RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive366

It's pure luck that we haven't had a truly catastrophic cyberdisaster because no one takes cybersecurity seriously
https://www.snopes.com/ap/2020/07/31/florida-teen-charged-twitter-hack-bitcoin-theft/

The Twitter "hack" was some random kid.

Let me say that again for emphasis. The Twitter "hack" was some random kid.

Using basic social engineering hacks.

What if it had been Russia, who got into only Trump's account, and tweeted "The time for freedom is now--rise up and kill any Democrats you can!"? Can you imagine the chaos and impact that would have? Or, Russia has too many reasons to disincentivize that--what if a random alt-right troll did it? For the lulz.

Basic social engineering. Sure, Twitter will be on alert for it now... somewhat. For a little while. Until they get lax again. Twitter is hardly the only vulnerability.

That's not even getting into REAL hacking. Not that it's needed. A large portion of the US power infrastructure is controlled by hardware that is STILL SET TO DEFAULT LOGINS. Like your router, when it comes set to "admin/admin". It's not QUITE that bad, because the default is dependent on the model of the hardware and not easy to just guess, but if you know the model, you can find the default, and bam you're in. Some of these are only accessible by hardline, so there's a physical presence needed, but it's not like every utility tunnel is guarded against access. Not remotely like that. Hell even our nuclear reactors are barely guarded.

Nobody in power understands the problem so nothing gets done. I wonder if someone might do something like cause a week long power outage in a major city, just so people realize the scale of the problem, before it ends up in something much much worse. Glitch (talk) 20:04, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem really is how you can stop this. These kinds of hacks rely on a human element (hence social engineering), which is fundamentally unfixable unless we start using biological data exclusively which has all sorts of concerns involving privacy. Other solutions like physical authentication exist, but similarly can be social engineered. Technologically, we have the right measures in place, 2FA and in some cases physical authenticators go a long way. Sociologically, we have a borderline unfixable issue. We can tell people "hey, don't be an idiot", but that message can take a while to land. A big part of that has to do with the fact that PCs have to accommodate for the worst possible user. You may understand how to use 2FA for security, but the elderly (who often hold management in corporations) and folks who aren't super interested won't and often refuse to understand/use it. Password reuse is a good example. Most people nowadays know that reusing your password across services is setting up a ticking timebomb for a big compromise. However most people also don't think they "need" a password manager, since that is for tech nerds. Instead, they rotate a few passwords around and think that makes them safe enough. This will be an on-going issue and as stated, it's not possible to remove it without creating a major privacy concern. 21:15, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I think there's a lot of catastrophes we're unprepared for that are going to fuck us over. COVID-19 really makes you rethink how stable our society is-Hastur! (talk)  21:18, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * How can it be stopped? Obviously it can never be stopped 100%. Nothing ever can. But we can make it a hell of a lot harder and less likely.


 * A random 17 year old was able to effectively impersonate a former US president and the Democratic nominee in an election year and address millions of viewers. That's how badly we're secured. I feel like the implications of the huge bullet we dodged that he was just stupid and greedy are going completely unnoticed. Which is exactly why the one that's coming, that's going to actually be really bad, won't be stopped. Humans only learn that fire is hot after they get burned. Sometimes not even then.


 * Everything is fundamentally unfixable, until you figure out how to fix it. At the very LEAST, as a complete brain dead reform, we could have a corporate security culture such that if you ever give anyone (even the CEO) your login credentials to anything, you are immediately fired on the spot, no exceptions, and blacklisted. With modern software there is absolutely 0 reason for that to ever be necessary. ZERO. Yeah no policy is ever followed 100%. But we're a long, long way from 100%. We can't even SEE 100% from here.


 * The problem is not the technology. It hasn't been for years. The problem is that even when good security policies are in place, they aren't followed. That has to stop, now. Frankly, Twitter should be shitting their pants in terror of serious and dire consequences because Trump's Twitter was on the table for being compromised. I'm pretty sure some law on the books makes it a criminal offense to impersonate a sitting president, or aid in the commission of said crime. I know that's not the case, because corporations and their higher ups are above the law and thus have no fear of any consequences, but it SHOULD be.


 * This is not a privacy issue. This is a "people are fucking stupid and that's compounded by a culture that incentivizes them to be that way" issue. And it's not going to get fixed. Anyone with even passing knowledge of the situation has been ringing the alarm for about 2 decades now. The vulnerabilities are obvious and well known, and nobody cares. People are going to die over this. I have to stop thinking about it before I get depressed. Glitch (talk) 00:08, 1 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Some script kiddie hacking twitter to do a bitcoin scam hardly qualifies as a "truly catastrophic cyberdisaster." Governments are spending untold millions (billions?) of dollars on cybersecurity to not only protect their systems, but actively attack their adversaries' systems. This isn't focused on military systems alone, but critical infrastructure like the power grid and utilities and public health infrastructure. Also, state and local systems are targets from targets both domestic and foreign threats, for example, people trying to fuck up elections. No matter what protections we put in place, it's not a matter of if, but when, a "catastrophic" event occurs. The best prepared authorities will not only have a good protection system in effect, but a good system that can recover from an attack while minimizing the impacts on the people they serve. We, the public, need to make sure that the people responsible for protecting all these systems are sufficiently and transparently funded and managed. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 02:04, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Did... did you read what I wrote? Because the fact this wasn't a disaster is my ENTIRE point, as it very easily COULD have been. And it doesn't matter how much money their spending if the policies are bad and not even being followed anyway. It's completely irrelevant actually. Oh, great, so this system is completely hardened against all forms of attack, to great expense--too bad they left the password on the default setting, or gave it away to someone on the phone who claimed to be a Government Password Inspector. It's like putting the key to your fortress under your doormat. It doesn't matter how good the security is if it's easily bypassed. Glitch (talk) 02:32, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I was mostly replying to RZ's original post, and I concur with what you wrote above. Your point "it's not the technology, it's the people" is spot on. I wanted to chime in with an observation that it's not if these things are gonna happen, it's when, and these technology companies need to learn from their mistakes quickly and put controls in place to prevent a recurrence, or their whole business could be placed in serious jeopardy. It's slightly different with government organizations, when peoples' lives are at stake. In this case, these organizations need to be open and honest about the threats and how they manage them, so their stakeholders (us) can give them the resources and expertise they need. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 16:12, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I apologize for my misunderstanding of what you meant. I'm so used to either being misunderstood in what I'm saying (whether the fault for that is mine or the reader's is immaterial, but I'm very actively trying to work on minimizing the chance of the former) and having to continually clarify or else being disagreed with that I forget there's a possibility of being both understood and agreed with, hah. Mea culpa. Glitch (talk) 19:57, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I have gone through a couple usernames. Not exactly by choice, but I don't backdoor here. I've had this one for a long time, and as long as I keep logging in my password is set, but I would have to make a new username if my password ever got ditched, because at this point I have no idea what it is.  This site is good in the sense that you don't have to tie a username to an email address.  I would never try to recover a password from a place that I don't know is secure, or at least protected.  In bad faith, if somebody tried to track me down, maybe they could find out who I am from my posts and statements, but that wouldn't give them my credentials.    And I think ultimately, they'd be very disappointed. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:59, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

PSA
I won't single anyone out, but I read and edited Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And I am quite shocked by the poor job being applied to the initial quote. From:, the supposed quote: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that...there comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Now, to be clear, this is sourced from:

What does the full quote say?

I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, 'This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.' There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

I don't care what your opinion on her is; this is a ridiculous case of cutting up a quote in pieces without even properly signalling it to the reader. If you are going to - for whatever reason that may be - cut up a quote, make sure to introduce this: [...]. So the reader knows that this is not the exact sequence of words stemming from the original quote and, if they are interested, they can pursue the full quote by going to the source linked. But this? This is a shit salad, and I am not even a fan of hers. Worse, I think the full quote in itself is incriminating against her, there was no need to make it look worse because it reads like a fearmongering, bigoted piece. If you are going to cut up the quote, do it fucking correctly:

I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. [...] There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that... [...] [T]here comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

I am sorry for sounding angry, but this is a mistake I have to make sure doesn't happen regularly here. This quote was written in March of 2014 and stood for more than 6 years, guys, and nobody noticed? I happen to be familiar with Hirsi Ali because I used to be an anti-Muslim bigot of the Sam Harris kind for multiple years, and editorial "tricks" like these, which the anti-SJW community loved to point out, didn't help and made it worse, because it made me by default assume that every critic of Hirsi Ali is this dishonest. And it doesn't have to be, and I am a different person today. Okay, whatever. 00:09, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes that's bad style to the point of inaccuracy, but I also see why they chose to abbreviate the quote, because the context doesn't really alternate the intended meaning. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 01:10, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's likely the quote was mistaken for non-quote text or the editor didn't see the end of the quote and beginning of the regular-text and chopped it up, likely not on purpose. While it's nice that you corrected it, I would say aggressively bitching about your "disappointment" on the saloon is seriously the worst way you could possibly try to encourage other users to be more careful when editing. WTF? Shabi  DOO  02:09, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know Shabidoo. It seems like some pretty hacky writing on the part of the original transcriber of that quote. 02:39, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's quite possible that they didn't know how to properly write quotes with omissions. I, too, consider it a basic writing skill, but it is a skill that a lot of people nonetheless lack the same way many people butcher poor, defenseless commas.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 04:24, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I am not sure what tone of mine would please you, but I confess that I was quite frustrated. shrug The presentation of the quote comes off as hacky, but you're right that it could've been oversight. Although I can't help but think it's unlikely to have been accidental.
 * I politely disagree; the reason is that the quote came off as weird to me. It felt like it was cut in rather disconnected pieces, that's why I got suspicious of it in the first place. Or, in other words, the "flow" of argumentation came as weird to me. I don't know how to explain it properly. 04:27, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I think your intuition has little credibility against a pretty reasonable assumption about writing on a wiki anyone can edit. I'd be happy to overturn that assumption for something more substantive, like clearly dishonest edit history on the page.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 04:59, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * My intuition that the initial quote was weirdly constructed that raised my suspicion? Or what else are you referring to? 06:11, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't see the problem here. — Oxyaena Harass  07:29, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There absolutely was a problem that they fixed. It's potentially libelous(it'd take a pretty serious case though) to ascribe a quote in a manner that doesn't clearly denote omissions.  The imagined sneaky liar doing it on purpose is almost certainly entirely in their head.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 23:40, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

00:18, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Some editing required
I just created a draft on the New Eden School. It needs some serious work though. — Jeh2ow Damn son!  20:00, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I did a little expansion and reorganizing. Mainly (In terms of expanding), I mentioned the creationist courses. One of the required textbooks is by dear ole ICR drone Brian Thomas. --George Soros Puppet (talk) 01:43, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Herman Cain has just died
He never caught them all. — Jeh2ow Damn son!  17:45, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Rest in peace Fowler (talk) 17:59, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * good riddance 19:04, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * thats just a tad insensitive Fowler (talk) 03:52, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doKkOSMaTk4  04:08, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * *blink noises* Fowler (talk) 16:01, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant, it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 13:55, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Vaush
Can someone who knows about Vaush have a look at the latest, not minor, edit as it seems to affect the general tone of the article. I don't know the gentleman so can't tell if it's right or wrong. Scream!! (talk) 19:52, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Some of it looks good from what I've seen of him, some of it looks bad. The "don't actually say the bad words" bit is stupid. We literally link to articles on these words and terms for fuck's sake. 20:05, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM8LS7k4uyw All you need to know about vaush. Or, shorter: he is a sexual harasser, predator and basically a far-left copy of destiny who gained prominence because younger people online like that sort of gross stuff.  20:56, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see you've done zero research on anyone to your left, as per usual. No, I'm not a fan of him. 21:15, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * ok, prove me wrong 21:58, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * On what? That the Dusty video is all you need to watch in order talk about Vaush? Prove it is. I'm sure he's said other dumb shit as well. He's also said non-stupid shit, which while it doesn't exonerate him for saying stupid shit, means that there's more than just "dumb wannabe edgelord" That he's not a Destiney ripoff? I mean, that's pretty easy. Vaush's stream and style is pretty clearly derived from both Destiny and PewDiePie, plus probably other shows I don't know of. Note I said "derived from" and not "rip off of". 22:10, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok so basically nothing I said was wrong. Congrats for playing yourself. 22:24, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * "All you need to know about vaush." "basically a far-left copy of destiny" Eat crow. 22:27, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Raven is socdem capitalist pig complaining about a fat autistic man sexually harassing someone years ago on Destiny's discord. Eat raven. HairlessCat (talk) 01:24, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Huh? 01:33, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Not only did he sexually harass someone, he also tried to coerce the victim to shut up and use the mods on destinys discord to cover it up (https://twitter.com/myteethfellout/status/1128429651267915778). this isnt to mention that he also harassed other women, mostly with mental disabilities. (https://twitter.com/tamalupisis/status/1137952275232509954). so yeah, fuck that guy. 03:07, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * He also lied about apologizing to the victim, blocking that person instead. (https://twitter.com/xX_ItzTweek_Xx/status/1168598253320822786) 03:09, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * He ain't perfect. HairlessCat (talk) 12:25, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Would you say the same thing if he was an Alt-Righter?? Gunther1987 (talk) 19:16, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Interpretation?
I was listening to ac\dc's back in black the other day and was wondering what the fuck he was taking about, can anyone enlighten me? Fowler (talk) 17:39, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The song is a tribute to a band member that died. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 19:19, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * If you play it backwards, it’s about how we should all worship Satan. 19:27, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * If you play it backwards it sounds better too. Cardinal Chang (talk) 15:56, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Just what the USA needs: another disaster
https://www.aol.com/hurricane-isaias-causes-major-damage-002750856.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9zZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAG_7ewOm6FMy7Adw9zeuST5Qkek4IlOnD67k8bbywP0yNx0gRtqqWFfcL5p_OpMET5v2HGUJsjjdwbhd2hNnamUn8Ohz_E4QtjbzxYU_xzBV0NxPPhXlPKEPPU0blmqfG7lnhulEuAZJ3b1sY6516Ev5PSaHGm9ErN7sPTmEKt6

Nature just loves piling shit on top of a major pile of shit that has killed over 155,000 people. Now we got Hurricane Isaias --George Soros Puppet (talk) 01:59, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Functional cultures produce resilient societies that can weather disasters with minimal disruption. This is probably a good time to take stock of what went wrong and how that can be prevented in the future. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 17:14, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

The COVID-19 pandemic and Trump decimating the US, I swear to a God that likely does not exist, it is taking a toll on my mental health
I am not exactly sure how to put it but I guess the outside pressure of everything is messing with my thought process. --George Soros Puppet (talk) 14:15, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Turn off telecommunications, and go do something unrelated and enjoyable like reading a book, watching a movie, exercise, or a productive hobby. After you’ve relaxed, detach yourself emotionally from what’s been troubling you before returning to the Internet. Getting upset or preoccupied doesn’t help anything. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 17:13, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Shocking tales from the Aspie side!
I was looking for anecdotes about hyposensitivity to pain this morning after remembering how much I enjoyed the shock from joke gum: a shipmate bought one for his kid and brought it into work one day and pretty soon after the first shock I'd worked out how to keep it triggered in my right hand (until he took it back for his kid, the philistine). I couldn't find examples of similar behavior, and have gotten that a lot of other folks here are on the spectrum, has anyone else experienced this (or something similar)? Artificius (talk) 10:09, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * When I was little I used to constantly run into the flatscreen TV we had. I don't remember doing so, but my mom does. It was because I liked the pressure. — Oxyaena Harass  17:12, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I know that feeling. I sleep under two wool blankets I stole from my last ship even in the summer (then I use a fan, and I have to wash everything every few days). It's all about the pressure. Artificius (talk) 23:51, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Y'know, it's funny. No one there liked those blankets (wool tarps), and yet I still care that I stole the stupid things. Artificius (talk) 23:57, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Brighteon
I found a YouTube rip off promoting "free speech". Later, I did some research and found out that it's CEO is Mike Adams. — Jeh2ow Damn son!  17:44, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, there's one for infowars too. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 21:09, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Horrible Youtube channel
Check this out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jZL-7JB4vE&t=2s HairlessCat (talk) 20:46, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Fuckers are using elephants in combat. Fowler (talk) 14:08, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * you really have to make me look like an idiot, don't you? Fowler 11:50, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

<3?
What does this mean? I would have thought it was a willy Fowler (talk) 09:47, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Seriously? It's a heart.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 13:55, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * >:( Fowler (talk) 14:02, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's a heart. Gunther1987 (talk) 17:04, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It means "less than 3". 17:16, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Apart from "heart" - statistics are often lumped together where there is <3 replies to a survey or similar, so as not to obviously identify individual responses. Aloysius the Gaul 21:16, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * A willy should look like a rocket ship. That looks like the thing astronauts crash land back on Earth (formal) in, what is that called?  They gotta go pull em out of the ocean because they landed in it?  That's what it looks like. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 02:54, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Do you mean this Gol, 8=====D? Fowler (talk) 07:40, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * cock is as diverse as the people they are connected to. open your hearts and your legs for all the dicks of the world and leave your penis-facism at the door AMassiveGay (talk) 07:49, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Leave your prejudice at home private! Fowler (talk) 07:52, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Eviction crisis
Is it an exagerration to say that America is literally fucked? Nebuchadnezzar7658 (talk) 21:57, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * There are some subsidies being doled out in my state. Not sure how much of an impact it will have, though-Hastur! (talk)  22:03, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hopefully some of those numbers can be curbed, but it's still going to be catastrophic. Nebuchadnezzar7658 (talk) 22:16, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Right? That's a lot of money being asked for that just doesn't exist.  We might end up like in 2008.  Or there'll be a massive bailout.  Which I'm not thrilled about, because it's not going to come from taxes on the wealthy.-Hastur! (talk)  23:15, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Oddly, the mass evictions are going to screw over the landlords, as there's going to be a huge number of empty apartments that can't be filled... CoryUsar (talk) 23:33, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * It'll be a double whammy. People can't afford rent or mortgages and get evicted creating a homelessness crisis, then landlords and banks default on the loans because people can't pay. Need government intervention, pay the rent and mortgages for Americans through at least July 2021. Though the sum is likely astronomical, it is a small price to pay to keep the societal fabric of the US from literally falling apart. I mean the number of horrible things that come from losing housing security, it too long a list to even document.RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:55, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Don't forget that with increased homelessness- it will be more difficult to keep track of COVID-19 cases. --George Soros Puppet (talk) 00:00, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * And yet, if we let the landlords default, home prices will finally fall to a level affordable to the masses. CoryUsar (talk) 00:32, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * This is what is so freaking shortsighted about caving to landlords (who correctly want to be paid for someone inhabiting their property, if perhaps exorbitantly): very few of the millions of people facing eviction are doing so in a stony, lackadaisical vacuum. Their jobs all ceased to exist simultaneously as a result of COVID-19. If no one is eating out because they don't want to spend their last week on a respirator, that fancy restaurant your tenants comp your drinks at can't stay open long enough to require the services of the accounting firm who blew off a week in a cubicle's worth of steam at concerts and movies or shopped the Bass Pro (where they often lingered perhaps too long in the formerly staffed gun department). Every one of those businesses laid low by the invisible hand paid people who likely didn't own the places where they lived, and unless you're willing to drop your rent to compete with the other dons for a miserly government stipend then who exactly will be moving onto your property? How does this go in any direction other than appropriation of your property by People's Committees? Artificius (talk) 03:07, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Hold up, before you bust your ass on that slippery slope. Though I do believe that after 45 is out, the Federal Government will likely need to embark on a massive buying spree of a lot of property, the primary focus will be more on keeping people in their homes, on their farms, though many banks will likely want to offload a lot of mortgages, not just for residential property but commercial as well. People's Committees implies something common to force land distribution like in Venezuela or Cuba, which isn't gonna happen because as much as I'm a Democrat, they still are funded by rich white people. I think we are going to be a little shocked about how much money we're about to spend, however the full faith and credit of the United States is backed by the labor of every American, which still is a tremendous amount.RipCityLiberal (talk) 03:55, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * That's a fair damned point, though I was more in a Doctor Zhivalgo and Russian/October Revolution headspace than Venezuela/Cuba (honestly no idea how closely they've hewn to the old Soviet model). I meant to imply that there's only so many nights that property would sit vacant while its former inhabitant slept in a tent among thousands more like in my city. Whether that's from a more sane, rational approach such as the government section 8'ing the homes in question, buying them up en masse, or from the whole thing going unattended by Congress long enough to boil over with the social contract and grease the slippery slope into something suspiciously like Communism (since the original term would never play here, maybe "I can't believe it's not Bourgeois!") is where we should start a pool. Artificius (talk) 04:25, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

The solution is simple: abolish private property. I recommend you all read Proudhon's masterpiece What is Property? (1840). — Oxyaena Harass  03:57, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * And then what? Also, and though this certainly doesn't cover everybody, Americans in general are terrible as saving and it's not just due to expenses; it's actually a good thing to try to save something up for a crisis. Although no one wants to hear it, some people are in this spot from their own making (like a few idiots I work with who run air conditioners with windows open and bitch about not being able to pay their electric bills); now how to sort them out is another matter, but there will be some who are evicted because they should be. There's no good solution, just a least worst one. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい ) 04:10, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Housing is a human right, I fundamentally disagree with this in every way. Capitalism has created the homelessness crisis America (honestly the Western world) is experiencing. Previously banks manipulative practices created the 2008 crisis. Now a global pandemic has brought the system to its knees. It's time to explore a new system.RipCityLiberal (talk) 04:16, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Living beyond your means is not a human right, however, nor is refusing to make good on legally binding contracts. To go to the obvious example, I have no sympathy for sovereign citizens getting tossed out of places and arrested for playing stupid games with their rental or mortgage agreements. And while the banks absolutely are responsible for the mess that was 2008, if you think this housing crisis is bad, look what Eastern Europe was dealing with in the 80s; while it's certainly a goal to reduce it as much as possible, I highly doubt any economic system can totally eliminate that problem. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい ) 05:21, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Interesting rant, but oddly specific and very reliant on a weird direct relationship that maybe you have with your landlord? Like, who comps their landlord's drink?  I've lived in a house where the rent was cheap and there was no such thing as a late fee.  Squirrels in the walls in winter, bats in my attic room in summer, but hey, the rent was five guys cheap.  I now live in an apartment, very nice, no contact with the management besides "sign the lease, here's the rent, oh pool is closed still?  whatever."  Am I missing something?  Like, this is some caricature of French nobility? Who comps their landlord's drinks!?! Gol Sarnitt (talk) 04:14, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * If that was too ranty, I feel comfortable blaming alcohol if you do (this is the Saloon). "Comping the landlord's drinks" wasn't a reference to anything historical so much as a snide reframing of the relationship between some hypothetical mogul of a property owner's luxurious lifestyle and their ever-more impoverished tenants. As far as he's concerned, this hypothetical jerk is well within his rights to throw the deadbeats out on the street if they won't go back to work. And he totally is! It's also myopic, cruel, and likely to fuel social changes more catastrophic to his empire than if he and others had embraced reform (here I'm definitely referencing Theodore Roosevelt's "The Right of the People to rule" speech and its bit on Turgot, partly cause you got me thinking about French aristocrats and the decades of continent/world-spanning joy brought about by bread riots and short men in funny hats). Artificius (talk) 04:53, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

endorsed, I'm with ya. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:14, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Ok, so many things.
 * @oxyaena Didn't you once say you were incapable of holding a job?  I don't think you should be able to tell others what they are and are not allowed to own.
 * @RipCityLiberal I don't agree that housing is in itself a "right", as it fails the Desert Island test.  However, what I will say is that if someone does productive work, a job that is necessary for society to function, no matter how menial the task, society does owe this person some bare minimum of food, shelter, dignity, etc.  Enough to be a part of the society that depends on this person.  A "living wage".  We can disagree on what jobs actually are critical for society, or how much the living wage should be, but we should all agree there should be something.
 * @Blade Going to agree with you wholeheartedly.
 * Side note, being homeless and unemployed is not exploitation, it's the exact opposite of exploitation. You are making absolutely no one else rich by being on the street (Prison-Industrial Complex notwithstanding).  If the most sociopathic shadow-government corporatist were to create a paradise/dystopia, you would work your ass off doing the most complex tasks you can possibly do, in a squalid but otherwise safe and secure home, having just enough food and health care that your productivity and health is maximized, with little savings left over for yourself.  So, basically, being a young college graduate in NYC or San Francisco.
 * I don't know how it is in the rest of the country, but in NYC and California, the landlords don't get to toss people whenever they want to, eviction proceedings have to go through the courts. The courts are already more or less shut down (the judges tend to be older and thus are finding an excuse not to be in crowded indoor rooms), so no matter how deserving or undeserving the tenants are, even when the courts reopen the backlog is going to prevent a lot of the evictions.  I'm more concerned about the financial wizardry of how the landlords acquire the buildings in the first place; buildings that have more debt than they are actually worth tend to have... "faulty wiring". CoryUsar (talk) 10:13, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The reason I`m incapable of "holding a job" is because the capitalist system inherently favors neurotypicals over neurodivergent people. As for property, read What is Property by Proudhon and then get back to me. — Oxyaena Harass  15:25, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * There are many ways to solve homelessness that don't involve getting rid of property rights lol. 16:53, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Good, then use them or shut up. Ok? Ok. 16:56, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * "Good, then use them or shut up. Ok? Ok." My country did and we don't have this problem, I'm just watching America do American things.  17:45, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Norway: Adequate and secure housing for all No need to get rid of capitalism. 17:34, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * America: Property over people. Fix it or shut up. That's not a debate. Make real world effects, or shut up. 17:37, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Me, with my bare hands? I am not American to begin with. What's your plan? 17:40, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I will vote in favor of legislators and referendums who promote affordable housing. Happy now, or do you still feel the need to tell me to shut up?-Hastur! (talk)  17:41, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Goody for you. They'll ignore your intentions, fuck us all over, and kill our kids so they can win their stupid elections. Better solution. We elect people, and if they don't improve shit we kill them. We keep doing that until either shit improves or we run out of bodies. Seems better than a system that wants to kill my Nieces and Nephews so a fucking moron can desperately try to win an election, so he can validate his insecure ego. All while people say "both sides". Great, if both sides want to kill me and my family, I say kill them both. Kill them all and burn the entire stupid ass system to the ground if that's what it takes to fucking fix the problems. Because pushing that stupid voting button sure as hell ain't doing it. Fuck all of you who think that's ok. Fuck you all. Fuck every last shit that's ok with my fucking family dying for such petty fucking shit. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to emotionally prep myself to possibly bury my fucking nieces and nephews because the president is a fucking idiot, and everyone is too stupid to kill him and be done with it. 17:50, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

−
 * What a bizarre thing for GC to say. You can’t make an observation if you aren’t capable of personally taking over a government and making things happen? Just bizarre. I guess none of us can speak on anything. Or is it just a means of silencing people you don’t agree with? 17:51, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't fucking care. All you all do is talk talk talk. None of you have any fucking effect. Nothing has any fucking effect. The fucking system is fucking broken and it's going to fuck us all over to survive. FUck you all!! 17:53, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * (ec) I am genuinely sorry to hear this GC, I hope the affected family members recover safely and soon. Not a fan of yours personally but our petty mutual hate is not an impediment for me to wish your family members good health and recovery. And yeah, fuck Trump. 17:57, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * What are you doing now, GC? 17:56, 29 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I find myself wanting to know what GrammarCommie is doing to dismantle/improve the current system, besides clumsily removing other peoples' comments and yelling at us-Hastur! (talk) 17:58, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * He is understandably upset about Trump's Covid-19 response affecting his family. Let's not be too harsh now. 17:59, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Screaming into a void while we all do nothing, and are nothing. And the fucking system grinds us under like grain under a millstone. Or, if you want the really graphic answer, thinking about suicide and then realizing I'm too much of a coward to actually follow through, and that it wouldn't do anything anyway, and that everything is going to go to shit and there's nothing I can do about it. That's what I'm doing, isn't it great? Really improving the fucking world aren'td I? What are you doing? Is your little debate solving anything? Any fucking policy changes resulting from it? No? Fuck it then. 18:03, 29 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I've had enough of your shit, Brx, you smug, self-righteous prick. You're an asshole. And for Em, your country is the size of a small city here in the US, what works for a small city won't work for a nation filled with 300 mil people. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  18:02, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

If you are feeling suicidal right now, please give the hotlines a try. http://www.suicide.org/hotlines/texas-suicide-hotlines.html It can't hurt and can only help. 18:07, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I told you, I'm too much of a coward to actually do it. I know, I've tried before. I can list the ways. Attempted to hang self, Attempted to choke self, attempted to slit own wrists. Each time I fucking broke down before I could do the deed. My problem isn't suicide, it's what makes me want to kill myself. 18:12, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * And my family isn't sick, yet. But, while you all 1-80 because I mentioned suicide, think on this. I live in the US, in the South. I live deep in the red area. None of my neighbors wear masks, and both my sisters and my brothers in law are Trump supporters. If he does open those schools, I'm betting they'll send their kids there, especially my eldest sister, who has four kids to manage. And guess what the effects of cutting funding to education and then demanding a resource intensive curriculum during a pandemic are? Yeah. Fun times ahead. And the real fun part? The CDC says the real big wave of infections hasn't hit yet! Round two! Guess what happens if those kids go out into that maelstrom? Yeah. Best case scenario, they die. Worst case, we suddenly have a fuck ton of kids with a severely decreased quality of life, who maybe die anyway because every part of our system is shit, including the healthcare system. So, it's not that my family is affected yet, it's that Trump wants to pretend to solve the pandemic so he can up his re-election chances. It's basically his version of declaring a war to win an election.  18:43, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * GC, I get the feeling of hopelessness, and suicidal depression has been going up and down for me often in the past couple of years, so in that you and I are aligned. I cannot however let the argument from cosigned by . Fundamentally, what America has is not Capitalism, it Kakistocracy bordering on Kleptocracy. Those who have accumulated large amounts of wealth did not get it from hard work, they got it from an exploitative system and luck. You cannot tell me, that a family where the primary breadwinner, working two jobs and over 60 hours a week, is lazy. You cannot tell me that a system that allows for 60% occupancy of housing while literal millions are on the streets is fair. Nor can you say with an absolute straight face, that "people living beyond their means" are dedicating more than 50% of their income for rent and mortgages. What we have in America no longer works, in '08 we had an opportunity to fundamentally change the way we think about housing, and we failed because we lacked the imagination of a world where housing is guaranteed. Most Scandinavian countries I think have found a healthy balance with capitalism, but the control over the market and these countries (and indeed many European countries) far exceeds the control in the US. I would 100% support modeling government control similar to these systems, but it requires dispelling from the bullshit arguments that people alone are responsible for their economic situation. Fundamentally, the system is rigged against them.RipCityLiberal (talk) 18:58, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Who said lazy? The amortization tables for mortgages are readily available, getting a mortgage that's above your means is certainly not a good thing for the banks but you don't have to sign up for it. I didn't say all people are completely responsible for their situations, but certainly not everyone is blameless either. You can be hard working and still not use good financial judgment. The Blade of the Northern Lights (<font face="MS Mincho" color="black">話して下さい ) 20:04, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Fun tidbit, the President who did the most to curb homelessness in recent years? George W Bush of all people.  Really, if it wasn't for Iraq and Katrina and doing virtually nothing to prevent the housing bubble and the handling of Afghanistan and the alienation of foreign countries especially Iran when they were willing to have outreach and the open hostility to Putin and the gutting of public schools and the inability to control health care costs and the doubling of national debt in spite of starting off with the last time in US history when the US had a budget surplus and the exorbitant tax cuts for the rich while doing little to go after tax evasion and the continuing outsourcing of manufacturing to China, he wouldn't have been all that terrible.  CoryUsar (talk) 20:15, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * @GC While I don't want to argue with someone who is going through a crisis, the death rate for children from COVID is far lower than for other diseases that we simply put up with. Obviously that doesn't mean that absolutely no kids will die, but approximately speaking, the total mortality rate for everyone under 65 including healthy people, is .1%.  Source here  It's the people over 65, especially with other health problems, that are dropping like flies.  Of the people under 65 that die, 90% had an underlying condition, and given that around 1 in 5 people under 65 have an underlying condition, ok hold on a sec gotta math something, around a 1 in 200 chance of death if you are under 65 and have a serious condition, and a 1 in 8000 chance of death if you are under 65 and otherwise healthy.  Again, rates vary quite a bit by age and which condition in particular, these are rough averages.  Unless your sister's kids have health problems they are more likely to die in a car crash than from COVID.  Always buckle up, and please people, wear a facemask. CoryUsar (talk) 21:28, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * My eldest sister has high blood pressure. So I suppose I'll probably be burying her instead. Fun. Although one of my nephews has asthma if I recall. So I might have to deal with that after all. All so Trump can pretend to fix this problem, instead of actually fixing it. 21:58, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The evidence we have on children is scant, we shouldn't be spiking the football saying they are safer. And what kids do very well is spread the disease the others, say to an immuno-compromised parent/adult. Already examples of this happening.
 * why do they offer those mortgages to people that can't afford them? Because they profit from them. Banks pay sales people to deceptively offer services to juice revenue in the short term, to increase capital. People are only to blame for wanting to improve their living situation.RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:07, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * @Grammar No, you probably won't be burying your sister.  Like I said, she has a 199 in 200 chance of surviving.  Most likely to survive, but chance of complications which, yes, can cause permanent damage.  She and her kids should definitely wear masks.  As for the asthmatic kid, again, most likely will survive, but still a risk of complications.
 * @Rip No... we have plenty of evidence for children.  Virtually everyone in the Chassidic and Haredi communities around NYC got Covid already, and as far as I'm aware there's been almost no child mortality in spite of their communities being 8 kids per family with no possibility of isolation.  Unless genetically, Ashkenazi Jews are naturally resistant to Covid (which is a possibility), I think we can extrapolate that everyone else has similar odds.  As for kids being snot and germ factories, yes, yes this is true.  Again, the schools should be requiring masks.
 * @Rip ok double @, but needs to be said.  The banking industry is not in the business of lending you money.  The banking industry is in the business of selling your loans to other, larger banks.  They don't give two shits if you can't pay it back, because that's not their problem.  The bigger banks got fucked hard back in the 1970's when the smaller banks lent like drunken sailors and resold the loans to the big guys, so they stopped doing cocaine every once in a while to actually vet the occasional loan.  Then the US decided that there wasn't enough money flowing from the big banks to the little banks to help people buy homes, so they repealed Glass-Stiegel, so now the big banks could sell the loans again to an even bigger dumbass, hedge funds.  But to convince the hedge funds that the Brooklyn Bridge was such an amazing investment deal, the big banks went over to S&P and Moody's to do some financial wizardry, and voila, everything got rubberstamped and the hedge fund managers were too fuqtarded to do any do diligence, because after all, why would S&P be paid huge amounts of money to claim something was good if there was the possibility it wasn't?  And, well, you all live the rest of the story.  Happy ending, it won't happen ever again because we've never made the same mistake twice, so long as you ignore all the obvious fact that if we never made that mistake we wouldn't have had Glass Stiegel in the first place.CoryUsar (talk) 23:17, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * On banking, why do we accept that banks operate like that. The purpose of financial institutions should be to hold and distribute capital. If that isn't what they are doing, don't we need to evaluate that? On Covid and children, there are several things people are overlooking in this whole debate. The first is how it spreads among children, most schools (in America at least) closed schools in March, before the spread of Covid reached it's spring peak. It's difficult then to have clear evidence that children behaving normally (with their dirty disgusting selves) wouldn't spread the disease. South Korea, Australia, and Israel thought they had a hold on the virus, re-opened schools, then had to close them recently, because of spikes. The second is that the threat to children dying from the disease is low, but mortality shouldn't be the only metric we use to evaluate. Children's bodies react to the disease differently, and the long term consequences from being infected are completely unknown. Why are we willing to risk our future on what amounts to a guess. Lastly, children are not the only ones in school. Teachers, administrators, counselors, janitors are all at risk. Let's say a child gets infected, and has mild symptoms. Two weeks treating it no problem. But they infect a teacher and a janitor, who now put their family at risk. How would you explain to a child, that when they got sick, they also got their teacher sick and then they died. Is that something you want on a child's conscious? Or let's say a child get's sick enough they require medical treatment in an ICU, which diverts resources from another older person who is sick. The obvious choice is to treat the child, but if the child never got infected, they could use those resources. We must get this under control before we can even consider bringing children back to school.RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:36, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) We shouldn't accept that the banks operate that way, but the reason they do is because we the public fucked up and decided that "homes = investment".  Factories and bridges are investment.  Homes are consumption.  Want to fix the problem?  Start by getting rid of the home mortgage deduction from income taxes.
 * 2) The uninfected are like a giant lake of gasoline, you can keep putting out the fires but that lake is still there, ready to ignite so long as there is a spark somewhere.  No matter when you lift the lockdown, those little snot-factories will spread the disease.  While the shutdown barely created herd immunity (the disease spread too slow to sustain itself), the shutdown couldn't last forever and even it did there's no way to prevent some pocket of disease from re-spreading everything a year from now.  What we can do is enact enhanced policies that can be in place indefinitely (e.g., masks and limited seating at restaurants) that either create herd immunity or causes the disease to have such a slower spread that herd immunity only requires relatively few people catching the disease.
 * 3) As for guilt?  Kids have been spreading the flu since forever, I don't think there's any more reason for blaming a kid for a coronavirus death than for last year blaming those kids for flu deaths, there's just slightly more deaths now.CoryUsar (talk) 00:30, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I can't believe I need to say this, but you cannot compare seasonal influenza to Covid-19. In any fashion. Seasonal influenza has vaccines, has decades of historical study, and although highly infectious tends to not be fatal (.01% in the US). Covid has no vaccine, six-ish months of study, and is highly infectious as well as being at least 10 to 15 times more fatal. We cannot gamble children's lives like this. Masks are a duh, but class sizes need to be way smaller (before my mother died in 2017, her third grade class had 32 kids, physical distancing was impossible), remote learning must be an option, and there must be preparation for full remote learning if there is an outbreak. We quite literally cannot afford to fuck this up.RipCityLiberal (talk) 15:50, 30 July 2020 (UTC)


 * You can compare anything to anything. I absolutely can compare apples and oranges; oranges are better for adding to mixed drinks, apples can be turned into booze directly.  The question is whether the comparison is actually useful; you can compare the nutritional value of carrots to steak, but it wouldn't make sense to compare King Lear to toenail clippers.  As both are spread in the same manner and have similar symptoms, it does make sense to compare COVID and Flu.  In fact, you already did compare them, as I will be doing further.
 * The mortality rate of the seasonal flu is on average .1%, not .01%. The mortality rate of COVID is on average .5%, making it about 5 times as deadly.  But I agree that that's not the biggest problem...
 * You are correct in that there is no vaccine. This is, yes, the real issue with COVID.  While anywhere from a third to a half of people get flu vaccines each year, and more importantly the people who are the most socially interactive with the vulnerable (nurses, doctors, etc) are more likely to get the vaccine, barring any actual conspiracies, absolutely no one had a vaccine for COVID-19.  Thus, unmitigated, the disease would spread incredibly rapidly, and far more people would get COVID than would get the flu.
 * "Gambling children's lives" is absolutely a thing we've been doing since forever. Otherwise, schools wouldn't have existed before the Polio or MMR vaccines, yet, they did, and often in more unsanitary conditions than today.  If the lockdown is put back in place, and the government collapses entirely (a remote but very real possibility), a lot more children are going to suffer than from COVID.  Those free lunches don't just appear out of nowhere, nor do their teachers' salaries, nor the bricks assembled into an elementary school.  "Think of the children" is a phrase used by people who usually haven't been thinking of the children at all. CoryUsar (talk) 18:51, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The comparison literally has no function. It isn't like apples and oranges, it's literally a disease we know, study, and have a general grasp of how it works, versus one we do not. I admit mistaking flu mortality rate, but you are also off for Covid by at least a factor of 10. Your implication that I am being disingenuous about my concern is frankly insulting. There are two factors that generally determine a functioning society; children in schools and sports entertainment. Presently the US cannot do either effectively. The collapse of government (which is frankly absurd, federalism insulates virtually all Americans from anarchy) is entirely because of the failure to control the virus. It didn't need to be this way, in every single way the Federal response has been a failure, and because of that children cannot return to school the way they were before. Rushing to get this semblance of normality back, when the pandemic is accelerating, isn't just dangerous, it's irresponsible. And you have failed to refute the underlying argument in all my statements; Kids will get infected with Covid. There will be outbreaks, kids will die, kids will fatally infect their parents, teachers and friends. And then we will have to stop completely and refocus our resources to address those outbreaks, instead of taking the time now to control the current outbreak so schooling can return next year in some form. The financial numbers we received today make it even more important, we get this right the first time.RipCityLiberal (talk) 20:04, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * You are way, way off in terms of mortality. The rate you cited was the case fatality rate, not the actual mortality rate.  The key difference is that the CFR is only from confirmed cases, and thus excludes the asymptomatic people or those with minor symptoms who never got tested in the first place. My original cite that I used for estimating the death rate of people under 65 puts the overall rate at 1.4%, not 6% as your cite does.  More importantly, that citation is a bit outdated and it turns out to still be a massive overestimate.  What you want is the infection mortality rate, not the case fatality rate.  The current CDC estimates of the IFR are between .5% and .8%, with a best estimate of .65%.  The center for global development puts it at .7% for the US.  The Lancet puts it at around .66%, though this cite is positively ancient coming from March.  It's possible that the CDC and others are in on some conspiracy, but I generally doubt that. CoryUsar (talk) 21:34, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Grand Opening, Grand Closing. -RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:00, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The real problem with children getting sick is that for the most part, children CAN'T be isolated from their families. 200 kids getting sick means 200 families getting sick.  That's 800-1000 people, possibly more depending on the area, and a lot of those are going to be among the most vulnerable.  You are right that "kids will infect and kill others" is a strong argument, strong enough to support the reduction if not outright temporary closure of entire school districts.  The argument that "kids are going to die in droves", however, is not quite as strong. CoryUsar (talk) 20:05, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Never was concerned about droves of children dying now, the issue as always has been and should be:
 * We don't know enough about how the disease affects children
 * We don't know enough about how children spread the disease
 * We don't have an effective strategy of testing, tracing or isolation
 * Schools do not have enough resources to create a virus free enviornment
 * Children in the US do not yet need to return to school in any large fashion. -RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:57, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I think we know enough about how the disease affects children, and how they spread it. However, I absolutely agree that we don't have any effective strategies on this (or anything else, these days), and also that schools don't have the resources for, well, nearly anything they need even without a pandemic.  As for the need to return to school, well, I get the impression that if the pandemic goes on much longer, Gen Z is going to be permanently educationally damaged from this.  Yes yes, remote learning blah blah, but that's just not the same.  We are consciously making the decision to sacrifice Gens Y and Z in order to protect Gen X and Boomers.  Again, we are in a world where there are no right answers, merely least-awful answers. CoryUsar (talk) 22:14, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Considering that Gen X and Boomers are in charge, and currently fucking everything up I'd say this is mostly accurate. Remote learning isn't good enough, but that's more a resources being unequal problem, then an everyone learns enough problem. Anyway, in Oregon, no schools are coming back until January at the earliest.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:38, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I tried to decipher this
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/4590274

Thinking that there was some grand point to be made about reality, but the first line kind of blew that thought up. I don't know why some assume what happens during a drug fueled experience has some insight about reality. I tried to read through it but it made no sense at all.Machina (talk) 23:28, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to read that wall of text but I will say that in my experience psychedelics give the sensation of epiphany, truth, and realization without necessarily giving you those things-Hastur! (talk) 23:44, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's true that drugs can help to escape some of the filters that help humans make sense of the world (or at least perceive it through different filters). In that sense, yes having a psychedelic experience can help you understand reality better...but not in the way that some say. That is, a difference sense of reality is not "more true" but that the very experience of seeing the world through different filters should give you insight into the fact that everything IS experienced through many filters in the first place and it ought to help you see what "truth" means. I would say a good psychedelic experience is just as useful as a good course in metaphysics/ontology or a very good work of art/literature/theatre/cinema that tries to demonstrate how filtered our experiences and construction of reality are. Shabi  DOO  00:32, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * This was a methamphetamine experience. There is nothing psychedelic about methamphetamine. Psychedelics target the serotonin systems (such as 5HT2A, the primary receptor of LSD / mushrooms / etc.). MDMA is a stimulant that also targets the serotonin system. Methamphetamine does not. The text is tweaked word salad made by repeating "deep" words like "abstract", "reality", etc. I had fun with pasting the text in a https://projects.haykranen.nl/markov/demo/ Markov chain text generator.] It gave me "deep" lines, like "That we understand thought in itself in asking that it know can be may being with idea has and the other paradoxes" that made as much sense as the original poster. It made me want to put the text on a soap bottle. Soundwave106 (talk) 03:29, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I’m not a scientist or whatever (just a druggo) so I might b wrong but I’m p sure meth is slightly serotonergic as well isn’t it? I heard that’s also part of the reason that it’s Legit Neurotoxic (like MDMA vs., say, regular amphetamine). That’s also why higher doses and/or low tolerance can sometimes give meth a vaguely enactogenic feel to it. 203.111.4.57 (talk) 14:07, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * What I find from Googling seems to suggest that methamphetamine does damage the neurons. But papers I find like this suggest methamphetamine has no role for the 5-HT2 (serotonin) receptor, which is the classic "psychedelic" target. Of course, science is a living process so the information is subject to change.  Soundwave106 (talk) 19:32, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * im not quite sure what the purpose of the distinction being made here is. the average drug user will be using psychedelics simply to mean acid and mushrooms etc. they wont be classing drugs on what biological systems they hit but on the kind of high they produce and the what they want from a night out. if you want a more psuedo spiritual experience you wont be reaching for a meth pipe. no one smokes t and expects mad visuals they'll be smoking t to be able to fuck for 24 hours solid. maybe throw in a little k or g for kind of speedball effect. you'll not likely have any kind of epiphany smoking t or visit a higher plane of existence, but make no mistake meth is a seriously mind altering drug, and no one ever has picked up a pipe and thought this will end well.
 * oddly though, after a few days of debauchery, i'll struggle putting a sentence together and i'll look like golem, but ive found im super good at the crossword in that state. swings and roundabouts AMassiveGay (talk) 23:13, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The biological action drives the high, and I tend to think that way. That's just me. It helps you understand why LSD and mushrooms are similar-ish experiences, for instance, and helps you understand recent phenomenon like "spice", "bath salts", etc. Certainly my level of understanding isn't enough to actually invent new compounds, but some people are at that level (mostly making medicine, but occasionally making recreationals), and on the medical end, to give an example (COVID-19), when it comes to potential treatments, I'd certainly place more bets on, say, someone who knows what is than someone who thinks Bill Gates created COVID-19 to depopulate the planet.
 * From a "high" perspective, from what I've seen in trip reports, the quasi religious experience comes from two main classifications of drugs: psychedelics (LSD, mushrooms, but also including others like mescaline and DMT) and dissociatives (ketamine, DXM, MXE). To some degree, entactogenic stimulants (MDMA) give a bit of that effect too, but not as much... although entactogen stimulants exist that hit serotonin more (Vice apparently wrote last year that 2-CB is kind of getting popular, surprisingly, and this is one of them)... so "your mileage may vary".
 * If a stimulant doesn't hit serotonin, you can't call it psychedelic. Therefore those who value "psychedelic insights" will not find a lot of value in a tweaked out meth rant. Some in the beginning of this discussion were comparing a meth session to a psychedelic experience, and it's not. The closest equivalent to the "meth experience" would be those that have done some Adderall (amphetamine), as meth works similarly. (Only there is no danger with Adderall of getting any impurities, so you won't experience any shitty impurity side effects.) Soundwave106 (talk) 16:33, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Lol, there's only one way for you to find out, and you'll discover that one of the sides is right. You can recontextualize it however you want. HairlessCat (talk) 14:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No I'm pretty sure it's just nonsense that seemed profound at the time but when you write it down it's nothing new, special, or even that smart and can often be wrong. In short you shouldn't trust people who had drug experiences about any sort of revelation. I asked for a translation to see what he meant by his words but I guess that's not really needed.Machina (talk) 01:43, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Trump interviewed on Axios
This world is proper fucked, with cretins like this at the helm and their ribald, frothing supporters at the stern. Good lord, it's nearly as car crashy as Prince Andrew saying he doesn't sweat and loved Pizza Express https://www.axios.com/full-axios-hbo-interview-donald-trump-cd5a67e1-6ba1-46c8-bb3d-8717ab9f3cc5.html Cardinal Chang (talk) 08:19, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Swan tries so hard to lead him to show even a shred of human decency or compassion, and every single time he chooses to obfuscate, assign blame or self-praise. He has blood on his hands, and he can't even acknowledge there might have been any sort of failure.RipCityLiberal (talk) 16:49, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's getting to the stage where I feel bad about mocking the afflicted. But, he didn't care about doing so himself, so fuck 'im. (To this day I am still surprised how his description of Serge Kovaleski did not kill his political aspirations outright and immediately.) Cardinal Chang (talk) 18:19, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Not that I do mock the afflicted. It's just that mocking Clownface Von Fuckstick is indeed heading into mocking the afflicted territory Cardinal Chang (talk) 18:21, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's been a while (maybe 2 - 3 years) since I've watched an entire Trump interview. Jesus Christ that was painful to sit through......--NavigatorBR (Talk) - 00:31, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

The interview reminds me of an "all gas no breaks" or early louis theroux episode. Junfa (talk) 01:05, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I had to wait till the end of the of the interview and watch the credits with my fingers crossed, hoping Armando Iannucci's name would appear as creative consultant or scriptwriter. Honestly, it's one depressing interview. Narcissism meets positive thinking (is there really much of a difference?) it's the new earnest half-wit in comedy character creation. Cardinal Chang (talk) 09:23, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Something interesting I noticed on the state election ballot
Each August here is Michigan there is a vote for either state reps, county level officials and local millage's. During this type of election there is no splitting the ticket between parties as always.

Now here is where is gets interesting- on the Democrat side of the ballet almost all the proposed reps had more than one candidate. On the Republican side there were no other choices for reps or county workers. Have Republicans become so lazy that they cannot offer more than one candidate for state elections? How does a political party get so lazy that they cannot be bothered to have more candidates? Unless there is some sort of ulterior motive? Either way it is just sad. --George Soros Puppet (talk) 21:37, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It is not implausible that the locla Republican organization met in some kind of caucus ore even an informal meeting and doled out the candidacies to avoid splitting the Republican vote while allowing the Democrats to split theirs. Smerdis of Tlön, wekʷōm teḱsos. 00:16, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's also common for both parties to not put much effort into winning elections in seats they consistently lose. The skew of national partisan politics often make local elections downright unwinnable for one party.  It's my opinion that this fact generally increases corruption a lot.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:12, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Fun part, the state rep for Michigan has kept his seat for years. He is also a Republican with no other Republican candidates but worse yet, the democrat candidate almost always loses. I can smell corruption from miles away. That was my thought yesterday at the polls. --George Soros Puppet (talk) 17:26, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

When your sword in minecraft breaks and you are forced to defend yourself with a shovel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcLV2CWi8oI 02:14, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * he should've accepted salvation 196.53.0.186 (talk) 06:37, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Trident Drowns should be nerfed! The Sqrt-1 talk stalk 13:23, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't be so easy if this was a leaping great white. HairlessCat (talk) 14:09, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah the Trident Drowned are a nightmare. Before they existed I could safely pass a night on a boat, now it's suicidal to do so. 15:07, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Feedback appreciated
Help_talk:Manual_of_style 20:36, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Concentration camps in China
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17oCQakzIl8 17:25, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The world needs to take a stand against the Chinese government's human rights abuses.-Hastur! (talk) 17:27, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * It seems to me that the US, Russia, and China all need to be roundly condemned and held to account by the rest of the world, but considering how much military and economic power each of the three hold in comparison to everyone else, I'm not going to hold my breath. I'm not sure which way the correlation goes, if being at the top of the power heap leads a state to be awful or if being awful leads to being on the top of the power heap, probably a complex inter-relationship, but anyway. Regardless, I only have so much energy for so many causes, so I'm focusing on holding the US to account from the inside for now. Still I certainly support stamping out authoritarian violence wherever it is found. Glitch (talk) 17:48, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think that'll ever happen, since these 3 countries are Great Powers and these 3 have never trully felt accountable for any of the shitty things that they've done. Also, good luck trying to make Putin feel sorry and kick Xi Jingpin from his dictatorial throne. Gunther1987 (talk) 19:21, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The US might have bigger problems. 21:43, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * That they do. One of our reporters who reports (yeah, that's a sentence) for America (I'm European) had an interview with some MAGA's who literally claimed that if Trump doesn't win the elections, another civil war will break out. Just what is it with the US and Wars? Gunther1987 (talk) 22:26, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I grew up in a conservative household in the 80s, and they've been saying there's going to be a new civil war if a Democrat gets elected for literally every election since I can remember. It's just what they do. I'm pretty sure one is coming, but not from those blowhards. Glitch (talk) 22:55, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The only way that the US can even have a chance to lead the world again for human rights, is to get the orange fuck out of office. He literally doesn't care.RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:44, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Given that tRump personally encouraged Xi to build Uyghur reeducation camps, I think 'actively opposed to human rights' would be a more accurate characterization than 'literally doesn't care', particularly since there are quite a few other examples of tRump violating humans rights, e.g. refugee child separation and imprisonment in the US. Bongolian (talk) 00:33, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Trump also praised the Tiananmen Massacre as an act of “strength”. 00:51, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * It shouldn't end with Trump out of power. He's just the end point of the process, its most obvious manifestation. No, the corruption must be ripped out, root and branch. Else it'll just happen again, and the next guy might be smarter. 01:22, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, how exactly is the world going to pressure China to stop torturing minorities? The Chinese officials are murdering prisoners for organs not because they want to have organ-throwing contests, but because they or their families need an organ to survive, a small boycott won't change their mind. I'm not sure how credible this source is, but supposedly Uyghur women are being forced to marry Han men, and given the lack of women in China due to poorly thought out social policies, well, I don't think a boycott is going to be enough to convince the Chinese government to stop making minority men "disappear". CoryUsar (talk) 01:42, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Unless there's been another source, the only ones claiming that China is stealing organs are the right-wing cult Falun Gong who believe God sent Trump to destroy communism. I'm not saying that means they're wrong (about organ stealing, pretty sure they're wrong about Trump), and China sure isn't trustworthy either, but I'm not inclined to take their word for it. They just lack that certain credibility, you know? Glitch (talk) 02:40, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * "Just out of curiosity, how exactly is the world going to pressure China to stop torturing minorities?" The other two major world powers can't, Russia is an ally and about 50K people died in Chechnya in the 1990's, so they don't give a hoot about this stuff. The USA is too economically intertwined with them to condemn this stuff. China now has real "soft power" in the USA. An enormous number of companies changed their policies, donated billions to BLM, fired people, and pledged support to political causes over the death of one man, George Floyd. No such dissent or activism is possible in China, and for American firms that want access to that giant Chinese market, one peep, and they could be cut off. You want to broadcast the NBA in China, show a Marvel movie, make sure your patents are protected? You don't criticize what you aren't supposed to. It's really quit a good system if you're a dictator. China has its domestic situation on total lockdown with nothing getting in it doesn't want and can at the same time exercise soft power in the USA and other nations. My family grew up in the USSR and we're witnessing China pull off what the KGB and Soviet hierarchy could have only dreamed of. Neo Stalinist (talk) 03:13, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There was that China tribunal thing which claimed it was happening to the Uyghurs, not just the Falun Gong. Here's an earlier, different report.
 * I don't particularly care for the Falun Gong either, but if we only care about human rights for people we like, we don't really care about human rights in the first place. CoryUsar (talk) 02:58, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that when I looked into it only a few days ago, it LOOKED like every claim ultimately sourced back to the Falun Gong, via people taking their word for it. Did I come to the wrong conclusion? Maybe so. Could I have been intentionally fooled? Definitely. But your first link is to somebody's blog that's just hosted on Forbes, I think. In any case they claim the China Tribunal as their source. That source ultimately leads to the Falun Gong and the Epoch Times, their English propaganda wing. Your CNN link only says that some OTHER people claim it's happening--people who have ties to the Falun Gong, if you look into it. If it's real, and it could be, of course it's abominable and should be stopped. But it might be nice if ANYONE not tied to the Falun Gong claimed to have any evidence at all. Glitch (talk) 03:32, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Here's an article from way back in 2006. Basically, China admits that they harvest organs from executed prisoners, so long as the prisoner signs a written consent form.  If you believe those forms are legit, I have a bridge you might be interested in.  Here's an old, old article from HRW, from the mid-90's, before the Falung Gong had any real power.  If you are wondering why these sources are so old, I've been Googling and excluding anything involving the words "Falun" or "Epoch", and since the Falun Gong are allegedly the source of most of the organs these days, well...CoryUsar (talk) 05:10, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I think you are ascribing to me some sort of faith in the Chinese government that I assuredly do not have. I don't trust them at all--but I also don't trust the Falun Gong. And, in light of the frequent false positives about what horrific things "the Chinese" are doing that turned out to be nothing but Western right wing fever dreams, I'm very skeptical about the whole thing. Is it happening? I have no idea. I can say that if I was the Chinese government and I wanted to steal organs from somebody, I would pick a group who had serious credibility issues of their own in hopes no one would believe them. But that doesn't mean I trust the guy in the alley about the CIA microchip in his head, either. Consent form or no consent form, it's obvious China has the ABILITY to take organs from anyone they can get their hands on. Some ability to hush it up, too. But that isn't proof they're murdering people FOR their organs. The organs could well be nothing but a nice bonus. Frankly if they're going to be killing people anyway, I'd rather the organs go to somebody instead of rotting in the ground.


 * Although honestly the numbers the Falun Gong are talking about strike me as awful low, even taken at face value. A few ten thousands over a couple decades? If I was China, I wouldn't even get out of bed to murder fewer than a million dissidents and steal their organs. More of a nuisance than its worth, especially with having to hear Western human rights groups nagging me about it forever after. If this is the worst they're doing right now, maybe we should just call that a blessing. But maybe I'm more pessimistic about China than you are.


 * More than anything I'm saying, until we have much better verification, I'd prefer we stick to the awful things we KNOW China has already done or is doing, rather than what they MIGHT be doing. By we, I mean those of us with no investigative power to look into it for ourselves. If you're involved in a human rights group that can get you into a Chinese prison to look for evidence of (more than usual) wrongdoing, by all means take a look. Just try to make sure you come back with all your parts. Glitch (talk) 06:22, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Its not only humans, look at COVID: Chinese animal markets with corpses lumped together, no hygiene checks of any kind, perfect conditions for a virus. Fowler (talk) 09:58, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Corrupt user asks, "how exactly is the world going to pressure China to stop torturing minorities?"
 * See (Sadly, Wikipedia does not have a Global Magnitsky Act article, but the basic premise of the law targeting Russian oligarchs was extended to apply against Iranian Ayatollahs, the Chinese Central Committee, etc., as well. The law was just invoked against the CCP entity controlling Xinjiang, as explained in this short vid where 17% of the world's ketchup and other commodities come from. nobsTo Bob Mueller:Every dog has his day. 18:12, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Incidentally, what a coincidence that the Independent China Tribunal released it's final report on March 1, 2020 (they announced in June 2019 it would be released on that date) just weeks after its findings were obscured by the release of covid on January 23, 2020. nobsTo Bob Mueller:Every dog has his day. 18:23, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

"Shared disinformation"?
https://www.snopes.com/ap/2020/08/02/foreign-threats-loom-ahead-of-us-presidential-election/

"Biden’s campaign is increasingly concerned that pro-Russian sources have already shared disinformation about Biden’s family with President Donald Trump’s campaign and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill designed to hurt the Democratic candidate in the days leading up to the election."

I'm pretty confused here. Disinformation is information that is intentionally incorrect... IE, lies. Isn't it? Are they just talking about mixing accurate information with lies to give it more of the appearance of credibility? The article implies that somehow the Russian could "gain" valuable disinformation from hacking the Biden campaign, and share it with Trump. If the information is accurate, then it's not disinformation. Right? Glitch (talk) 19:33, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * We're long past the point where narratives need to be cohesive to be pushed in the media or believed by much of the public. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 19:55, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I mean, yes, although you would be hard pressed to support the position that humans of the past were smarter or did more critical thinking in general. As a species we've been deeply stupid from the start. That's why what we do here to counter that is so important. I'm just confused as to what they're even trying to say. I can write it off as nonsense, but I don't learn much from doing so. Glitch (talk) 20:00, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Given the rest of the article, this looks more like poor phrasing than anything else. 21:19, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "I'm just confused as to what they're even trying to say." It's stringing together talking points to score goals for the favored political team. In this case, I'd say it's of the "preaching to the choir" variety intended to strengthen support rather than to convince unaligned people. Any factual content is beside the point, and though it may be nonsense, it's important to keep track of what narratives are being pushed, since that tends to influence actual policies. And this sort of thing is a reversion to normalcy. Naked partisanship and advocacy has been the default state of "news" media for nearly its entire existence. The conditions underlying a brief period of relative trustworthiness in the US have changed, so we don't get to have that nice thing any more.
 * And it's not a phrasing issue. The underlying problem that Glitch pointed out (an incoherent conceptual basis) is there. This has been a recurring issue with Russia-related "hacking" narratives. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 19:48, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

The best political compass test by far.
I got specked as a syndicalist, see here: Spekr — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  23:15, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Some of those are kinda weird. "Access to abortion should be regulated by the government," for example.  I think all medical services ought to be subject to regulation.  Another one was about the government needing to be transparent.  Very few people, regardless of their political position, are openly against government transparency, at least in the developed world-Hastur! (talk)  23:23, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Another one asks for respect of private property rights. Are we distinguishing here between capital and private property?-Hastur! (talk)  23:26, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Aannd another question conflated civil forfeiture and eminent domain. Final thought: this website design is kind of a pain.  Maybe this was meant for phones/tablets?-Hastur! (talk)  23:29, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "Libertarian socialist" oh dear. 23:37, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Had trouble using the website on my laptop due to its design though. 23:38, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Apparently I'm a social democrat, which will make Godless Raven happy. However social democrats apparently oppose "most private property rights and most uses of money."  Anybody want to take bets  on the chances that this quiz was designed by a libertarian? -Hastur! (talk)  23:42, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, not a big fan of that political test. 23:44, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Poe's law? Because that was the most amusingly bad and biased political compass test I've ever seen. And the worst implementation of responsive design I've ever seen, too. At least half the questions were impossible to answer as an anarchist. Libertarians really don't understand Anarchism... Dendlai (talk) 00:27, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Has Oxyaena secretly been a libertarian this whole time?-Hastur! (talk) 00:31, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I also agree that a few of the questions were ambiguous, vague or confusing. I ended up much less to the left and to the libertarian side on this compass than with other compasses (-62, -49). I also really wish that these compasses would stop using the term libertarian per the "freedom" slide of the scale. Libertarianism as a term is so heavily loaded with people whose ideology tends towards a conservative side of the spectrum and radical free-market principles that using libertarianism, even in the 2D scale, is very very confusing. Shabi  DOO  00:35, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oxy is an anarchist that really likes to defend Cuba, China, USSR, etc. Make of that what you will. (If you don't believe me: go to pages we have on these dictatorships and see who editwarred there.) 00:37, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, I did that test some time ago but I got "libertarian socialist" (-65 economically, -31 culturally). I guess I have to defend Cambodia now. 00:40, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * According to that test, I'm a centrist. Honestly, I preferred the other one with all the questions about sex and religion. At least those are things I;ve got opinions about. I found all those questions about property and trade boring. Spud (talk) 11:49, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You're an idiot, Raven. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  14:06, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

When are you going to debate Jar, an actual socialist? 14:19, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * why is the saloon filled with "you're an idiot, raven"?Fowler (talk) 14:22, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Because it's oxy, she is upset because I challenged her to debate an actual socialist (who is strongly critical of Cuba and other Communist regimes); she backed out. 14:27, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Do you still think that this is the best political compass test by far?-Hastur! (talk) 14:33, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * } You didn't challenge me to do shit, you had Em pull me into a discussion I did not want to be in *multiple times*, to "debate" someone I didn't even know, and wouldn't leave me the hell alone. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  17:02, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

You were there. Oxy backed out from debating an actual socialist (Jar), right? 17:13, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that what you are saying is 100% true, GR. What does it matter? What is your goal in fighting with Oxy? I really can't see what either of you have gained out of this little feud, it looks lose-lose from where I'm sitting. Glitch (talk) 17:28, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I know you are new here glitch, but if you knew GR and his pattern of talkpage/saloon bar edits better you would realize starting pointless drama with users he perceives as being to the political left of him is at absolute least 50% of what he does.-Flandres (talk) 17:41, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That's hardly the case. He has a bit of a grudge against some users who dogpiled him when he first joined the site, that's all-Hastur! (talk)  17:55, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That is a way too favorable way of analyzing this but considering that you also dislike a lot of the same users I am not surprised.-Flandres (talk) 17:58, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You're insufferable, Raven. And, Hastur, that's far from the truth as to what originally happened. I don't even know the guy, I was pinged out of nowhere, I left because I was, again, in no mood to "debate" someone I didn't even know, and was also mourning, you dumb prick, and you wouldn't leave me alone afterwards. You had Em invite me twice to something I wanted no part in in the first place. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  18:16, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, so there may or may not be bad blood, maybe it's one sided or may be not, but what I'm asking is... What is the POINT? What goal is being worked towards? Isn't pointless bickering in many ways the very opposite of the mission here? Can we not try to move past it? Yes we're all humans and when we're attacked we want to strike back in revenge, but it's not like we can do enough damage here to actually dissuade each other from attacking again in the future so that revenge would have some kind of purpose... It just makes things worse for everyone, and I can't stress this enough, it's detrimental to our mission. Glitch (talk) 18:17, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There really isn't a valid "point." The "goal" is more or less some childish sense of fulfillment derived by "pwning" a user you happen not to like. That is...pretty much how this site de facto works, or at least the parts of it where users can talk to each other.-Flandres (talk) 18:30, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, maybe. Certainly I considered that scenario. But I would like to hear those involved explain what they're trying to accomplish, in their own words, rather than assuming or ascribing motivations to them. No one likes to have others put words in their mouth, and it's really bad for trying to get to the actual truth of the matter. To clarify, all of this is value-free. I'm not saying it's morally wrong to bicker. I'm saying it's wasteful and inefficient and that alone is sufficient reason to try and put a stop to it, unless it's fulfilling some critical need that I'm not seeing. Glitch (talk) 18:44, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * If you still want an answer to your question,, let me know on my talk page. I will happily explain the context to you. 15:37, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Something I didn't know about Marx
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Karl_Marx

In other words, Marxists & ML's worship an anti-semite who came up with this shit? And I thought communists were terrible... Gunther1987 (talk) 18:02, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You might want to read the discussion on the talkpage. 18:06, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * What a jerk that Marx was! I've always had mixed feelings about the guy. He authored an enormous body of work and had clear intellectual pursuits that rival any of the great thinkers in history. At least some of his ideas were motivated by genuine concern for working people and forwarding human progress. But, upon the discovery of an admittedly hostile biography, "The Red Prussian" I had to concede that Marx, the man, was a pretty odious lout in his personal life and held some fairly bad political views. He alienated almost everyone around him, was unhygienic, egotistical, moody, often crass, bad with money, and endlessly mooching. None of this disproves his ideas, they stand or fall on their own merits. Likely his worst sin, although historically controversial, is that he probably impregnated his own maid(who he very ironically may have never paid) and then denied paternity to the child by blaming the whole thing on Engles. Neo Stalinist (talk) 03:39, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The racism bit could definitely use more nuance and information. And yeah, he was definitely an anti-semite.  Hardly the most rabid one, but that doesn't excuse him-Hastur! (talk)  18:14, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Speaking only for myself, as a socialist, I take everything he wrote with a grain of salt. He didn't invent socialism and he certainly isn't the sum total of thought on the subject. And Lenin and later Stalin's interpretations of his theories are progressively more and more dubious. Taking anyone's word as gospel truth is foolish, all the moreso if they lived in the 1800s with all the cultural baggage that entails. That said, he was undeniably brilliant, and a good deal of what he said holds up today as a wonderful diagnosis of the ills of capitalism. His prescription of communism is a lot less solid, even though I think socialism in general is a good treatment plan for now. Yes, you're right, a European man from the 1800s was racist. That's hardly surprising, and not directly relevant to the bulk of his work. Glitch (talk) 18:26, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'm not surprised that a European man from the 1800s was anti-Semitic, given that Europe only began to address its deeply entrenched anti-antisemitism after the 1930s, and continues to struggle with it today in some areas. 18:34, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There is worse, and only because is editwarring AGAIN it isn't shown, but check out: https://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Karl_Marx&diff=2209656&oldid=2209578 (it is sourced and all)

 00:13, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That quote alone isn't good enough. You referenced a paper with a far more detailed breakdown of Marx and Engels' racism on Talk:Karl Marx and that would make a far better basis for calling him a racist-Hastur! (talk)  00:15, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * By all means document his racism, and the fact he was probably an asshole too. People who find that relevant ought to know about it. Personally, I always ASSUMED he was both a racist and an asshole, so when you claimed such, I really didn't doubt it. I just don't find it relevant to the bulk of his writings. Proving someone is a racist asshole is a completely different thing than proving their economic and political theories wrong. I mean the vast majority of people, even important thinkers, that lived before say 1900 were morally radioactive by today's standards. That doesn't make them WRONG. Sure, acknowledge their awfulness. Even Lincoln was hella racist. But isn't saying "Marx was a racist asshole, therefore Marxism/ML is incorrect" a textbook ad hominem? Again... I am not a Marxist and for damn sure not a ML. Glitch (talk) 00:27, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It doesn't matter how hawkish Hillary Clinton's foreign policy is, nor how corrupt her campaigns are, only that we remember to yell "Benghazi" and "Emails" on cue. 00:57, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Let's take a look, shall we?

The Jewish nigger Lassalle who, I’m glad to say, is leaving at the end of this week, has happily lost another 5,000 talers in an ill-judged speculation. The chap would sooner throw money down the drain than lend it to a ‘friend’, even though his interest and capital were guaranteed. In this he bases himself on the view that he ought to live the life of a Jewish baron, or Jew created a baron (no doubt by the countess). Just imagine! This fellow, knowing about the American affair, etc., and hence about the state of crisis I’m in, had the insolence to ask me whether I would be willing to hand over one of my daughters to la Hatzfeldt as a ‘companion’, and whether he himself should secure Gerstenberg’s (!) patronage for me! The fellow has wasted my time and, what is more, the dolt opined that, since I was not engaged upon any ‘business’ just now, but merely upon a ‘theoretical work’, I might just as well kill time with him! In order to keep up certain dehors vis-à-vis the fellow, my wife had to put in pawn everything that wasn’t actually nailed or bolted down!

I do not trust any Russian. As soon as a Russian worms his way in, all hell breaks loose.

As he [Tremaux] indicates, (he was in Africa a long time) the common Negro type is only a degeneration of a much higher one.

The real point at issue always is Turkey in Europe – the great peninsula to the south of the Save and Danube. This splendid territory has the misfortune to be inhabited by a conglomerate of different races and nationalities, of which it is hard to say which is the least fit for progress and civilisation. Slavonians, Greeks, Wallachians, Arnauts, twelve millions of men, are all held in submission by one million of Turks, and up to a recent period, it appeared doubtful whether, of all these different races, the Turks were not the most competent to hold the supremacy which, in such a mixed population, could not but accrue to one of these nationalities. 01:54, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay? I'm not sure why you're trying to convince me of something I already told you I believed before you even asserted it. I really don't care if you add all of that to his article, as long as it's properly siloed away from the things he said that actually mattered. He wasn't influential because of his views on race. An ad hominem fallacy is not making INACCURATE statements about someone's character. It's making IRRELEVANT statements about their character to refute their arguments. Sure, maybe you could make a case that his racism in some way makes his writings on economics and politics incorrect--I don't see how, but in principle maybe you could. Do you intend to? Otherwise it's a cut and dried ad hominem... Surely you see that? Glitch (talk) 02:25, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Now, Marx's support of the British effort in the Crimean War(1853-1856) is starting to make sense. Neo Stalinist (talk) 03:58, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

So you agree that Marx was a virulent racist? 02:29, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Sure, I don't know why I wouldn't. Glitch (talk) 02:31, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Literally none of this surprises me. I just think it's largely irrelevant beyond "A guy from a time period where racism was widespread was was racist." In other news, water is wet, but that doesn't tell me whether this particular body of water is safe to drink. 02:43, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Also Raven, please respond on the Communist Manifesto talkpage. I'm not going to ping you every time I respond, as I don't think that would be polite. 02:45, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * ay ay 02:52, 4 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Holy shit.


 * Also, I thought Oxy was going to stop editwarring after she got desysoped (I probably misspelled that), so she could get her tools back in a few months? Gunther1987 (talk) 15:37, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I didn't edit war, and Raven also did more than one revert on said page. He still gets his tools back and I don't. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  17:16, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Cuomo Begs Fleeing New Yorkers To Return From Connecticut, Hamptons After Revealing Top 1% Pay 50% Of State Taxes
Andrew Cuomo begs fleeing New Yorkers to return Ffom Connecticut, Hamptons after revealing Top 1% pay 50% of State Taxes. Pathetic.
 * LOL Daily Wire. Here is a CNBC link for those who actually know what capital gains are, which apparently Ben Shapiro does not.


 * (Incidentally, my initial thought on the New York proposal, which based on the CNBC article is a "mark-to-market" yearly unrealized capital gains tax above a certain level, is a terrible idea. I do personally believe realized capital gains should be taxed at ordinary income rates, and do think that in general all the bullshit shuffling around corporations and rich individuals do to avoid taxation needs to be clamped down on. But this IMHO seems way more discouraging of investments in productive assets at first glance, it's not the right focus.) Soundwave106 (talk) 22:02, 5 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Well, people are already leaving the large cities and are buying properties in the suburbs and exurbs. After a brief pause due to the Great Recession of 2007-8, the suburbanization of America continues. The Wuhan flu merely speeds things up. I personally do not think people mind paying high taxes. After all, the New York City metropolitan area is home to about 20 million people, making it one of the largest in the world. However, people, quite reasonably, I might add, expect good public goods and services in return. That means effective law enforcement (read safe neighborhoods), reliable firefighting, quality public schools, dependable public transportation, among other things. Capital flight is a real phenomenon. If you make your place disagreeable, people will leave, starting with the rich, who can do so the easiest. Nerd (talk) 22:12, 5 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Daily Wire is unfettered shit.RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:20, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Umm, last I checked, people were moving back into the cities. That's what Gentrification is; rich people moving out of the 'burbs and back into the cities.  Funny how people complained about white flight when the rich people left, and now complain about rich people moving back in, really, rich people should just stop moving anywhere, apparently. CoryUsar (talk) 01:56, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I was never really clear on how both could be horrible expressions of racism (white flight I could see, given the redlining, but there's no income ceiling on moving anywhere). Reminds me of the joke headline, "World to End Tomorrow: Women, Minorities Hit Hardest". The Blade of the Northern Lights (<font face="MS Mincho" color="black">話して下さい ) 02:10, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I guess the concern of this is that housing becomes too unaffordable for those of lower income. This happens to often be minorities in urban areas, but I'm not sure that this alone is important enough to be a "racist" thing -- I would say, for instance, the same income issues also applies to artists, who also often are attracted to lower rent areas, know no race or gender boundaries, and sometimes form part of the reason people are attracted to "gentrify" an urban area in the first place. It is probably possible on a community level to craft policies to help longtime residents stick around and thus benefit economically from gentrification (someone determined that whether people mostly rent or own property matters a lot here, so that could be a focus). Keeping older residents around probably would also help maintain the "soul" of a community; actually, the main complaint I've heard about gentrification is that the soul of the community is lost. Soundwave106 (talk) 02:44, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

If anyone who doubts people are leaving the cities in large numbers, please read this whole section from Wikipedia. Check the sources if you are skeptical or want to learn more. Again, please read the whole thing. In my opinion, the only problem with 'gentrification' is when buyers, especially those from overseas looking for a safe destination for their money, are not really looking for a place to live for any significant part of the year but only as an investment which they later sell to somebody else. Land is a special commodity in the sense that its total amount is generally fixed. Such phenomenal demands, as can be seen, for instance, in Vancouver, distort the market at the expense of the locals. Other than that, gentrification is actually beneficial because financially successful people are moving in and settling down with their families, providing the local authorities with more taxes to fund their services. People tend to like living in nice neighborhoods, so more will move in. That could help the city revitalize itself.

As for the so-called 'white flight' phenomenon, it is commonly observed. Demographer Eric Kaufmann noted, "Minorities will move into relatively white areas, but whites generally do not move into strongly minority areas. Whites have, and will, tend to move toward relatively white areas." More here. Many non-whites prefer white-majority neighborhoods, too. Makes sense if you think about it. Immigrants would not have come to white-majority countries had they hated being near white people. What I also find interesting is that even those who tout the virtues of multiculturalism and ethnocultural diversity reportedly do not really believe in what they say when it comes to buying a house in a neighborhood with quality public schools. People generally being among their own kind. Here, I am using the word 'kind' in a rather broad sense. Race may or may not be relevant. Look at your own social circles, for example. In this case, people like living among themselves and among well-off white people. Nerd (talk) 05:28, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * And then that's where the problem of gentrification making areas unaffordable for anyone but the wealthy and privileged. This shit reads like an apologia of gentrification, which has many genuine problems. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  17:11, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * No one is entitled to somebody else's property or fruits of labor. You get what you pay for. If you dislike the deal, walk away. I don't have a problem of relatively wealthy people move into my neighborhood. It shows me that where I live is desirable. If I were living in a proverbial crime-infested Third World slum, they would not be interested. Having people like those moving in benefits the entire neighborhood, as I explained above. More funding for public schools, firefighting and police departments, better public infrastructure, safer streets, more well-off people moving in. The place as a whole becomes a better place to be. Nerd (talk) 19:09, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * What a horribly spooked point of view, I highly recommend reading Proudhon. First off, all property was stolen from someone else, either by being parceled out of the commons via fiat or seizure from the indigenous. Second off, where would they go? Throw them out onto the streets? That seems to be what you're suggesting, all of what you say is good and all, but it's exclusionary to the privileged class. Where will the less well-off go? — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  19:44, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Everybody lives on land their predecessors fought over. This does not mean the people living today have no right to ownership. The moment you deny the right to property that moment you sow the seed for social chaos. The concept of historical claims is as ludicrous as the attempts by the Chinese Communist Party to seize more land and maritime territories from their neighbors. It requires you to give special importance to a certain time in history. I cannot just go to your place and demand you let me stay because somebody fought over the piece of land you now live in on the past. That's nonsense! In case you did not know this, people have been leaving the cities for some time now. (Please see the Wikipedia section I linked above). Why have they been moving? Among other things, high costs of living and high taxes. If you cannot afford to live in a place, go elsewhere. Find a cheaper place. You are entitled to your own fruits of labor and property, not someone else's. Nerd (talk) 19:51, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * You didn't answer my question: where will those affected negatively by gentrification go? Not everyone can afford to move, especially in today's economy. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  19:55, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I did, actually. Out of the places that have become too expensive for them. The final location is for them to decide. It is after all their lives, so they have to take responsibility for them. You can't just sit there and demand a house or an apartment. People should seize control of their own lives. Nerd (talk) 20:04, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * And you don't see how this creates inequity? To just up and leave out of no fault of their own? Come on. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  20:24, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Some of us have had to move because we do not like the current place. It seems to me a fact of life. Don't like it here? Go somewhere else. Nerd (talk) 20:33, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You deal with this liberal. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  20:49, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You don't have an inherent right to live in any specific place. CoryUsar (talk) 22:59, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * What if I can't because I'm too poor? What if I like where I live, and I just think those with more should contribute more? And you don't have an inherent right to money, or to force someone to live somewhere else.  00:55, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * So, we agree? CoryUsar (talk) 02:38, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Probably not, given the content of your earlier posts. 12:04, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I think it depends on what you mean by an inherent right to money. If you have money, or property, you have a right to it.  The government can't simply take it away from you without fair compensation, that's literally in the constitution.  We needed an amendment before income could be taxed.  Property is a bit different in terms of tax, it's yours, but you are using services so it's only fair that you pay tax to pay for those services.  In terms of inherent right to it, if you don't have money or property, the government isn't under any obligation to simply give it to you.  We give people some bare necessities for numerous reasons, but we aren't required to.  In terms of where you live, you don't have a right to live in, say, The Hamptons.  If you can't afford to live there, you don't get a house there.  Government can't force someone out to let you in, at least not without fairly compensating the prior homeowner.  You can't be forced by law to live in a specific part of town, but if that's all you can afford, no one is violating your rights if you live there.
 * Gentrification is a bit weird, as it creates some perverse incentives. Let's say some poor people actually band together and decide to make their community a mini paradise.  They do the dirty work, kick out the gangs and drug dealers, get rid of the homeless, clean the place up.  Then the rents rise.  So they kind of have to avoid making the place better than they can afford, unless EVERY neighborhood decides to do this and there aren't enough rich people to move in.  You end up with issues if a rich person can own many, many homes instead of just one, but the smart thing to do would be to simply charge exorbitant taxes on non-primary residences so that everyone else gets lower taxes or it makes first-home ownership that much cheaper.
 * However, that doesn't mean gentrification should be illegal.
 * Do we disagree on anything? CoryUsar (talk) 12:38, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "If you have money, or property, you have a right to it." No you don't. Both of these things are granted to you at the whims of the state, and these can be revoked at any time. Money especially is not yours, it belongs to the national government under which you live, and is lent to you for use. It's the same with private property, ultimately. These are things that the state apparatus lends to you, not things you have any inherent right to. As to gentrification, this concept is very much tied to systemic racism and the ongoing disenfranchisement of black people in this country. You said " Let's say some poor people actually band together and decide to make their community a mini paradise. They do the dirty work, kick out the gangs and drug dealers, get rid of the homeless, clean the place up. Then the rents rise.", yet you failed to see the whole picture. The black people existing in large numbers in that neighborhood is part of why it's so poor. Further, crime is downstream of poverty in almost all of these neighborhoods. In essence, black people are disenfranchised, thus leading to poverty, thus leading to an uptick in crime to augment their income so they don't lose their homes and/or to escape the slums, which is then used to argue for disenfranchising them further. Gentrification is not merely urban development, but borderline ethnic cleansing (note I said borderline), in that it seeks to remove a specific ethnic group, for sole purpose of replacing them with another. Finally, to address the original topic, a 50% tax on the wealthy is adorable. FDR set it at over 90%. 13:09, 7 August 2020 (UTC)


 * 1) Uh, no, property rights (and thus, money as well) are in the constitution. If a right guaranteed by the constitution is subject to the whims of government, then rights as a concept are utterly meaningless.
 * 2) Neighborhoods aren't poor simply because they have black people. There have been numerous communities of minorities that achieved wealth without the help of Mighty Whitey, heck, that was what the Tulsa massacre was about.
 * 3) Poverty being the main source of crime does not explain why rich kids commit crime as well, often at similar rates. Not always the same types of crime, but surprisingly, most drug dealers aren't actually from the lowest echelons of society.  Really, the biggest difference between poor and rich kids is money, it's middle class kids who are obsessed with obeying the law because unlike poor and rich, middle has something to lose and will lose something.
 * 4) Gentrification is "borderline ethnic cleansing"? Really? That's about as asinine as insisting that white people were the victim of ethnic cleansing when they were forced out of the cities in the 60's. Heck, you'd have a stronger case there, as the increasing crime really was violence forcing people out.
 * 5) Gentrification does not remove an ethnic group, but a socioeconomic group. Rich black people move in too, even if they are fewer than rich white people.  Unless you can show me where rich black people have been forced to leave by equally or less rich white people, you are high on your own supply.  What I can show you, however, is an actual case of ethnic cleansing of Afromericans by illegal immigrant gangs.  Long story short, drug cartels want that sweet sweet drug money and don't give two shits about whether or not a black person is actually competition, it's easier just to chase absolutely everyone out and not take any chances.
 * 6) The 91% tax bracket was basically a joke. Barely anyone was actually in that bracket, and there were so many ways around it (e.g., my Jaguar and Gulf Stream are actually owned by my company, etc) that few actually paid it, it was mostly for show.  Imagine if tomorrow we enacted a 99% tax bracket on incomes of a trillion dollars or more, that wouldn't do jack. CoryUsar (talk) 16:00, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

About a person who is a thorough anti-communist but is classified as "Libertys" and "Left of Reason"
I'm not sure how to use it, but I'll post it on this page.

Some people, like Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy, are anti-communist but classified as "left-wing." I don't think all anti-communists are right-wing and don't hit the left.

Harry S. Truman is the president of the atomic bombing Mainland of Japan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and should be classified as Crimes against humanity.

Jimmy Carter is also an anti-communist, though he has a bad reputation from conservatives such as Ann coulter. In the first place, during the Cold War, both Republicans and Democrats were conservative parties.

Nelson Rockefeller became synonymous with Republican moderates as "Rockefeller Repabublican", but he is an anti-communist. he is not left-wing Michael Bloomberg, who was classified as Rockefeller Repablican, later tilted to the right.

Classifying them as "left" or "liberal" is like classifying the anti-communist Democratic Social Party, which was originally separated from the Japan Socialist Party, as left-wing.
 * You can be left wing and anti-communist even anti-socialist. I don't see a problem here or why it's a mod issue tbh. 15:51, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * ^ she is right. I consider myself to be left-wing and also anti-Communist. 16:41, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure being left wing means being "anti-authoritarian" which would make you anti-communist.RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:09, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You're conflating Marxism-Leninism with communism, as an anarcho-communist I beseech you to correct that error. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  17:15, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Even as I typed this I realized an error, it should be instead directed towards Stalinism, Maoism, Putinism and the CCP.RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:24, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I suppose this whole thing would depend on how you define left wing. Personally, saying you are "left wing" only really says you (nominally) favor labor over capital, rather than vice versa. The intricacies of this quickly explode into a kaleidoscope of opinions, some bad, some good. As an anti-capitalist, and anti-Marxist (I'm critical of Marxism as a collected work, though I think he had some good ideas here and there), and anti-authoritarian, I am (obviously) aware of these intricacies. 18:06, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Far left parties are those that define themselves as to the left of, and not merely on the left of social democracy, which they see as insufficiently left-wing or even as not left-wing at all. The communists are themselves a broad group. Without Moscow’s pressure, orthodox communism does not exist beyond a commitment to Marxism (of sorts), the communist name and symbols, and a historical sense of the movement among activists. The conservative communists certainly tend to define themselves as Marxist-Leninist, maintain a relatively uncritical stance towards the Soviet heritage, organise their parties through distinctive Leninist discipline (democratic centralism) and still see the world through the Cold-War prism of imperialism although even these parties have overlaid their Marxism-Leninism with appeals to nationalism and populism (above all in Greece and Russia). Reform communists, on the other hand, are increasingly divergent and eclectic. They have discarded aspects of the Soviet model (for example, Leninism and democratic centralism in the case of Italy, France and the Czech Republic, significant opposition to the market economy in the case of France and Cyprus), and have adopted, or at least have paid lip service to, elements of the post-1968 new left agenda (feminism, environmentalism, grass-roots democracy, and so on). 19:15, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You ignore the fact that there has been an active anti-Bolshevik tendency among the left, specifically among communists, since before 1917. Great quotes you got there from a guy who has barely any knowledge of communist theory. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  22:56, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * lol alright, i guess the university of edinburgh is hiring anyone these days, huh? 02:00, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

One of the problems with defining both "left" and "right" is that you first need to define a "centre" to which you can be left and right of. Unfortunately the centre moves depending on which area of the world you consider along which period of history. Obviously there are some things which will almost always define left and right such as labour and capital but much of the debate about left/right is pretty subjective for the reasons I've mentioned.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 09:25, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * On any particular issue there isn't a true straight line, e.g., you could want to legalize abortion but only to reduce the amount of interracial babies (not a farcical example, it's Nixon's view and thus indirectly the reason for Roe v Wade), you could want mandatory abortions of the mentally disabled, you could want fully legal and accessible abortions prior to the third trimester, you could want it only up to 11 weeks (Germany), you could want it heavily restricted and onerous to get one but occur at any stage, etc. "Left" and "Right" only exist because in general, you need to get as many allies as possible in order to get something relatively close to you want, and the only way to do so is by getting the biggest faction possible, meaning there's only room for 2 sides. CoryUsar (talk) 13:24, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * One of the problems of defining a "centre" is generally it can be occupied by people who are apolitical, without any defining political characteristics who are easily persuadable by family friends, media, and entertainment. These "Centrists" generally go unrepresented. nobsTo Bob Mueller:Every dog has his day. 17:55, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think the plasticity (i.e. the agreeableness) of people is an issue with the political axis classification; normally, there are two kinds of people who have an issue with the axis:


 * Extremists who want to over-represent themselves onto others (e.g. fascists, communists, socialists, anarchists, Nazis, etc.)
 * People who have legitimate issues with reductionism in politics and the arbitrary nature of classifications. 18:44, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "Extremist" is a loaded term, and you're still lumping in anarchists with Nazis. Jesus Christ. You do realize that these two "groups" you've created are not mutually exclusive, right? Also I see you're still incapable of admitting you're wrong regarding the existence of the anti-Bolsheviks amongst the left, since before 1917. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  20:32, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not talking to you anymore, . You declined to debate a real socialist when I offered you one and people like will complain about me if I even address you. So I ask Shabidoo to contain Oxy or something, I don't wanna interact with Oxy (because I will inevitably be blamed if she has a meltdown) and will try my best to not interact with Oxy. Good night.  20:40, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't recommend using the ping on people you plan to ignore. CoryUsar (talk) 20:55, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

GR, I wouldn't start bitching about other people acting out or asking others to contain them until you show that you are able to do it yourself, which you haven't shown much in the last few days. The only thing that has changed is your frequency of being insufferable, not the intensity of it when you do. You've actively provoked Oxyana on several occasions this week and now you're playing the little persecuted victim who needs to be protected from her. As you may have noticed I don't defend most of what Oxy says or does, I have only called you out when you've been a dick to her. As is no surprise to anyone, some people harass the shit out of her, something that can go well beyond the colorful or surprising things she does and says. I would agree if you are incapable of interacting with a user without being a dick, then by all means do it...disengage. Just don't, while you are at it, ping the user, challenge the user, goad the user or initiate or participate in any drama whatsoever with the user. Shabi DOO  21:14, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Cool, will remember. Let's see what happens if I ignore Oxy. (Spoiler: She will still accost me everytime and everytime someone will accuse me of being 'provocative'). 21:29, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

How many active users are on the site?
Just new and wondering really. &mdash; Unsigned, by: Junfa / talk / contribs
 * Signature please. As for the number of users, I have no idea. --George Soros Puppet (talk) 01:10, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There's a tool for it but it appears to be broken-Hastur! (talk) 01:13, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Just wondering because I don't want to get into flame wars on public record! I guess I should just be careful typing or go back to lurking, anyway. Wonderful site even if I didn't get off to the best of starts! Junfa (talk) 01:19, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Been a user for a while and I got off on a pretty bad start myself. Just be civil and avoid senseless arguments. I have been in your shoes. --George Soros Puppet (talk) 01:47, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Go to Special:Editcount, leave the username blank, select "All" for the month, "2020" for the year, and 200 or so for "return users in top." That will give you an idea of the number of active users this year so far. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 01:50, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * If I read it correctly the 500th most active user in 2020 has 7 edits Aloysius the Gaul 03:12, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * (Checks own stats) Huh, I have 428 edits. 214 of them in 2020 and a 183 of them last year... (Side note, what's the difference between "Main" and "Project" pages?)--NavigatorBR (Talk) - 05:36, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Just different namespaces. 08:35, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * :  ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    ,  :    . Seems like it stops after 16.  08:53, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * how do we define active users anyway? Vorarchivist (talk) 17:59, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Help with Coast to Coast AM “Area 51 caller”
Long story short, my anxiety has been spiking like hell (probably due to the lockdown and having more free time) and caused relapse into old fears.

In essence, I’m asking for any help kind of explaining to me why the coast to coast AM radio broadcast is bullshit. I know it’s bullshit, I have all the evidence it’s bullshit, but my dumb monkey brain needs confirmation from people I hold in a high esteem (i.e. RW).

The basic rundown is that in 1997, some guy called in to allege he was an ex-area 51 employee, said that aliens are extra dimensional beings, and that they’re working with the government to control the population or something, then the broadcast cut off (video in question)

Later, I’m 1998 a guy called in saying that it was him and it was a hoax. He even does an impression of the frantic call which is spot on. The video of the second broadcast starts at 5:30 of the video.

One would think that that was enough but the true believers weren’t happy with that and came up with a bunch of wild theories about how it’s a cover up, it’s not the same guy, it’s aliens that imitated his voice etc. Etc. Their evidence is that 1) the voices don’t sound alike or 2) that the voices sound too much a like (something that I can’t wrap my head around) and 3) that the voice analysis proves that those two are different people. I’ve searched long and far and couldn’t find any proof of that alleged voice analysis.

Scare theatre did a good job of analysing the video and provides a sceptical outlook on things, also found this reddit post with many people saying that essentially it’s a hoax.

In my opinion, the voices sound identical, I spent hours continually playing the clips side by side and the voices sound a like. It feels like people saying that they don’t sound alike is just wishful thinking and cognitive biases. But yeah they sound very alike to me.

So all the pieces are there, but somehow I cannot shake off the anxiety of the alleged aliens wanting to control the world, so I asking is someone would be able to help with just doing a quick logical and coherent debunk of this? I guess I’m afraid of the idea of extra dimensional beings wanting to take control, which sounds very stupid when I write it out (because it is) but we already have established that my brain is stupid. Also I’d like to know why people say a voice analysis proved this if there isn’t even one? I’m really sorry about this honestly, I feel like a fucking broken record at this point, but as a way of saying thank you, I could make the page both for this and that other piece of shit anxiety fit I had the other month? Let me know if that’d be valid. But yeah, I’m sorry about being a pain and any help is greatly appreciated, if there’s anything I can do in return to show my appreciation please let me know.—WMS (talk) 17:01, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Elaborate coverups tend to not be falsifiable in the end. Every point of evidence raised against a coverup just indicates that the coverup was on a greater scale than previously assumed-Hastur! (talk)  17:05, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * So are you saying that stories like that are based on the fallacy of infinite regress and don’t hold any logical or scientific merit?—WMS (talk) 17:17, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes-Hastur! (talk) 17:23, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * A Google of the current psychological thinking on alien experiences suggests that the people most susceptible to alien belief score highly in personality and also are open to new experiences. I wouldn't call it a "stupid" brain. The schizotypy type proposal is like the autism spectrum, in that its bad in its worst cases (schizophrenia), but it is also linked to positive characteristics such as high creativity in smaller doses. And being open to new experiences is *not* a bad thing. Unfortunately it is a personality type linked to paranoia and anxiety issues as well, that's the negatives of this particular spectrum. Something to be aware of.
 * The logical debunking of this is more just to say what Area 51 is. Area 51 is well known to be where the military designs top secret experimental aircraft. Due to the number of engineers and scientists involved over many decades, in my opinion, if something was actually "extra-terrestrial", we'd know about it. Conspiracy theory types generally take dystopian views of aliens, but science and engineering types often have a more positive view of extra-terrestrial life (think the Star Trek crowd). Frankly I find it inconceivable that there is any we would *not* hear of signs of extra-terrestrial existence at first from them, even if the net was negative in the end.
 * The real conspiracy is to some degree, working conditions might have been shitty and the government may have fucked up the environment. The general story I've heard is that the UFO rumors got started when they were testing some of these planes, some of them (like the and the ) looking relatively unusual. The military didn't mind because the alien UFO thing was a "useful distraction" from the real work going on there. So, if you want to entertain a notion, fancy a Area 51 engineer, bored of working on  all day, maybe drunk, calling up poor old Art Bell and pulling a little prank on his listeners. Sounds more plausible than the caller's tale, at least. Soundwave106 (talk) 17:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There are many, many reasons why the general claim the US government has proof of the existence of aliens is super dubious, all of which makes this particular more specific claim even more dubious than that. However, let me walk you through a very simple argument to put your mind at ease.


 * If a whole major military base like Area 51 was dedicated specifically to working with aliens, the US President would almost certainly know about it even if it was Need To Know since it would be relevant to many things the president does. If a US President revealed to the people of the world the existence of aliens, that president would go down in history as one of the most significant people to have ever lived. Donald Trump could not possibly resist such a temptation, no matter how dire any possible consequences of the revelation might be. Therefore if there is such proof, the US President is not informed of it, which is extremely unlikely, therefore the claim as a whole is extremely unlikely. Glitch (talk) 21:52, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Edward Snowden said he couldn't find anything about aliens. HairlessCat (talk) 12:46, 5 August 2020 (UTC)


 * That's an interesting piece of information to chew on Soundwave, I've been quite susceptible to anxiety and paranoia from a young age and my family had have had similar experiences with anxiety so I'll definitely have a look into the schizotpy personality as it may be of important help to understand my brain. But honestly, thank you all for these logical arguments, they're very helpful and have managed to calm me down. Thank you very much, I'm hoping to use all the knowledge, energy, logic and paranoia to help RW. Thank you.--WMS (talk) 14:03, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Maybe I can get a job digging plague pits
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/05/us/second-grader-coronavirus-first-day-of-school/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0BCuEtvmb2ViDpIkJd9KyhzJMXVvUCS-UgsZFBDkaT7g0V23JA9GsKNRg

The poor planning at reopening schools is already leading to mass COVID-19 infections. Give it time and a new viral strain will possibly show up. The more infections there are means the increasing chance of mutation. --George Soros Puppet (talk) 14:57, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Infections are one thing but what we really should be concerned about is the fatalities. Only those who are the most vulnerable -- the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions -- should be quarantined. Healthy adults and children should be allowed to roam freely as they choose, with social distancing and masks in crowded and confined spaces, of course. It seems that people overemphasize infections and neglect the possibility of herd immunity. How on Earth would you build up herd immunity if you do not allow healthy people to get infected? People will eventually need to return to work and to school. Nerd (talk) 15:50, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Pre-existing conditions? Like being diabetic and/or overweight? There's the majority of the anti-mask protestors in the US fucked then.Cardinal Chang (talk) 16:27, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * {Edit Conflict} You continue to make this argument and it is just fundamentally false. The argument is not that we don't want people to work or school, the point is to limit infections of people to: 1)Try not to overburden the health system and 2) Stop the spread from children to adults. Without the ability to get test results in a reasonable time (48 hours max), trace infected people's recent contacts, and quarantine infected people, America will not get control of the virus. One of these school situations, the parents sent the child to school while waiting for test results. In another 116 people were exposed to an infected person, assuming each person was in close contact with 10 people, trying to trace and contact over 1000 people is a herculean task where there are likely only a few dedicated contract tracers. And if children get infected, they have to quarantine at home, with their parents who also need to quarantine. What is the difference between that situation and where we were before? Besides now possibly a family unit is exposed to a dangerous virus. This idea of herd immunity is also so outlandish, primarily because it would likely condemn 2-5% of the population to death, and it would require at least 60% of the population to get infected and recover. How exactly are hospitals supposed to support tens of millions of people sick at the same time, not to mention what is that going to do to the economy when tens of millions more people aren't working because they're sick. Everyone who believes this pipe dream should just admit; they are OK with millions of preventable deaths, just to not wear a mask.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 16:30, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * If you read what I wrote, I support wearing masks in crowded public places. Unless somebody manages to produce a commercial vaccine soon, our best chance of getting out of this mess is herd immunity without it. Staying indoors for long will only wreck out mental health and our economy. According to this tracking board from John Hopkins University, out of 4,852,749 people infected, 159,407 were killed, or 3.3%, compared to 3.8% for the whole world. Places like Canada, Mexico, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, and the United Kingdom are doing worse than the U.S. And don't forget the people who got infected but show no symptoms and have never fallen sick. Even in countries that aggressively test people, the number of individuals infected is probably higher than the number of confirmed cases. Overall, infections and fatalities were on their way down, but then came the protests and riots. If people could manage to stay calm and practice social distancing and where masks in crowded places, things could have gotten better. But somebody had to throw temper tantrums so here we are.
 * Deaths from the Chinese novel pneumonia are preventable if we practice social distancing, wear mask in crowded places, and carry on as calmly as possible. It will not go away any time soon. For that to happen, either somebody produces a commercial vaccine, herd immunity is achieved, or the virus expires. The first and third possibility seem beyond our reach, but the second is achievable if we are careful. Living in fear is not the way forward. Nerd (talk) 19:03, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * First, it's Covid-19, not whatever racist nickname you garbled there. Second, to achieve herd immunity you would needs 70% of the population to be infected and recover from the virus. That is upwards of 260 million Americans that would need to be infected. Even if we assumed the most charitable fatality rate, .01%, that's over 3 million deaths. Is that really a stance you want to take, kill 3 million people for the rest of us to live without "fear"?RipCityLiberal (talk) 20:03, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Have you heard of the Spanish flu, Lyme disease, German measles, Japanese encephalitis, the Stockholm syndrome, the Ebola virus, the West Nile virus, the Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS), the African swine flu, among other names? Nothing 'racist' there. You use that word but you don't know what it means. Like I said, actual infection numbers will always be higher than reported or confirmed cases. Are we sure a large chunk of the human population has not already been infected? The way forward is not fear and paranoia but rather caution. There is a difference. We should gradually and carefully re-open things while quarantining the most vulnerable, who are generally not young children and young adults but rather the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions. You are talking about percentages yet you seem obsessed with raw numbers. Percentages tell a more nuanced story. Yes, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed around the world and well over ten million got infected. But there are more than seven billion people. The human population won't crash. Most people will survive. As I stated above, the U.S. is doing better than average, nothing to be ashamed about. America's neighbors and some other major economies are doing much worse. A better future will only come if we walk towards it. Nerd (talk) 20:13, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I am astonished no one has shit on you in the six months this pandemic has dragged on, because everything you just said is wrong and requires only a cursory web search to destroy everything you wrote. Yes, your stupid pun is racist. was first detected in the United States, not Spain. But in 1918, the American news media failed to adequately inform the public, instead taking their talking points from politicians. The Spanish media was the only group reporting the truth.  gets it's name from a river near where the first cases were discovered in 1976. Pretty sure everyone just says,  and . The others probably should have a name change, but that is neither here nor there. Only racists specifically say "China Flu", the point being to blame Asian people for the disease, that has resulted in several racist attacks.
 * Yes I am quite concerned with numbers, because numbers inform decisions, pretty sure percentages are also still numbers. If I am understanding your argument correctly, you don't just want herd immunity for America, but the planet, which is just so insane it's bordering on genocidal. If the fatality rate was at .01%, which again is extremely generous, you are condemning 70 million people to death. That would be catastrophic.That is the entire population of Thailand, the UK France and Italy. And that's just deaths from Covid-19, assuming everyone was infected around a similar time frame (say 3 months), worldwide ICU capacity would be completely maxed out. 96 countries have less than 5 ICU beds per 100,000 population. What about all the other things that kill people, they haven't just disappeared. Cancer, stroke, heart disease would still be killing people on the regular.
 * There is virtually no metrics that indicate the US is handling this pandemic well. The US accounts for roughly 4 percent of the world population, but accounts for nearly a quarter of all cases. The US accounts for a fifth of all fatalities. Florida, a state with 21 million people, had more cases than the entire EU combined, and twelve times the number of Australia (25 million) and South Korea (51 million) combined.
 * Maybe we do need a new name for this disease, Trump Flu. He seems to be the one fucking all of this up for everyone.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:45, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * More specifically concerning the 1918 flu pandemic, the reason it was first reported in Spain and received the wholly unfair misnomer "Spanish Flu" is that most of the western world was involved in WW1 and information about an epidemic that might be harmful to the morale was hushed up. Essentially there was no free press back then. The flu started almost certainly in Kansas (in one of two possible military bases) and moved on troop ships to France and Belgium, both of which were also very much involved in the war and hushed it up. Spain was the first neutral country it got to, and the press there was free to report it.
 * So Nerd, either start calling it a "Kansas Flu" and admit that the most deadly pandemic in modern history started with Americans not washing their hands after shoveling chicken shit (PIDOOMA based on the actual fact that it was an avian flu, or better yet stop applying national signifiers to pandemics. You racist wanker.Coigreach (talk) 23:21, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * First off, for fuck's sake, the Kansas story is mostly bullshit, we aren't sure where it originated but it had already begun in Europe in March 1917, 10 months before the outbreak in Kansas. No one knows for certain exactly where it started, but it wasn't 1918 Kansas.
 * Second, also FFS, I don't know how often I have to reiterate this but the actual mortality rate from COVID is .6%. Not 3%.  Not 5%.  6/1000.  It's dangerous because it spreads so quickly and severe cases can cause permanent damage, not because it's particularly deadly.  More importantly, we don't have enough space in our hospitals for everyone at once, so if too many get sick, people that would've otherwise survived are simply left to die.
 * Third, number of cases is absolute bullshit. Not all countries are doing adequate testing (including the US), but if you look at deaths per capita, the US comes in 8th.  Not exactly good, pretty awful in fact, but behind a lot of other countries which supposedly are better.  However, again, the deaths are somewhat bloated, as someone that has both terminal cancer and COVID will count as a COVID death.  (EDIT, can't confirm hospitals outright lying about COVID).  Elsewhere, Iran, Russia and China are lying through their teeth about how many have died.
 * This disease is far from over, but whatever it is we do, everyone will after the fact insist they knew what we should have done.CoryUsar (talk) 03:04, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You can't have this argument both ways. Mortality is likely way lower than .6%, I used .01% to put it in line with the Flu. Percentages though allow people to hide behind the actually human cost. If .6% of the American population died over night it would be catastrophic. If .6% of the world population died over night, you're talking about entire countries becoming mass graves. Herd immunity is more than just a pipe dream, it is death sentence.RipCityLiberal (talk) 15:28, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * First off, Flu has a mortality of .1%, not .01%. Second, most of the people dying are already sick.  Some may have lived a few years more, a few maybe a decade or so, but it's rare for someone both young and healthy to simply die.  It's a terrible disease, but keep in mind that this disease is actually less deadly than most of the diseases that we simply just put up with back in the day.  Whooping cough kills 1 in 200 children and thus is dozens of times as deadly as COVID.  Measles is twice as deadly; the lower reported mortality rate is only because as the absolute fastest spreading disease, just about everyone had it as kids.  Diptheria is absolutely awful, killing around 8% of those who catch it.  Mumps only rarely killed people, but it often caused complications.
 * This is absolutely not an endorsement of COVID. The point is that COVID is not "new" in terms of the type of threat that we have faced before, it's actually much milder than most of those types of threats.  The world that we left behind thanks to the efforts of Jonas Salk, Robert Hilleman, and all the other vaccinologists?  COVID is merely a shadow of that world.  COVID is tragic, but if it's as you say "catastrophic", then we as a society has grown too complacent.  If anything, this is a horrible reminder of the world the Anti-Vaxxer crowd wants to bring back, we have been in a war with diseases for millenia and we need to call out those Quislings for who they are.  However, we have faced these sort of threats before, much worse threats, and often several at once and survived.  And we will survive again. CoryUsar (talk) 17:05, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * All of those diseases you mention are preventable. And it is awful that we have just accepted that people die in large numbers. Again, you cannot keep hiding behind percentages, what is the number, how many people will die from something we can prevent? In the US, between 24,000 and 62,000 people die from the flu. Worldwide 160,700 children die from whooping cough. All of these deaths are preventable, but because they generally only accept poor countries no one cares. In the eight months Covid-19 has spread across the globe, it has killed at least 711,000 people. In the US, Covid will likely be the third most common cause of death this year. Stop trying to normalize your genocidal predisposition.RipCityLiberal (talk) 17:23, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * WaPo put together a good tool for you to try your her immunity idea. .6% fatality rate = 1.2 million deaths to achieve 60% immunity
 * on deaths per capita - the us is vast and full of wide open spaces. taken as a whole, its population density is relatively low. if per capita deaths arnt too bad its because of more sparsely populated areas lowering the number. looking at state by state, per capita deaths are through the roof in some places, corresponding with the more densely populated states. seeing as many states are larger than most european countries, its probably a better comparison, especially as there has been so much divergance in response state by state. all these stats though arent always really directly comparable for alot of factors. that said, excess mortality rates can give a clearer picture thre impact as it will include deaths not just directly attributed to covid itself, but everything surrounding it. russia's excess mortality rate is significantly higher than deaths attributed to covid alone. i am reluctant to draw any firm conclusions on any of this even now until the dust has finally settled, especially on doing worse and for what reasons. except maybe for the most blatant fuckheadedness. there is alot of that going around though AMassiveGay (talk) 17:45, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Digging plague pits is for somebody with just a GED or less. If you have reasonable computer skills, you can get hired as a contact tracer with access to the NSA's FISA database. nobsTo Bob Mueller:Every dog has his day. 17:46, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * @Rip Those diseases are preventable today, they were not preventable a century ago.  Again, I'm not endorsing COVID.  As for "normalizing" it, everyone you know and love will die.  Every last one.  Life is a terminal condition.  We can't simply stop living because we might die.  If the country and economy collapses, guess what?  A fuckton more people will die than from COVID.  We invaded Iraq, and by June 2006 the Lancet estimated we had killed 500,000, not from bullets or bombs or even violence, but because the entire country went to hell and people couldn't see their doctor, the electricity was out for weeks at a time, plumbing was a pipe dream, food was a memory, etc.  If the country collapses, and it very well could, well, you get the idea.
 * That "60% needed for herd immunity" is misleading. You don't actually need a random 60% of people to get COVID, you just need the most connected people to get it.  The reproductive rate is an average, with a few people both spreading the disease most rapidly and being the most likely to catch it.  NYC achieved herd immunity months ago with something like only 30% of people having gotten it.  That's still more than half a million deaths, which admittedly, is scary.  Even adjusting for age and health, that's still going to be the equivalent of 100-150,000 average people.
 * Once again, my recommendation is "make masks mandatory, limited opening of economy". Something that can be done indefinitely.  Now, if we know for a fact that a vaccine/cure is a month away, of course we shut down hard and wait it out.  But we can't shut down hard and wait another month, and another, and another, for years at a time.  We can however wear face masks forever, just like we now bury the dead instead of leaving them for the scavengers, or flush our poop instead of leaving it in the field.  It may be an issue regarding masks in a public park or sidewalk, but there's nothing illegal about being thrown off a bus for refusing to wear your face mask properly.  We just have to be willing to be confrontational enough to do so, like the good ol' days when kids used to beat the shit out of you for fashion faux pas (yes that actually happened). CoryUsar (talk) 19:17, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Regarding herd immunity, coronaviruses in general don't produce particularly robust long-term immune responses. It's looking like SARS-CoV-2 antibodies fade on the scale of a few months, so herd immunity is not a particularly viable option, even via a vaccine. Especially since there has never been a successful human coronavirus vaccine for various reasons. Prevention via exposure management is probably going to be the main thing going forward, at least if DRACO doesn't get funding. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 19:28, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's very unlikely that reinfection will occur, mostly limited to anecdotes. CoryUsar (talk) 19:53, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Tested, documented cases of reinfection have been known for months, and have happened around the world. Coronaviruses in general can be caught multiple times. And COVID-19 is still a new, relatively rare disease. If one in a thousand catch it, only one in a million would be likely to catch it twice if there were no immunity at all. Less since there hasn't been much time for immunity to fade yet. This hasn't become significant for the population dynamics of the disease yet, but it will probably be a major part of how things play out long-term, especially if it becomes endemic. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 20:10, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Not even gonna bother looking at the tool WaPo created about this exact thing and continue with random bullshit. OK. Also the argument isn't "No one should die", it's "We should do everything to stop preventable death from an infectious disease we know little about". Also I thought conservatives were prolife? -RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:12, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) I'm not conservative
 * 2) Your lockdown is going to kill people. I thought "you liberals" were always harping on about how poverty is deadly? CoryUsar (talk) 22:16, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure poverty is deadly (not quite as deadly as an infectious disease), and the government should be providing financial support to people while businesses are shut. Because if people are forced to return to jobs and then get infected, it's not exactly going to help the economy. Pretty sure you've been using every single right wing talking point to try and justify killing millions to protect the markets. But that is what you are trying to justify aren't you?RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:33, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * A comment of mine, which you have ignored twice now by the way, needs to be repeated again it seems. The fall out from poverty can partly be alleviated by government spending and wisely planned and implemented social programs as is done in most of Northern Europe, along with free medicare and subsidies for housing, generous unemployment benefits, food subsidies, cheap post-secondary education etc. Government planning and spending can help with this and can definitely help cut down on the number of deaths...so people don't need to rot away in exteme squalor or be homeless rotting in the gutter. At the same time the government can also implement wise programs in which sensible reasonable human beings wear their fucking masks, don't have parties and maintain social distancing and utterly minimize their socializing and shopping and non-essential work places shut down for a reasonable period of time.. That along with government programs to subsidize wage losses and failing businesses (as done in some EU countries) will very much help minimize deaths. So it isn't a zero sum game Cory. You can both help people not pointlessly die of COVID and help minimize people pointlessly dying of poverty. Try to get that into your head. It is NOT either/or. Both can be avoided. Shabi  DOO  00:30, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You can have the generous social services as long as you have a tax base to support them. The US?  Even without the pandemic we'd be lucky if we could raise enough taxes to cover the current debt, let alone the added social services.  We simply aren't going to raise an extra trillion in tax revenue, not even if the Dems win the entire House and every Senate seat up for grabs.  The lockdown is only going to make things worse financially, as the tax base is being obliterated.  There's only two longterm solutions if this lockdown isn't eased, and both are basically the same result.  The first is the US renegs on its debt; who knows, maybe Trump will get pissy and cancel only the debt China owns, but what this will do is cause the entire financial system to collapse in a manner just as bad as The Great Depression.  And all the Northern European social democracies?  Remember that in spite of the 2008 crisis being about the US, Europe was hit harder.  The US slips and falls, the EU gets a broken neck.  Your rightfully-lauded Scandinavian model countries will collapse as well.  The second option, well, it's basically the same thing but lying that it totes isn't, bro.  The US prints more money.  Basically, everything the US owes is in dollars, and the US can simply print 25 Trillion dollars and claim all the debts are paid off.  Doesn't matter if the dollars are only good for wiping your ass, the debt is gone, and the rest of the world economy collapses entirely, which drags the US along with everyone else.  The US is unable to import anything, dollar being worthless, and also can't take out any more debt. CoryUsar (talk) 00:59, 8 August 2020 (UTC)n
 * Countries are not static entities, with enough motivation they can quickly transform. There is no reason why the US cannot become a more compassionate reasonable society. In the mean time...what are you doing about it? By the way, Northern Europe is not limited to Scandanavia. Even moderately generous countries like Belgium or Ireland utterly surpass the US in relative social spending (and effectively cutting down on some of the misery of poverty). Even Spain is doing better than some republican states. So no...you don't have to look to "model" Scandanavian system to find caring countries that seriously try to tackle social problems (and limit the fall out and deaths from poverty). Canada shows that a North American country can pull it off with a lot fewer resources, economy and people. Shabi  DOO  01:22, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

I wonder if Mike Pence will run for President in 2024
George Bush Senior followed after Ronald Reagan, what will Mike Pence do?&mdash; Unsigned, by: 2001:8003:59db:4100:47e:6313:fa23:156a / talk 12:16, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It is possible that he might make a run in 2024. --Possible Goat (talk) 15:16, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Why is this trollish? Seems like a reasonable query to me. Scream!! (talk) 17:13, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * GC making an ass of himself and thinking that every BoN is a troll again. I’m hitting the end of my patience. 17:19, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Has he ever tried running for a Presidential election before? Gunther1987 (talk) 17:37, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No, though he was considered for running mate in 2012. He just never had the national media profile necessary to run.-Flandres (talk) 17:41, 8 August 2020 (UTC)


 * See, this is why I fucking removed this topic, because none of you fucking think. Wow, some guy keeps posting shit in the saloon on a daily basis, and engages in trolling in articles. Hmm... Maybe the saloon posts are trolling too... Maybe not feed them... 18:12, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * A penny for people's thoughts? Anna Livia (talk) 18:45, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Here's a link to where I list off the IP range's behavior, both in the saloon and in other parts of the site. 18:46, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * for God sake, most of these discussions are fine. You are the one throwing a fit. If you don't like the discussions then don't participate. Simple enough. Get your undies out of a knot. --Possible Goat (talk) 21:38, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry if I'm (apparently) the only person that studied up on how to deal with trolls. 21:41, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Here is the thing- the OP asked a legit question, you threw a fit (for some reason). How is asking if a person will run for election somehow trolling? --Possible Goat (talk) 21:57, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

On topic: If Trump wins in 2020 (I hope not, but Amerikkka is Amerikkka), he could technically have Pence run as the front candidate and Trump as VP. Yes, this is legally allowed afaik. 21:59, 8 August 2020 (UTC) 22:02, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, Putin pulled of this stunt back in 2008 when Medvedev became President and made Putin Prime Minister of Russia, before retaking his throne in 2012. So if the russians can pull such a stunt, I wouldn't be surprised if America copied this over. Gunther1987 (talk) 22:13, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm betting if they try that stunt they'll be blatantly cribbing Putin's playbook. 22:23, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Help
I just made an account on Conservapedia, what should I do with it? Fowler (talk) 13:28, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Conservapedia isn't as fun as it used to be-Hastur! (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Watch as it gets banned. 13:47, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I fixed the moon article and did some other shit and got a "minuteman" block. Fowler (talk) 13:48, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * And people say that I lack subtlety-Hastur! (talk) 14:05, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * well shit... Fowler (talk) 14:07, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * | Well that block escalated quickly.Coigreach (talk) 14:41, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * RationalWiki does not encourage or condone vandalizing Conservapedia. And genuinely trying to improve their articles is a waste of time and energy. Spud (talk) 07:14, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * mk Fowler (talk) 09:07, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Wise advice from Spud. Bongolian (talk) 01:16, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Figuring out the number of digits in extremely large numbers
I speak of numbers such as Graham's Number and TREE(3) in terms of digits. Now I am no mathematics expert (I barely passed Algebra 1 in high school) but wouldn't using the number of universes it would take to fit the digits be a good method i.e the number of universes to put all the zeros?

I probably sound stupid but I am just curious, I sorta developed an interest in very large numbers recently. --Possible Goat (talk) 01:24, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Large numbers eh? I recommend watching Numberphile, they have videos on even larger numbers, discussing about Grahams number with Graham himself etc. The Sqrt-1 talk stalk 01:53, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Here is the playlist of big numbers. You are looking for “What is Grahams number? (feat Ron Graham)” and “The Enormous TREE(3)”. I also recommend checking out other big numbers. He is the link https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt5AfwLFPxWJ_FwchNAjB3xa8UnoKdmQI Hopefully this will explain why Grahams number is G64 etc. The Sqrt-1 talk stalk 04:06, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Friendly reminder to US citizens on the wiki who are 18 or older
Remember to vote the Mango Messiah out of office and straight into the dumpster this November. Ideally a dumpster behind a Mexican restaurant for Irony. --George Soros Puppet (talk) 16:28, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * The primary trouble with this idea is that for the vast majority of possible voters, their vote is only symbolic because their state is locked for red or blue no matter what they do. It really only matters if you're in one of the swing states. The rest of us are essentially spectators. Glitch (talk) 17:05, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Vote anyways. Make a show of support.  Also some formerly red states are looking mighty purple right now-Hastur! (talk)  17:15, 30 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I hereby commend you. Also, my state is not one of the purple ones--at all. Deep, deep red. Further, since it's entirely symbolic, I don't want to symbolically participate in my own oppression by voting for Biden, who is only better than Trump in the sense that a gutshot is better than a headshot. My ideal scenario is that Biden wins, but in a close race with the lowest turn out in history, to terrify the Dems into actually transforming into a left wing party instead of a center-right one. Right now anyone on the actual left has no representation in government at ALL. Things are only going to get worse overall as the government gets further and further from being representative of the people. The "Harm Reduction" strategy of the Dems has been a monumental failure going back for several decades now and this is its last gasp. Or so I see it, anyway. Glitch (talk) 17:25, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I will say, establishment democrats are facing a lot of pressure to be more on the left. Encouraging.  Fingers crossed, we won't see a repeat of the Obama era where democrats lived in fear of Republican filibuster and we'll see some meaningful legislation-Hastur! (talk)  17:32, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Would it help if I told you that by not voting you were participating in your own oppression to an even greater degree by doing exactly what Donald Trump wanted you to do? Semipenultimate (talk) 17:36, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Not unless you have a much more persuasive form of that argument than the ones I've already seen before many times, which I find to be mostly nonsense, no. Glitch (talk) 17:45, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Well it's difficult since I can't see any valid reason to sink into complete hopelessness as a response to the two-party system. If political franchise is entirely symbolic, if voting is totally pointless, then you've left yourself with no path to induce change on any level. Semipenultimate (talk) 18:09, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * (EC)I'm sick of this stupid topic ban, because failing to show support for someone getting dogpiled by these same shitty arguments feels worse than getting banned. You're not alone, and you're 100% right glitch.  You're not obligated to vote for a right wing rapist, just because there's another right wing rapist who's worse on the other side.  It's okay to have moral standards.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 18:14, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Ikanreed, wasn't your topic ban to only last as long as the primaries? I, at least would support ending it now.-Flandres (talk) 19:16, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I would only support it if Ikanreed doesn't start insulting those who would vote for Biden or calling them rapist enablers. Although honestly this topic has been debated to death I cannot see any new possible insight anyone could shed on the topic. Shabi  DOO  21:51, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * You have mistaken what I've said, I'm afraid. Or I said it poorly. I'm not hopeless. And I'm quite politically engaged. But voting for Biden is counterproductive to my goals. Do you understand? I donated $200 I could ill afford to Bernie's 2016 campaign, which by my count makes me extremely invested in the political process even compared to billionaires if you consider percentage of wealth given. I thought Bernie was our last, best hope for a compromise candidate that MIGHT be able to accomplish enough to head off a very bloody revolution. We all know how that went.


 * I think at this point a revolution is inevitable. The questions that remain are, how bloody can we stop it from becoming, how fast is it going to happen, will it succeed or be crushed, and if it succeeds can we keep the result of the revolution from just switching who sits in the authoritarian seat of power but actually devolve real power to the people. I very much hope that I'm wrong and we can achieve the radical change needed without a single drop of blood. But the odds of that coming from the existing legal structure in the US are practically nonexistent.


 * Familiarize yourself with the way the Constitution actually works. The details. I'm not really interested in debating the intent of the Founders and if they intentionally set us up for this result or just didn't know what they were doing, but this conflict is systemic destiny. Given the Constitution, and the mechanisms in place to alter it, this was practically inevitable. The rules of the game demand it. It's like arguing that the game of Monopoly doesn't inevitably end up with one person the winner. The only way to avoid that outcome is to flip the board and reject the rules themselves. How peacefully we can manage to do that, that's the real question. But unless we have a new Constitutional Convention, this is going to happen again and again until the game ends.


 * Well, that's how I see it, anyway. I'm open to being convinced otherwise. Glitch (talk) 18:40, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * now if a revolution happens (entirely possible), it would certainly be a bloodbath. There is no tip-toeing around that fact. This is the United States, it has mountains of gun owners. Right now voting is the only option to stay peaceful. Plain and simple, hate to break it to you. --George Soros Puppet (talk) 18:56, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Do you understand how the Electoral College works? And the Senate, for that matter? Please help me understand how my vote, in a state so deep red that it will not only go to Trump with a HIGH degree of certainty, but both Senators will be red as well, has a more than almost indistinguishable from zero chance of affecting anything at all. If you can't, and you believe what you say, you will accomplish your goals much more effectively by bothering those whose votes might actually count for anything at all, I think. Glitch (talk) 19:34, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I want to sum up, if I can. Correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth. You don't want to vote for Trump, or Biden, or put in a protest vote for your chosen candidate, Bernie. You advise others to bother those whose votes might actually count; by this I presume you mean their senator or congressional rep and it's good advice - call your reps! But for you these are all Republicans anyways since you live in a deep red state, so those whose votes might actually count will not listen to you. The only solution you see is some form of revolution which you hope will be as bloodless as possible, which for your sake I hope would be true, as you are a nonbinary person living in a deeply red state. Do I have the facts on the ground correctly arrayed? Semipenultimate (talk) 21:38, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I can sympathize with you, glitch(well, kind of). My state is deep red and does not have the demographic changes going for, say, Texas or Georgia, so my vote is worthless too.-Flandres (talk) 21:43, 30 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for respectfully trying to understand what I'm saying. That's so fundamental to productive discussion, and so rare. I wanted to say that first, lest I forget to.


 * Some slight clarifications. I think that the election process, from top to bottom, in the US is systematically illegitimate and does not represent the actual will of the people. I'm not sure how anyone who understands the way the government works in a systematic way, totally aside from the motivations of those elected, can come to a different conclusion. But nonetheless, based on that premise, I further think that any participation in this illegitimate system only serves to give it a false veneer of legitimacy, which should be avoided except in direst need. I think that if enough people reject the system entirely, it can no longer pretend to be legitimate and will have to be replaced wholesale. In theory there are ways to reform the system within the system--but in practice they are virtually impossible to use in any meaningful way.


 * Therefore, I will not vote unless there is an incredibly dire emergency AND I have reason to believe my vote will have some sort of effect on the outcome. The Trump situation is very nearly a dire enough emergency to count--but since my vote is entirely symbolic, that's irrelevant. If I personally got to choose between Biden or Trump and my vote was the only one that mattered, I would swallow my ideals and crown Biden, rather than abstain such a responsibility. But essentially the opposite situation is true, so I get to keep my ideals intact. Most citizens of the US are in a similar situation. Any "Get Out The Vote" efforts should be laser focused on the swing states, where votes actually matter. It's still the choice between a gutshot or a headshot, in my opinion, so I don't blame those who refuse to pick how their captor will execute them, but at least those people have the actual option to choose to choose, as it were. And I don't blame them for picking the gutshot, which has more chance of being saved before it's too late.


 * Perhaps at this point the best outcome I can see is that the threat of revolution will swell until a new Constitutional Convention is called in a desperate attempt to avoid it, and we can then create rules amenable to actual representative rule instead of innately hostile to it. That's probably a pipe dream, though. So taking revolution as extremely likely, I'm focused on the principle of least harm. Given, that the US government is systematically ill, broken on the inside and not going to get better on its own, it remains to us to determine how to proceed. Most care only that the tumor is removed, and I agree that is the most essential thing. However, I much prefer that we wield the blade with the precision and care of a proper surgeon, rather than get carried away with a Jack the Ripper impression. I wish no harm to anyone. But, as inaction is causing great harm and has for centuries, and we very likely cannot correct it without doing SOME harm, I'm very concerned with how we can correct it with as little unnecessary blood spilled as possible.


 * I appreciate the personal concern and I'm aware that I'm quite vulnerable myself. But, and you may take this as unlikely, I'm not terribly concerned with what happens to me personally given the stakes. If I could trade my life to fix it all with no one else getting hurt, I would do it in a heartbeat. If I could trade not just my life, but the lives of everyone I love so dearly too, to limit the damages to only that, I would hesitate for only a fraction of a second longer. And consider it a very, very good bargain indeed. The stakes are far too high for such a scope to hold any weight at all, in the balance. And I would happily let my legacy be that of the villain for thinking and saying so. Glitch (talk) 22:47, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I should clarify, for completeness, that that's what I believe I would do under such circumstances. History has shown I can be quite mistaken when predicting my own future behavior. Glitch (talk) 23:08, 30 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Trump going all in on encouraging anti-Chinese racism has made me pretty committed to voting against him for my own self-preservation. 22:28, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Well there's no doubts how I'll vote since, if I had to pick the most important issue that Republicans are mucking up, they are the party of climate change denial but it's like they want to make it personal with me with the anti-Chinese bigotry and willingness to kill birds for their stupid black sludge and mold paper with dead, sad white men on them that smells like greasy palm. 23:12, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFzJk0VeU9Y 01:58, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
 * You're supposed to vote your conscience, I wouldn't shame anyone for voting their conscience. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  01:34, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No, that's not what democracy is about. Voting is a highly utilitarian practice. This isn't your soccer league where you can pick and choose as you want. Politics is done by mass movement and compromises. In the US, there are two alternatives: a conservative democrat (Biden) and a fascist (Trump). If you don't vote for Biden, you are enabling fascism in the US. That's where your conscience should be, not this idealistic fantasy that people project on the world of realpolitik. 02:59, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd be pretty pissed off if people "vote their conscience" and Trump's war on immigrants, trans people, and other minorities goes on unchecked. People who don't vote for Biden have blood on their hands.  Get out of your ivory tower and realize that there are real world consequences to your actions-Hastur! (talk)  03:04, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The Dems have been campaigning solely on not being as bad as the Republicans for many decades now, and shaming anyone who demands they do better. Do you find that's working well? Does it seem to be a winning strategy? Because all I see is the Dems going further and further to the right as fast as they can, while the USA burns. But I'm sure a few more doses of shame to throw around will turn it all around. Glitch (talk) 03:57, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry... That was more confrontational than I like to get. But you're not going to change any Never Biden minds by shaming them. They've heard it all before. You're just going to piss them off to no purpose. If that tactic was going to work, it would have already worked by now. Glitch (talk) 04:10, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There is real policy at stake, here.   Those are just a few.  This is about more than just "grab them by the pussy."-Hastur! (talk)  04:13, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

The democratic party is a giant tent; if you want progress in the US, PRIMARY the conservative democrats. That's how democracy works. In the primary, go as left wing as you can. When the primary is over, defeat the fascists. In regards to going more and more to the right: Biden has been making compromises with the social democratic/progressive wing of the democratic party. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzKTB4r-vXc 04:16, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * None of those promises by Biden are worth anything at all. The only reason they're even being made is because they know they can't keep them. There's basically zero chance of the Dems getting the 61 Senators needed to break the filibuster (and they don't have the guts to remove it), so none of that legislation has a chance in hell of passing. It's just hype. The Dems OFTEN talk a good game. But they have done NOTHING substantive since Johnson. Nothing at all. It's Lucy with the football, Charlie. I feel like a great deal of the problem is that people don't understand just how stacked the deck is. Hell, REDMAP really should've clued people in, the people who pulled it off admitted it and said how and why they did what they did, and people still don't get it. People don't even know what REDMAP was or why it matters. The system is broken from top to bottom. We don't HAVE a democracy. The sooner people realize that, the sooner we might actually get one. Glitch (talk) 05:13, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Like I said above, there is real policy at stake here. Biden and Trump are not the same and nor will they do the same things-Hastur! (talk)  05:15, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I never said they were. Biden will be a relief after Trump. Trump and the Republicans have been trying to kill the golden goose (us) to get what's inside, Biden and the Dems will just keep taking the daily eggs while slowly starving us to death because feed is so expensive. Forgive me if I don't throw a party at the thought. Glitch (talk) 05:31, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The Dems are exactly the same as the GOP, America is not a democracy, it's an oligarchy, the only way to enact change is to replace the system entirely. Biden's a rapist and is responsible for a lot of the mess we're currently in, being "better than Trump" shouldn't be the bar we judge politicians by. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  06:01, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Now, that's slightly unfair. Biden MIGHT not be a rapist. Glitch (talk) 06:05, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Okay, Oxy. If Trump wins and you didn't vote against him, whatever happens to undocumented immigrants and trans people as a result is on your hands.-Hastur! (talk)  06:07, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Same if he escalates foreign conflicts. Same if he cuts important federal benefits.  Same for refugees seeking asylum here.  Same for people being attacked by federal agents.  Those are largely Trump things.  See, I actually know a lot of undocumented immigrants.  Some DACA, some not.  I know a lot of people who would be hurt if Trump were allowed to continue his rampage.  But I guess you don't care about those people.  You care more about standing on principle, in your ivory tower.  Watching people get hurt and doing nothing.-Hastur! (talk)  06:10, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Yep, that's exactly what Oxy said. Let's see how the GOP differs from the democratic party. I could go on and on, but I now recognize anarchism is a very serious ideology and Biden = Trump. 06:25, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Trans rights? Equal. =
 * Immigration? Identical. =
 * Climate change? Can't see the difference. =
 * Abortion? Hard to tell. =
 * Foreign policy? Who cares. =
 * Taxation? No difference. =
 * Police brutality? Same same same. =
 * -Hastur! (talk) 06:28, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You liberals sure are self-righteous, notice how all of these are merely half-measures at best. And to say I don't care about marginalized people is rich, even though I myself am marginalized. Remember that Biden instituted the ICE concentration camps in the first place. Again, Biden is in large part responsible for the current mess, you can go on and ignore my points, but at least don't pretend to be actually responding to what I said. Being better than Trump is not a bar which we should judge politicians by, not that you people care, since that seemed to go right over your heads. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  06:34, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Like I said, the very real consequences of a Trump reelection are on your hands.-Hastur! (talk) 06:36, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Half-measures? Far better than Trump's active stance against these groups.  You lack empathy.  Go preen in your ivory tower and tell yourself how virtuous you are.  I live in the real world-Hastur! (talk)  06:39, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You know what? Thanks for voting for Biden. No, honestly. I'm sincere. I think many of your conclusions are dead wrong and I think that you don't understand the political system well at all, but if it wasn't for the huge amount of liberals willing to vote for Biden, we might actually have another 4 years of Trump and that would indeed, as I've said all along, be worse. I will be (pleasantly) shocked as hell if Biden does anything of any substance whatsoever besides not being Trump, but that alone is worth thanking you libs for. And because there are so many of you, those of us who have given up on electoralism in favor of direct action don't have to wrestle with our conscience about voting for Biden, because you guys have got it covered. So go fire up your fellow libs and kick the Cheeto out of office. Really. Maybe we can just leave it at that? Even if we're not voting, we're pushing others to vote him out with lots of anti-Trump social media content. We're on the same side. Glitch (talk) 06:40, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * What am I dead wrong about? Trans rights?  Did you read (removed)-Hastur! (talk)  06:49, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Reflect about it: In Weimar Germany, who would you be before Hitler took over? The people opposing them (the SPD) or the people who just stood by and watched fascists take over (the KPD)? I know which side I am part of. I care about trans people. Biden will help trans people. Trump fucks them over. This isn't hard. You either care about trans people or you don't. 06:47, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You accidentally exposed your file structure there, Hastur, I edited it out for you. And I don't think you read what I said. I'll be glad to engage you on that topic, and any other, in a respectful manner, but please put a pause on it for tonight. I'm very tired.
 * GR, as a trans person myself who has not one but two other trans people as my romantic partners, I'm trying really hard to not be snarky on the topic of whether I care about trans people. But honestly it would be nice if you stopped using "Think of the trans people!" as a variant of "Think of the children!". We're quite capable of making up our own minds. Some of us hold our nose and support Biden. Others don't. Yes we all hate Trump. That doesn't mean we all automatically think Biden and the Dems are our best pals. Also, just because we're trans doesn't mean that's the only issue we care about. Again, yes, Trump is the devil. Everyone is agreed there. Glitch (talk) 07:05, 1 August 2020 (UTC)


 * 07:24, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Biden = Trump is such a ridiculous exaggeration. Even if it were the case that Trump was 90% bad and Biden was 80% bad (which is not the case and would be extreme hyperbole) 80% bad is an entirely more attractive option than 90% bad. And even if that were true per policies (which it isn't), the leadership style of a politician has a HUGE effect on the social climate of a nation. Having a president openly spout racist homophobic nastiness all the time emboldens the considerable number of racist/homophobic people to do crazy shit all the time. It means more open racism, more swastikas spray painted on peoples houses, more acts of racists violence and harassment and abuse. Just for this horrid grief that marginalized people have to deal with is an extremely important reason alone to remove someone like that from office. And that's just one example of the small effects that an even slightly better leader could have (and thats not to mention the devastating world trade disaster policies trump has had which will take decades for not just the US but the world to recover). Literally the whole world is less stable with Trump in office. And even then, I'd go along with all of your hyperbole any of you could answer what you think you're standing to gain by effectively helping Trump get into office. Are you even remotely serious about working to get a third and fourth political party into the US political arena? Are you trying to bring about change or just saying: uff...I'm not impressed with either option so fuck them both I'll throw my vote away on a a candidate nobody cares about with a protest vote nobody even notices and poo poo the system. I'd go along with any of you if you were serious about helping build realistic alternative option in the US, which would require a whole lot more than "pff..they both suck". Shabi  DOO  12:11, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * So...why are you spending so much energy to change the votes of two people who would probably not vote blue anyway? Biden has a (for our polarized time) MASSIVE lead. It's not like he is going to lose. Is Biden just such a pathetic candidate that he makes you so insecure you melt down whenever he is criticized? What is the purpose of this conversation beyond politely agreeing to disagree? Also hastur invoking a symbol of privilege to bash to trans people is hilarious,hmhmhm...-Flandres (talk) 12:45, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * A reasoned response to an irrational argument is never useless whether it changes a vote or not...nor is it a meltdown. Nice tone policing Flanders. I don't think Biden is a terrible candidate to begin with...if you actually read his policies. It's just democrats unhappy their perfect candidate didn't win and rejects the non-perfect candidate. Happened last election. No surprise. And in any case I only care because Trump's policies have made the world more unstable and have hurt the EU economy (quite pointlessly) and has inflamed radicalism in the middle East and considering Europe deals with the most random Jihhadist murdering (including in the city I live in) it is high stakes for non-US citizens like myself. Trust me...the vast majority of the rest of the world is hoping a sufficient number of Americans will be sensible this year.  Shabi  DOO  14:08, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I was not responding to you personally, apparently that needs to be clarified. Again, polls all say Biden will win and you are not changing the opinions of Oxy or glitch so what *is* the use of this? Are you arguing a topic that has been debated to death in your own words just for the sake of arguing?-Flandres (talk) 14:16, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No because to my surprise Glitch brought up some new ideas that haven't been mentioned before and as you've seen they've already converted someone to their folly. And in any case it's ridiculous to think the election is already won. Or do you have such a short term memory from the last dozen elections in the US, UK, Canada and Australia (just to cite Anglo Saxon countries alone)? Shabi  DOO  15:09, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Who has glitch converted? And um...have you seen Biden's polling lead? Like, actually looked at the data? How does he lose?-Flandres (talk) 15:32, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Even if his lead were double it means nothing. It's a poll...not a crystal ball. They are famously unreliable. Follow a few more elections and you'll learn...you clearly didn't learn from the 2016 election. Shabi  DOO  16:34, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, complacency is nigh-intolerable. We can't take chances.  The country is on fire and we need Trump out of office-Hastur! (talk)  16:52, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You still have yet to explain why Trump could win when every other incumbent in a disaster this large has lost. Also, I would like to remind you that polls were right that Hillary would be Trump in the popular vote. They promised nothing in the EC. Also she had like half the polling lead Biden does so your observation about 2016 is nt that sound in general.-Flandres (talk) 17:08, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I brought up some new ideas? Hey, neat. Yay me. I'm really not very familiar with what arguments "my side" has been making, because my reasons are mostly my own, not inherited from someone else. Or so I think, anyway--obviously we're all influenced by our environments. But also I have no real interest in badgering libs about Biden. Until they move further left, supporting Biden is probably the most helpful thing they could be doing. But I can't stand to see them using arguments that are 1) bad reasoning and 2) not effective anyway to harass leftists. It's a waste of time and effort if nothing else. You can't use YOUR moral intuition to shame someone else into acting against THEIR moral intuition. That should be staggeringly obvious. And yet here we are. I think it's possible to have a fruitful discussion about it, in theory, but the ad hominem and the righteous indignation and all that reason-destroying nonsense has to stop for it to even be worth trying. I believe I know the position of the libs, but maybe I've misunderstood it. I can't speak for all leftists, not remotely, but I can say that as far as my own position has been talked about here in this... thread? it's been subject to multiple major errors of assumption. In the context of a fruitful discussion, it's critical to assume good faith, so I'm not going to say I'm being intentionally strawmanned or whatever, but until we can clear up those misunderstandings (on both sides) we can't identify points of agreement and disagreement because we don't know what each other believes or is trying to accomplish. Is anyone honestly interested in approaching the discussion in a "rational" manner? I know, something something tone argument, rational doesn't mean respectful, etc, but since a fruitful discussion can't happen in the middle of a mudslinging contest, I think it would be decidedly IRrational to try to have one there. Glitch (talk) 20:22, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Imagine thinking polls are a statement of certainty rather than probability. Get better, dear, dear Flandres. 20:35, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You still have yet to explain how Trump will win in these circumstances, GR.-Flandres (talk) 20:37, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Flandres, a few months may as well be a few years in the future. A thousand things can happen between now and voting day. Clinton seemed like a sure thing leading by 15 points. Trudeau's rival seemed like he was heading for a majority. Corbyn was super high in the polls until he wasn't any more. It was considered ridiculous that the Labour party would lose in Australia last election, until they surprisingly lost. Anyone who prophesizes an election win months away has no experience following an election and shouldn't be taken seriously. Shabi  DOO  20:50, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * And Trump can win re-election during the worst national crisis since the great depression? One that he made worse at every single stage, a fact that is widely known? Hillary was also not leading by 15 points for the majority of the general election, get your data right please.-Flandres (talk) 20:55, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, he absolutely could pull out a last-second turnaround. You ever heard the term ? 21:51, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I never said it was, don't put words in my mouth Flandres. In any case her average lead throughout the last 6 months was higher than Biden's current lead. And none of it matter, we are months away. Too many things can happen. It's embarrassing to see someone declare any election in an open democracy a done deal months before election day. Shabi  DOO  21:55, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No, Trump may not be the best President ever, but he is by far the lesser of two evils. If I were a US citizen, then I would vote Republican as a way of keeping Trump in the White House, instead of an incompetent liberal getting elected. Kiko4564 (talk) 00:24, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Here is how trump can still win
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGJQbpYXtSs 21:00, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * btw. anyone remember Gore v Bush? And how the SCOTUS stole the election for GW Bush? 21:01, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Congratulations! You have made a good point. With the make up of the court as it is, the 2000 comparison is apt and a close associate of mine works with the post office and confirms some of the details of the video and more(you are better with videos than you are with your own words-that vaush one was fairly sound as well). What now?-Flandres (talk) 21:14, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Now, the republicans will try to cheat in every way they can, it is why I have to make people vote for Biden - who, to be very clear, I opposed and made arguments against online for 2 years - a candidate that is very weak and relies strongly on an anti-Trump sentiment rather than a pro-Biden one. He became 4th in Iowa and 5th in New Hampshire; he is not a very good vessel for campaign enthusiasm. That being said, I see Trump as an existential danger to the planet; even far-left folks like Noam Chomsky (an anarcho-syndicalist i.e. commie) agree with me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlhZ9SL90X8 21:40, 1 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree that it is important to get Trump out of the White House, but it is at best a short term reduction of harm. As for Chomsky’s emphasis on the climate crisis, I find it rather unreasonable to lay so much of the blame on Trump personally. What Trump has done is simply to be more honest about a view and a lack of preventative action, as well as a continuing detrimental actions that have been standard GOP fare for at least two decades (arguably more, if you consider that background presented in Merchants of Doubt).


 * While Trump has been significantly worse on other environmental issues, such as defanging the EPA etc., his climate policies don’t seem any more or less catastrophic than the GOP norm of denialism and refusal to do anything. Dubya refused to join the Kyoto Protocol, despite great efforts to water it down to appease the US. Trump’s exit from the Paris Agreement is just more of the same. Yes, it’s likely to have catastrophic consequences, but these politics are not unique to Trump and I can’t see any GOP POTUS doing anything that might be meaningfully more beneficial in halting climate change. ScepticWombat (talk) 10:13, 3 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Also, I have a problem with the framing because it sounds a lot like preparing the ground to blame the left for any Biden defeat, just as the Bernie bro narrative was used in the aftermath of 2016 and eerily similar to Trump’s preparation for a losing narrative blaming others (in his case voter fraud). If Biden and the “centrists” had shown just an ounce of willingness to give “the left” anything substantial (beyond meaningless task forces), there might be less of a threat of abstentions.


 * Once again, in a repeat of the aftermath of 2016, the “centrists” are preparing the ground for blaming the loss by a fundamentally flawed and weak candidate that they pushed through, despite these well-known flaws and without any meaningful concessions to “the left’, on feckless and faithless “lefties” who don’t do as they’re told, rather than on the lack of appeal of their own politics and candidates. To put it polemically: The “centrists” will rather lose a presidential election, than lose the control over the Democratic Party.


 * Again, was I a US voter, I would almost certainly end up voting for Biden, but the problem is that, while the consequences are pretty dire if Biden loses, a Biden win would once again signal that the “centrists” can and should ignore anyone on “the left” because they’ll “vote blue no matter who”. To use a medical analogy, Trump is doing nothing to stop the patient from bleeding to death and is actively making the blood loss worse. Biden promises simply to slow the blood loss, not staunch it and the patient will still bleed out; it will simply take a bit longer. My fear is that the lessons being learned among “centrists” are that is is feasible to let the patient bleed out, just as long as it doesn’t happen too quickly. ScepticWombat (talk) 10:29, 3 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I also consider Pakman’s defence of Biden by focusing solely on his 1990s suggestions for privatising Social Security as ancient history to be extremely selective, not to say disingenuous. As Nathan J. Robinson pointed out in his detailed layout of Biden’s political background and history, Biden has a series of incidents of favouring big business and other Republican darlings (including palling around with the likes of Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, when it was convenient). To quote Robinson’s summary of Biden’s character, based on his actions in a long career in politics:
 * ”The reason many of us are so turned off by Joe Biden is that, over the course of a many-decade career in Washington, he has let us down on the key issues when it matters most. Joe Biden has shown himself to be fundamentally weak, unreliable, and dishonest. He gets taken advantage of by Republicans, and he seems more interested in making friends than advancing Democratic ideals. Biden, ultimately, is truly “just another politician”: a guy who will give you a warm smile and then sell you out behind closed doors, a person who will make terrible decisions and grubby deals and then cover them up with lies. He adopts a “middle class” image but sucks up to the rich and powerful, and has contempt for ordinary voters and their concerns. He’s a man with little integrity or moral character, whose choices in office have caused a lot of people a lot of harm.”
 * Thus, to boil objections to Biden down to unreasonable cherry picking of bad policies 30 years ago and then dismiss criticism out of hand is just bunk. ScepticWombat (talk) 10:56, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You have put my concerns into eloquent words, and specific examples to my vague recollections. I would further say that the Democrats have been hammering the drum of "harm reduction", of just being not the Republicans, for at least 100 years, and what do we have to show for it? As far as I can tell the Democrats have only ever done two meaningful things for us--the New Deal and Johnson's Great Society. And in both cases it seems they only delivered them under great duress, under the specter of huge civil unrest that threatened to tear the country apart completely. Maybe they would have loved to have done more, more often, and the Republicans just prevented it all those other times, even when it seemed like the Democrats had control of the government. Whatever the case, they seem to have done very little over a great deal of time. The question is, how do we make them actually do things? Useful things, ideally. For a great many of us, Bernie was the COMPROMISE candidate. He WAS the middle ground. And obviously the party rejected him completely for being too extreme. So... What do we do with that? I was reading that recent polling shows 69% general approval of Medicare for All and 88% approval among Democrats, but the Democrats rejected it something like 135 to 35 from their platform this year. Either the polls are way off or the Democrats are far to the RIGHT of the general population. How do we even start to fix this? Can it be fixed? Glitch (talk) 13:55, 3 August 2020 (UTC)


 * The really big downside to Biden is, that he will almost certainly choose yet another neoliberal tool as his Veep (e.g. Kampala Harris), which means that even if he himself is likely to be a one-term POTUS, it will be almost impossible to get a different Democratic option in 2024 and, if she wins, in 2028. That’s a full 12 years of further neoliberal misrule — sure, it’s not as bad as Trumpism, but man that’s a depressing thought.


 * As to how to fix it, the most important tool is probably also the first on Godless Raven’s list of suggestions in Debate:US Voting 2020: Primaries. This is essentially how the Tea Party took over and/or coopted the GOP: By aggressively primaring anyone at odds with or not supportive of them (yes, this includes anyone who try to fence sit). It is the one thing that can eventually losen the “centrist” stranglehold on the Democratic Party, because control of the party, its direction and its machinery are far more important to the “centrist” corporate Democrats than actually winning elections. There will always be another election, but in a two-party system it is far more difficult to get “another party”.


 * Unless “the left” is willing to follow this strategy of ruthlessly primaries and not give into the constant blackmail of “the centrists” with their hypocritical calls for “party unity” (which always means that “left” candidates should bow our, never “centrist” ones as seen by the ludicrous challenge to AOC), “the left” will always get steamrolled by the corporate Democrats. They have no qualms about fighting fair and are clearly willing to continue to field terrible candidates championing unpopular and useless neoliberal policies, even if it means a greater risk of losing at the polls (not to mention the harm done to the vast majority of Americans and their future prospects). ScepticWombat (talk) 06:22, 5 August 2020 (UTC)


 * * checks notes* Yeah, man! Worked out great for the GOP. Super excited at the prospect of a House-full of progressive Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordans. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 11:45, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, because using similar electoral tactics is TOTALLY guaranteed to elect numbskulls... Oh, and Jim Jordan was elected before the Tea Party as was several of the other walking GOP embarrassments masquerading as congresscritters, such as Louie Gohmert, Peter King, Pat Toomey or Jim Inhofe. ScepticWombat (talk) 13:00, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Given good ol' Gym and the rest of your selection represent exactly the kind of batshit zealot the Tea Party later fought tooth & nail to elect, I'm not sure your retort does what you think it does.


 * Speaking more generally, making ideological purity your primary metric for support rarely produces politicians capable of the mucky, boring business of actually getting shit done in a democratic system, especially one with such formidable structural obstacles to sweeping change as the US version. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 14:14, 5 August 2020 (UTC)


 * My point was that the numbskulls of the Tea Party were at most a gradual escalation of the general GOP numbskullery prior its arrival. The GOP had already sent crazies like Gohmert to Washington waaay before anyone thought of the tea baggers. So using them as the scary example of what happens if you decided to fight the party establishment is silly, because they were in Washington and crazy as part of that prior party establishment.


 * Ideological purity tests is obviously not enough and candidates still have to be vetted in the grinding process of a primary and if elected, the politicians still have to answer to their constituents or risk being primaried themselves. If you want the boring stuff done, you’re probably not worse of by getting someone who actually cares about changing stuff, because they might actually tough it out, rather than the status quo “centrists” who think the pinnacle of achievement is to return to the Obama/Clinton presidencies.


 * So, if you want something different, you’ll have to fight for it and the only arena in which you’re likely to influence a party in a two-party system is through primaries. Then, once the “centrists” have seen that they can’t simply take the “left” voters for granted and that it is indeed possible for such primary challengers to unseat them, you begin to get some leverage within the party and a platform to change its overall direction. Also, if candidates have worked their way up through trade unions or similar organisations they will be very familiar with exactly the kind of organising, bargaining and the type of boring legwork necessary to get results that you asked for.


 * As much as I abhor the Tea Party’s views, its tactics have been insanely effective. All of the pundits agreed that after the trouncing administered by Obama to McCain in 2012, the GOP would simply have to ditch the right wing batshittery of the Bush era and move to the centre, or it would have no future whatsoever. Instead, the even more batshit Tea Party ruthlessly primaried its way through the GOP, which then basically adopted the Tea Party’s positions.


 * By contrast, it’s only really over the last couple of Congressional elections that “centrist” Democrats have had to deal with real primary threats and hence they have been free to completely ignore “leftist” views. This, along with the mind numbing idiocy of keeping focus on grand bargains with the GOP (Obama being the quixotic poster child of this approach), now more radical than ever, has left the “centrist” Democrats in a self-imposed bind: Every time they take one step towards the GOP, the latter simply steps back and any deal struck will be denounced by the GOP anyway and won’t survive any GOP gains at the polls.


 * Thus, the “centrists” are basically losing everything (apart from some cultural issues) little by little. It is indicative that Obama’s one great success, Obamacare, is basically a GOP design, though from the day when the GOP wasn’t quite as insane. Hence, if the “centrists” keep running the Democrats, the highest achievements will basically be equivalent to Reagan Republicanism. ScepticWombat (talk) 22:56, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Let's just look at where the "insane" electoral efficacy of the Tea Party has left the GOP: way to the right of most of the population; with perversely little incentive to change for most of its congressmen, women and senators occupying safe, deep red districts or states; and looking increasingly certain never to realise its stated goals of limited, fiscally responsible government and generally returning the country to some imagined 1950s golden age.

It's not hard to imagine progressive Democrats repeating the same unfortunate trick, especially if they take the Very Online Left as their yardstick of where the rest of the country is at politically, and / or pander to them as the GOP has done with evangelicals.

One concrete example for the purposes of argument: It's reasonable to suppose a Biden administration will try to restore / improve Obamacare. Progressive Dems could use this as an opportunity to lambast the "centrists" as corporate Big Pharma shills and ramp up demands for M4A in their push for 2022 House seats. It would probably be tactically smart for their purposes, but create wider Dem strategic headaches in statewide races, and thus actually make M4A somewhat less likely to happen in the medium to long term.

Alternatively - and work with me here - progressive Dems could get on board with fixing Obamacare as a vital short to medium term improvement in overall social justice, whilst at the same time making the case that long term, the evidence is clear that some form of universal single-payer is much more efficient, both economically and in terms of improved health outcomes. It might not win them as many House seats in '22, but: they get to look like the adults in the room; they don't fuck with the next round of Senate or governor races; and, just maybe, they meaningfully move the needle towards a winning M4A platform in '24 or some other point in the not-too-distant future.

You seem smart enough to realise the above alternate possibility (and others like it) isn't going to happen if they're hellbent on an ideological purge of the party, and primarying the fuck out of anyone who disagrees with them. Helena Bonham Carter (talk) 01:48, 6 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Of course, compromise can be a viable strategy/tactic and “the left” should pursue it where feasible. And yes, a better Obamacare might be a good idea, but the downside is that “fixing” Obamacare also easily becomes and argument against single payer. Hence, if your goal is the latter, you might be better off aiming for it in the first place. This becomes even more important given the likelihood that congressional bartering will probably water down any proposals anyway.


 * The problem with pursuing a strategy of compromise without aggressive primaring is that the “centrists”, who currently hold the reins of power in the Democratic Party, have demonstrated time and again that they are not prepared to compromise with “the left”, unless the latter has serious leverage. Hence, an aggressive primary strategy is a premise for any meaningful compromise strategy for “the left” —unless the latter consider “unity task forces” a meaningful result.


 * I also find your analogy to the Tea Party somewhat flawed since the “centrists” are actually to the right of a large slice of the electorate on several key topics, such as Medicare for all. Hence the likelihood that a “left” strategy based on the tactics of the Tea Party will strand them in an ideological lala land seems less likely to me (apart from my own political bias affecting my views, of course).


 * The “centrists” still seem more interested in bargaining with an ever more radical GOP over the big socio-economic issues than in actually trying to move the debate away from the neoliberal premises established in the Reagan/Clinton era. Basically, I consider the “centrists” to be a mortal threat to the longer term viability of the Democratic Party itself. The GOP‘s ability to fall back on nativism and the culture wars to whip up a frenzy among its electorate doesn’t seem to be lessening, but I’m not sure how the long term prospects are for the “centrists”’s “Well, at least we’re not at bad as the GOP” shtick, while they continue to pursue a Reagnist set of economic policies. ScepticWombat (talk) 17:26, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Favourite action movies of the 80's?
I have a few in mind... &mdash; Unsigned, by: 2001:8003:59DB:4100:58F5:757B:1E27:59AB / talk
 * Disclaimer: Daily Wire nonsense. 06:26, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's tough for me to pick just one... for me, it's a toss-up between Robocop, Predator and Terminator.Bigwiggler (talk) 07:31, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Deadly Prey is the greatest action movie not only of the 80's but ever, everything else is just pretentious wank Cardinal Chang (talk) 08:25, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Of the 80s specifically? Robocop, obviously. Also, Shapiro's pathetic little hipster Breitbart hasn't collapsed yet? 12:16, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm assuming this article functions as some sort of test of manliness against overbearing "PC culture" (I'm not gonna click on the link). A lot of 80's action flicks had a lot of tongue in cheek cultural commentary that I'm sure many of these idiots missed.RipCityLiberal (talk) 15:31, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The byline is "The Reagan era gave rise to masculine heroes who saved the day without regret or apology." So, pretty much. The actual article is paywalled, but in light of the byline, Robocop is a perfect choice as that satirizes Reagan era ethos quite a bit. I'll also echo Die Hard (which also satirizes machismo a bit) and Terminator (which doesn't, as far as I know). This was also the beginning of the peak of Hong Kong cinema and John Woo's A Better Tomorrow and Jackie Chan's A Police Story would be good to add. Soundwave106 (talk) 19:25, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't care if Benny made this article, I'm still gonna reply: Predator, and the original Rambo. — <font color="Red">Jeh2ow <font color="Blue">Damn son!  18:07, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * As long as you use ad bloc... I prefer to not give traffic to garbage fires. 18:45, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Starship Troopers is still the best movie, even if it's from the 90s. 19:31, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That's a great one. The eighties was a good decade for movies. If you like to laugh: Ghostbusters. If you want to be frightened senseless: Aliens.Ariel31459 (talk) 21:50, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Did you mean Alien? Because Aliens wasn't especially scary.  A couple jumpscares and some gore, but not like... dread?  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 21:55, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Also Indiana Jones 3 if that counts too. 00:16, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * i will go for big trouble in little china today. is the thing an action movie? probably not 80s action movie enough. but for movies that you can truly say are 80s action movies, if it isnt starring arnold schwarzenegger then its not an 80s action movie, its just an action film released in the same decade. schwarzenegger is the 80s action movie. AMassiveGay (talk) 11:10, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Anything John Carpenter is the correct answer-Hastur! (talk) 14:46, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Both great films! Junfa (talk) 20:48, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

~On dropping in to the Saloon Bar *
The humanity is never explicit. The arguments are great, *but this is the saloon bar. I'm not arguing for a thing as sacred, but when it's really combative for the sake of combat, it's not a place I want to be. Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:26, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Did something happen? Gunther1987 (talk) 09:16, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I did your mom. Everybody's mom, actually.  That's why everybody is so on edge-Hastur! (talk)  12:58, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Got nothing better todo than posting "yo momma" shit? And I can understand the edgyness. Being 13 and all. Posting constantly on 4chan's /v/.. Gunther1987 (talk) 15:29, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Maybe it's an obsession brought about by an absence of sorts. Like most "edge-lord"s, they weren't born, merely shat into existence, with a "Mommy" fixation hardwired Cardinal Chang (talk) 22:18, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I drank a lot. And I drink a lot a lot. I'm sorry if I said anyone was 13 and posting on 4chan, but I'm pretty sure I would not have said that even while blacked out.  Not even on my death-bed would I use such shallow insults.  Gunther, your mom called me and asked if I could tell Cardinal to stop calling out your name in bed when she's pegging him.  Cardinal, she's his son, that's too weird for her.  I hope you understand.   I'm sorry, but your mom and I are friends and we talk about you.  What was your point?  Because I'm miles past mine now.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 06:26, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * -Hastur! (talk) 06:27, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah the Cameron Booze Diet, good luck with that. One day you might even find a sense of humour Cardinal Chang (talk) 14:29, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm working away from the drinking, but I don't know what Cameron means. I assume it's devastating and I'll check, not bet. I would never want to find a sense of humor without being willing to throw my last sense out. I wasn't trying to be mean to you.  Take these jokes, I don't need them.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:19, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh its the old "i fucked your mother" approach going on down here. Fowler (talk) 08:39, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

This site is actually the perfect place to ask this and since I don't get any results when typing it in the search bar...
What is Sapiosexual? This is the first time I encountered this word. Gunther1987 (talk) 09:26, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * sapiosexual is when someone finds intelligence a fuck factor if you catch my meaning... 104.243.212.165 (talk) 10:27, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * its something some people say when they are really looking at ya tits. AMassiveGay (talk) 10:44, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-hearts-wisdom-what-does-sapiosexual-mean blah
 * Isn't that kind of dangerous when a denialist or a crank is Sapiosexual? They could find Alex Jones hot as fuck... lol. Gunther1987 (talk) 11:01, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Someone with the (lack of) intelligence to be attracted to the person claiming to be a sapiosexual.
 * Or someone who is attracted to soap. Anna Livia (talk) 18:43, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * In principle it's a thing. Many people are attracted to things that are connected in some way to intelligence, e.g. sense of humor.  In practice it usually means "I'm super pretentious".  Not that being pretentious is the worst thing in the world.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 20:01, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * In a linguistic sense, it would solely require Sapien. It's unusually broad.  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 05:58, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * And I'm drunk, I swear I read ikanreed's post, but I lost it within a minute, I'm very very drunk. This is why I avoid the weekends. 06:04, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * So drunk your signature broke Fowler (talk) 09:17, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Welp. Yep.  Can I amend that with a signature?  Gol Sarnitt (talk) 03:20, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Damning expose on CHAZ/CHOP
The left really needs to start self-policing. Sick of ivory tower liberalism from soft-science majors-Hastur! (talk)  00:01, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, abolishing the police is not a good idea. Another example of failure of a certain ideology on the left. 00:07, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I wonder why they might have a problem with those cops... I really do wonder... I'll also just leave this here... Oh, and given the political makeup of the US, it's highly dubious that most of those protestors are/were anarchists, despite what Trump says.  00:34, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * This isn't about abolishing or even reforming the police. This is about the left's refusal to acknowledge its worst elements.-Hastur! (talk)  01:02, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Somehow, I really doubt that. Again, given the political makeup of the US, most of those protestors were Liberals. You know, centrists. Further, I really can't take you seriously when you barf out the whole "See, here's what happens when you push back against the cops" (who left that area on their own) and then go "well actually, it's not about defending the cops, it's not about upholding the broken system that lets cops murder people in broad daylight, it's about this minority of people who though they don't have much political sway at the moment are totally the problem." Do you see why I'm kind of not taking you seriously now? 01:30, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, again, the cops used tear gas in residential areas, in open violation of city laws. I'm sorry if people didn't want to get gassed so you can play white moderate. 01:32, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

I see, the CHAZ was actually really centrist.  Quoting Vox here: Even with the inaccurate reporting, that isn’t to say there isn’t some discord at CHOP. According to Carla, the name change and subsequent confusion came from an internal struggle between two groups of protesters with differing visions for the area. For days, Carla said, there has been a power struggle between organizers who envisioned the zone as a peaceful, organized protest against police violence, and another group who wanted to see CHOP become more of an anarchist space where marginalized people could obtain mutual aid when needed. 01:35, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh what? It wasn't just anarchists like you originally said? You're now backpedaling? WHAT?!?! 01:48, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * When did I say it was only anarchists? 01:51, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "Yeah, abolishing the police is not a good idea. Another example of failure of a certain ideology on the left." Raven, August 2020. The CHAZ is a lawless wasteland run by warlords! This is why you should let cops murder black people! Tucker Carlson, June 2020. I dunno man, maybe there's a reason I tend not to trust people dissing the CHAZ, especially given it's been out of commission since the first of last month. 02:07, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * lol aight, I am Tucker Carlson actually. Got me really good. 02:09, 8 August 2020 (UTC)


 * No, but you do use some of the same rhetoric. Nice strawman though. 02:17, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The New York Times is generally considered a left-leaning paper... not sure that this is a great example of "the left" refusing to acknowledge its worst elements.
 * At any rate, my understanding is that CHAZ formed due to aggressive police tactics that actually transformed George Floyd protests into a community effort to keep aggressive police out of the neighborhood. As far as I'm concerned, the business owners have no one to blame but the police for what happened. Of course there are agitators and opportunists that would take advantage of the situation. Duh. But if the police didn't treat every single little thing like it was a war on something and focused on crowd management techniques for protests instead of shooting off as much crap at protesters as possible, CHAZ would not have happened. The New York Times is willing to acknowledge the looters and troublemakers. Some of the right is also willing to acknowledge troublemakers in the police (see libertarian places like Reason.com). And then there's places like Breitbart and Fox News. Le sigh. Soundwave106 (talk) 04:55, 8 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I found posts from Oxy calling it a "Centrist Rag". So, the NY Times isn't "Centrist" then (I'm not american, so I only know that The Daily Stormer is fucking garbage thanks to RW)? Gunther1987 (talk) 10:58, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Zheesh. People are throwing around left, centrist and right on the Saloon for the last few days, enough to last a life time. Give it a rest. The Times has columists and Op-Ed writers who tend to be favourable towards progressive and liberal policies but not all of them and not always. That's about the most you can say to generalize about a paper. There are no "left" or "right" papers in any meaningful way. Just a tendency to be sometimes favorable towards some policies and leaders. Shabi  DOO  11:51, 8 August 2020 (UTC)d
 * And "the left needs to start self-policing", it's phrases like this which demonstrate why people should seriously stop referring to "left" and "right" like they are groups. They are not. How many times does this need to be pointed out. They are vaguely defined spheres on two ends of an arbitrarily divided spectrum. People who have nothing in common except the fall to one side of a subjectively drawn line. "The left" doesn't exist as an entity, meaning the "left" doesn't need to do anything. Most certainly not "police" people in their arbitrarily defined group to say or not say, to do or not do anything. Shabi  DOO  11:56, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I personally think the NYT is quite centrist. They loathed Bernie in the primary. They hire columnists like Bret Stephens ("the disease of the arab mind") and Bari Weiss (who defended Tom Cotton's fascist Op-Ed to crush the protesters with the military). 12:03, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Media bias has them as left-center. I think that's correct. Since the Internet has forced newspapers to chase subscriptions instead of advertisements, I actually think they've shifted a little to the populist left over the years. And yes, using a single term like "left" obscures a lot. In particular, the New York Times seems to aim for the college educated / "white collar", urban market that has some sympathy for social justice and safety nets, but does not want to tear the system apart. The NYT crowd probably wouldn't get along with the Chapo Trap House crowd very well. In the past, liberal leaning papers usually hired conservative columnists to try and provide "balance" -- usually college educated neo-conservative types. I expect less of that in the future. Bari Weiss was chased out of the New York Times pretty much because of her severe mishandling of the Tom Cotton affair as I understand it, which is fine, she can go be a Zionist fascist elsewhere. Other conservative columnists these days have become very loud Never Trumpers (I'm thinking Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin and the like) and we'll see what happens post Trump to these sort of people. Soundwave106 (talk) 18:37, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I wonder if in a few years we'll look back on these protests as something similar to what happened to Occupy. Occupy's biggest failing was basically being an open tent for literally anyone who complained about "the 1%" without rhyme or reason as to why they might not like the 1% (Jason Kessler anyone?). The Floyd protests, at least from my view seem to be characterized by a mixture of genuine "the police are kinda being shitty to black people, do something about that" to "this is the anarchist revolution we've been waiting for" to "this is not about black people, this is about the working class against the ruling class", and due to a lack of concrete leadership on these protests the entire message gets muddled so that anyone with a bone to pick on any of these statements can find something to hate about a certain section of the protests. As for people like Kessler, while I don't think we'll start to see more people like him pop up out of these protests (due to these being more anti-racist in nature in public perception), I have no doubt that certain leftist grifters with fashy ties have been feeling extremely bolstered by these protests since the entire "working vs ruling class" thing has been picked up by non-grifters as well, and from what I know they are the ones that pushed that variation on the message to start with.
 * Another reason I feel that we can compare this to Occupy is that the message that the overwhelming majority adopted (Abolish the police), is somewhat asinine in that it kinda makes it hard to bring people in agreement with you. Like, yeah the police in the US are extremely overfunded, behave like the bullies in the playground and so on and so forth, these are all valid issues to have, but yelling "Abolish the police" kicks people who see the police as well, regular law enforcement (and yes this is mostly white people but hear me out) against you in defense because then you make them confront questions like "so if you want to get rid of the police, and someone robs my house while I'm not at home, then I can't go anywhere for that robbery?" for instance. It also is something that could easily have been reworded into a less agressive message, something like "Stop overfunding the police" would just as easily fit on a sign/work on a slogan and you'd be able to get a lot more support for that since unlike Abolish The Police, it introduces the relevant nuance to it.
 * To finally conclude my thought train here, I think one might also add to the discussion that a lot of the protestors online have been... rather incompetent. I get that "social media is not the real world", but if I look at how these protests have gone down on my social media channels, it mostly boiled down to:
 * Look, my tweet about [unrelated thing] got popular, time to add a reply saying BLM to it since give money to protestors.
 * Bait and switch: Open with one interesting thing, then in the next tweet post that you should totes give money to a large number of funds.
 * When someone has legitimate questions about some of the protests, refusing to assume good faith and just going for cheap dunks since "don't you support the lives of black people".
 * Sticking up for horrible people doing stupid things in the protests. This takes the shape of blaming things on "external agitators", the police going undercover, "you don't get to decide how people complain about things" and so on and so forth. Like, it's not by any means hard to admit that yeah, there are some shitty assholes in these protests and no, you don't think they did the right thing, but for whatever reason a lot of people seem incapable of admitting it.
 * That's my current thought train on these protests, and I'm having the feeling that we'll see things (perhaps sadly) fizzle out in the next few weeks. As for here, I fully expect an edit dispute that will almost tear apart the wiki for when we decide to start writing our article on these protests, but that seems like a regular tuesday for me. 12:12, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I really hope not, for our sake. What happens later down the line isn't pretty. 12:36, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Alright, C-Dawg gets it. We've had people defending looters in all this, ffs.  Looting a Target doesn't accomplish shit.  Just makes the movement look bad.  And instead of condemning the violent elements in the protests, idiots just say they're voicing their frustration.  And then people are saying things like "All Cops Are Bastards," which is a horrendously bad take.  All cops?  All of them, really?  I'm sure it feels very cool and edgy to say that but these are real people and saying combative crap like that only divides the country further.  We can't have legitimate protests coopted by radicals and opportunists-Hastur! (talk)  12:50, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Firstly, yeah I did defend vandals and looters. No, I never said "ACAB". Once again, you mash multiple users into one another, just to make them easier to attack. Here's the main reason why I defending the vandals and the looters. here's a picture here's another picture. Show me which are protestors and which are rioters. Download them and circle the ones you think are rioters via MS paint or something. If you can't, then you need to admit that the distinction is meaningless, especially given the rhetoric coming Barr and Trump's offices. 13:16, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * So just to be clear, when I said people, I wasn't talking about people on RationalWiki. I was talking about people in general, like the ones that show up on my facebook feed or write and comment on the blogs I follow.  Never said I was talking about people on RationalWiki, actually.-Hastur! (talk)  13:18, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That's actually worse. You accuse me of saying "ACAB" because you don't like shit you see on Facebook. Even though, both here and on the Discord servers I've been hostile towards the cops, but explicitly anti-ACAB. Great, just fucking great. 13:22, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Kindly point to where I accused you of saying ACAB.-Hastur! (talk) 13:26, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd rather it not go that way either (because BLM is a good cause in and of itself), but my hindsight for the past two months of protests + evaluating general sentiments on various social media kinda seems to point at there starting to be a similar reaction. I'd personally say that the only reason it hasn't fizzled out yet like every other stupid thing that has happened in the past 4 years is because of Trump's tedency of saying dumb things about the protests (and I think one can argue that he's doing that so that fewer people pay attention to how shit he's at handling COVID-19) whenever it seems like things are calming down again. 14:37, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Hey, I don't want to have to deal with the the black people in this country getting so angry and jaded that they go full on insurgent either. But that's what happens when the minority group's concerns are downplayed. And it won't take much more to ignite that powder keg. I can tell because of the initial riots, and what the people in that neighborhood said to defend them. As to Trump, yeah. He wants them to go that route. He needs an enemy to justify his regime's brutality. That's why he keeps calling them violent terrorists. But trying to talk down to the protestors, only really benefits one side, Trump's.
 * To quote MLK "I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."


 * "I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."...
 * ..."You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self respect and a sense of "somebodiness" that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro's frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible "devil.""
 * When you condemn BLM, when you try to idealize the protests, you only carry water for their opposition, and undermine their efforts. This is what I pointed out above with Raven. When he says "The CHAZ proves why we need the cops" he's echoing a sentiment similar to bad faith actors like Carlson, who make that same argument, even though the creation of the CHAZ was a direct result of police abuse. When you say "Well, I support the peaceful protestors, but anyone who doesn't fit my idea of a peaceful protestor is illegitimate" you play into other similar talking points. To truly support the protestors, to truly hear them, you must accept both the good and the bad, the radical and the moderate. And you must understand that if these current protests fail, if things do not improve by a large enough margin, then they'll stop marching with signs, and start marching with guns. This is how these things play out. Eventually, they lose faith in the hand of peace, and instead pick up the sword of war. 15:20, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Let me be clear first and foremost, I don't oppose nor condemn BLM. BLM is absolutely something important and the police have serious issues that need to be solved. Raven's echoing of bad faith far right arguments is... concerning, but I'll admit that I hadn't picked up on that one entirely (I frankly have better things to do than weed through torrents of far right dogcrap). Trump obviously wants them to go violent, no disagreement there. As for the MLK quote, yeah I'm familiar with it, and I think King does have a point, but the issue I at least have with your final line and this response as a whole, is that if you support the protests, you must accept everyone in them, is that you basically end up forgoing any kind of nuances. I don't really have an idea of an "idealized protest", every protest probably ought to be shaped in the way that works best for it, but as the saying goes: You don't need to be a plane pilot to realize that a plane stuck in a tree is probably a bad thing. I am not a huge fan of forgoing any kind of self-critique for some sort of Greater Good and I have the idea that due to the (not unfounded) fear that the right wing will just do lazy critiques, that any critique must be a bad faith critique is something that has started to permeate throughout the protests. I tried expressing the sentiment of the Greater Good during the Dem primary in trying to convince people online that the Rogan endorsement wasn't the PR disaster it turned out to be (that it might bring in new voters who otherwise wouldn't consider voting for Sanders), and all I feel that led to is me tacitly providing agreement to dirtbaggers invading lefty spaces and that leading into the entire bullshit drama surrounding Bernie's inability to unify the progressives after Warren dropped out, if that makes sense. I've personally come to the conclusion therefore that if we ignore major issues in a certain group and just claim that as long as they support a Greater Good that they must be fine to walk alongside you, all you're doing is tacitly agreeing to the major issues.
 * With that stated, I genuinely do hope that change comes and that these protests won't be necessary anymore rather than them just fizzling out, only for them to get kicked up the next time some black guy gets shot by the police. I'm not in the US and I have rather small disposable income, so my ability to say or do much is relatively limited (aside from getting rid of bigots in online communities where I have the power to do so) aside from trying to talk with people and get them on-board with the ideas of BLM if at all possible, but at the same time I also cannot in good faith say that I support people who do actions that I would consider morally condemnable in any other situation. 15:47, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Firstly, to Raven and Carlson echoing the same points. I want to be explicitly clear that I'm not trying to call Raven far-right. I am however trying to point out the narrative his position is feeding into. Even as Barr ordered troops to forcibly clear Lafayette square, Trump tried to hairsplit the protests into "peaceful protestors and a angry mob". (The relevant clip starts at 34 seconds.) This not about a "Greater Good", but about understanding the dynamic between the protesters and those who seek to undermine them, and how we plebs fit into it. To the dirtbaggers, they are part of the left. They aren't invading, they are a part of that ecosystem. To push back against them, you have to first acknowledge that. In fact, one could argue the same for the worst elements of the protesters. Solidarity must come first, so that critique lands all the harder. I can't push back against Farrakan's influence for example, if I simply condemn others for not participating in the Gandhi Trap. He's respected by parts of the Black Community partly because he fights for civil rights (or at least appears to). To get rid of his influence, I have to get better results and well... Have you seen how the protests were covered? Lots of headlines about property damage, and detached headlines about protests occurring, very little actual calls for accountability.  16:16, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

I cited Vox, btw. You know, the centre-left media outlet in the US? In case you missed it: Even with the inaccurate reporting, that isn’t to say there isn’t some discord at CHOP. According to Carla, the name change and subsequent confusion came from an internal struggle between two groups of protesters with differing visions for the area. For days, Carla said, there has been a power struggle between organizers who envisioned the zone as a peaceful, organized protest against police violence, and another group who wanted to see CHOP become more of an anarchist space where marginalized people could obtain mutual aid when needed. This is from someone who witnessed the CHAZ, speaking to Vox. If quoting Vox reporting counts as, cool. Didn't want to respond to this thread anymore, since GC was unable to find the quote of me saying, allegedly, that "all of CHAZ were anarchists" (yet GC was really quick to say that it was "liberals", without evidence), but then I am getting compared to Tucker Carlson, so I just wanted to point that out. Again, given the political makeup of the US, most of those protestors were Liberals. You know, centrists. 18:02, 8 August 2020 (UTC)


 * So let me get this straight - a Defund the Police protester gets stabbed, and immediately starts screaming, "Call the Police!" What am I missing here?  nobsTo Bob Mueller:Every dog has his day. 18:12, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * When it comes to Dr MLK Jr, I think we've fallen into the all too common trap of declaring that because the person was a net positive, that everything they were and stood for must also be "good". The reality is that humans are complicated, and that "good" isn't always agreed upon even long after the fact.  In the case of MLK, he accomplished a lot of good things, enough that a national holiday in his name is justifiable, but he came with a lot of baggage.  He was a devoutly religious man, which may be "good" to many people but I'm sure most of us here would disagree with him on that.  He cheated on his wife, and while his supporters will try to gloss over that or pull out some BS about his wife was totally into it and for the most part, people here probably won't give too chits about extramarital sex, but for a religious leader to commit adultery is actually a huge issue.  He had a lot of uncomfortable ties to Communists; the FBI wasn't keeping a close eye on him purely out of racism, but out of justified paranoia, even more justified when you realize that the Civil Rights Movement was less "infiltrated" by the Russians so much as it was created by them.  He was not the moderate answer to Malcolm X, but rather, Malcolm X existed to make MLK look more palatable to the public.  He was a "net good", but that doesn't mean he was all good, and likewise, him having flaws does not mean that what he accomplished was a "net bad".
 * In terms of the "white moderate" speech, well, he's basically declaring "either you are with us or you are against us". It's a Manichean worldview that fails to understand nuance and tens to create more enemies.  In the universe where the FBI intervened instead of merely standing by when he was murdered, I'm not so sure that the ultimate legacy he would create in that universe would be lauded anywhere near as much as it is in our own. CoryUsar (talk) 21:44, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The point.
 * Your head. 21:58, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

i dont know what people were expecting from these protests, considering how quickly they flared and the sheer scale of them, and especially considering the reasons for the protests in the first place. the organisers of the initial protests probably did not anticipate the scale. it is understandable if they have been chaotic. it is understandable that there has been some violence - anger and frustration at continued injustices is what brought people to street. emotions that can get away from us very easily.

but for the most part the protests have been non violent. there has been looting. in such a chaotic setting there was always going to be. there are always opportunists who will try and take advantage. looting, and other crimes and violence not connected to the protests, but being used for the opportunity the situation presents. but its not all widespread it seems. there have been reports of fringe groups stirring things, trying escalate violence for what ever reasons. again, they are there, but not all widespread. and all going on with confrontational riot police pepper spraying and beating down crowds.

at point, why wring our hands at all this? various figures in the protests have early on condemned violence and looting. do we need a further condemnation for every instance we see? we surely dont need to hear a response each time a window gets smashed. its not that widespread and was always going to happen but calls by some for blm or the left or whoever to address such criminality are about cementing an association of criminality with blm and the left. its a smear that we should not respond to. blm are not responsible everything that happens, they cannot have complete control over protests of this scale.

lets not forget what spurred all this - yet another black man murdered by police. a horrific symptom of the systemic racism faced by black americans. murdered by police for decades with impunity, denied access justice while being incarcerated in grossly disproportionate numbers, disadvantaged in education, heath, financial - in every sector of society, every part of american life. but its some looters that has us worried? we are concerned that some of the rhetoric might a bit aggressive?

we have been here before. there has been outrage at police brutality before. there have been riots before. there have been calls for reform, there have been reforms. and here we are again. another black man killed by police. asking nicely hasnt seem to have done much. the bare minimum of reforms that could make a difference will need more than asking pretty please. pressure needs to kept up to achieve anything more than doing just enough to mollify the masses. but ive said elsewhere that reform wont rebuild trust in police that will needed for them to work. its a half measure doomed to be watered down and we will be here again.

as for the the CHAZ business, again what did anyone expect? its formation was not planned, coming about because the police pulled out. whatever it turned out to be, the press spotlight and threats from those in authority to violently take it back ensured opportunists and those spoiling for a fight would flock to it, exacerbating a challenging situation. the negative attention it got was far out of proportion to its place in the protests as a whole and it is not indicative of any short comings in any of the perceived ideologies that have been claimed by or assigned to it. it is nothing what abolishing the police would look like either, seeing as the police just pulled out leaving no institutions to replace them. its just a further distraction from the issue of police brutality and systemic racism. AMassiveGay (talk) 14:12, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * 15:02, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * There are plenty of things to criticize about this movement, but this ain't it. CHAZ/CHOP was limited to one city, and wasn't exactly a unified action. Many BLM supporters said they lost the plot after a week. Also comparing left wing violence to right wing violence is like comparing a NERF gun and an AK-47.RipCityLiberal (talk) 16:36, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Only one is subject to government restriction? 192․168․1․42 (talk) 17:47, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

So Vox is echoing far-right talking points?
Here: Even with the inaccurate reporting, that isn’t to say there isn’t some discord at CHOP. According to Carla, the name change and subsequent confusion came from an internal struggle between two groups of protesters with differing visions for the area. For days, Carla said, there has been a power struggle between organizers who envisioned the zone as a peaceful, organized protest against police violence, and another group who wanted to see CHOP become more of an anarchist space where marginalized people could obtain mutual aid when needed. I just wanna know whether Vox is not left-wing enough for some people at RationalWiki. 17:57, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Vox isn't perfect, and can you seriously piss off for once? — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  18:20, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Not yet. 18:41, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * what is it you think vox is saying, and why do you think it is in agreement with what you have been saying? if you think it is saying chaz is or was over run with with anarchists, it does not. it says some people were floating the idea of 'more of an anarchist space'. the full article makes no more claims beyond it being an idea being floated, nor tells of the political affiliations of anyone within. the article merely says they are considering their options, believing the police will be moving in at any moment. the idea it was all an anarchist stunt or takeover or that anarchists were calling the shots or have in any way organised and controlled events are the right wing talking points i am assuming you have been accused of regurgitating. the vox article does not support your case. in the wider picture of protests and police brutality and systemic racism, chaz is a pointless side show and its not all about you AMassiveGay (talk) 19:10, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Is x left-wing enough? is such an asinine question. Left right is a spectrum whose only actual value, in an intellectual conversation, is to place political parties on a politcal spectrum. Turning it into some sort of formula for an ideological competition is rediculous. Left vs. right does not equal progressive vs. regressive, liberal vs. conservative or democrat vs. republican. Shabi  DOO  19:21, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Goddless Raven, listen to me. You need to stop asking disingenuous questions, then when people answer you, refusing to understand what they say.  It's absolutely trolling and you've got to stop.  You're shitting up the bar.  ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 19:50, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * And why was this fucker taken out of sysoprevoke? — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  20:05, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Here's a thought. The cops have fucked off after gassing you and your fellow protestors, plus civilians (including children), and also after you guys routed them back to their station where they then cowered like the dipshits they are before running away. The neighborhood needs system of enforcing the peace. No one wants to form a standard hierarchical leadership structure, because of the cops and neo-nazis who keep coming in and attacking people. Most of you are pretty moderate, but some of you are maybe PolSci students. So some of you (the hypothetical PolSci students, or someone else with the relevent knowledge) suggest elements of a decentralized administrative system which calls for greater civic participation and has ideas on a non-cop peacekeeping system in order to meet the needs of the now semi-autonomous area. You then form a semi-autonomous liberal hippy commune. I dunno, seems plausible to me. 21:25, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Vox is NBC bullshit re-packaged for a younger audience. What? You think true blue communists have the capital to reach as far as Vox has? nobsBlack Guns Matter 21:37, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Rob shut the fuck up adults are talking.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:52, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

You know, the funny thing is how I didn't even insert the political axis as a thing until someone (GC) did in order to complain about how I am supposedly "echoing far-right talking points" by merely quoting Vox's reporting that yes, there was a power struggle within the CHAZ by anarchists trying to redirect attention from systemic racism, police violence and the murder of George Floyd to their... "cause" (which I don't even recognize as a cause, since it lacks any serious nature to it). You think the left vs. right spectrum is nonsense? Good, take it up with GC, who assumed without any evidence that the CHAZ was inhabited by "centrist liberals"; yet, when I gave evidence that some faction within CHAZ was far-left larping, then we have a problem? Okay. Secondly, you can look up all of my replies: I never said it was all anarchist. I posted an article by Vox because Vox is widely regarded as not being far-right; my original question being a facetious counter to GC's and Crow's assertion that I am "echoing the far-right" when, given by the account of the person who was involved with the shitshow that is CHAZ, it had a significant anarchist influence. Unless you have better evidence, I take it that none of you are accusing Vox of being "fake news"? Because if quoting Vox is now considered far-right, I am sorry, you might've lost the plot. Now, it is funny how ikanreed is complaining about me "shitting up" the bar when someone just called me a "fucker" and is consistently targeting me with verbal attacks. Gotta say, my haters don't really care about any of this as long as it is to attack the bigly evil raven. 23:32, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * That being said, can any of you answer? Is Vox echoing far-right talking points? Yes/No? 23:41, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
 * GR your I'm a poor little victim complex was tiresome already like a week ago. Give it a rest and learn to take responsibility for doing something silly, provocative or cringe-worthy. Shabi DOO  00:08, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Godless Raven is an iconoclast and believes it is important for people to recognize the flaws in their heroes and even their ideologies. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.  If you object to his iconoclasm, the simplest, most effective solution is not to reply.-Hastur! (talk)  00:12, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * As usual, Hastur can be counted on to provide way-too-generous "summaries" of GR's actions.-Flandres (talk) 00:28, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed. His final question "is Vox parroting far-right talking points" or whatever, is a totally valid fair question. I don't know the answer. But the "is it left enough" was a ridiculous question asked to provoke not gain any information or knowledge. Try to spot the difference Hastur. Shabi  DOO  00:33, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Wow, Shabidoo finally concedes on anything! And of course, Flandres is here to malign me, as usual. Otherwise, nothing out of the ordinary here, CIA. It's just another day on RationalWiki. 00:34, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * People consistently disagree with you on a similar set of topics that you constantly bring up on a site that often encourages dialogue with people you disagree with! Good job, GR! You've found the thread that brings the fiendish conspiracy to destroy you all together!-Flandres (talk) 00:39, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you, very kind of you Flandres! 00:45, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You know, I demonstrated this before you brought up Vox. Maybe you should improve your reading skills on certain subjects eh? Anyway, learn to read, and don't put words in my mouth. 01:04, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

What do you think you demonstrated, GC? You have yet to admit that I never said CHAZ is "all anarchist". 01:07, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * " Another example of failure of a certain ideology on the left." Shut up, you selectively disingenuous shitheel. 01:47, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Aside from the personal attack, if I point out the failure of the anarchist faction of CHAZ, does that mean all of CHAZ is far-left? It doesn't make sense. Do you at least retract saying that CHAZ is made up of liberals/centrists? 01:56, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * No, I do not retract my statement, because you didn't say "Ah, so some of those ideas didn't work out that well due to X, Y, and Z factors" You said, and I will quote you again (much more honestly than you've been quoting Vox, since you originally brought it up to dispute my statement that the bulk of the protesters were Liberals, aka a mainstream position), "Another example of failure of a certain ideology on the left." See, when you said "a certain ideology on the left" your passive aggressive vagueposting made a demonstrable claim, which I and others have easily debunked. Further, you argued that the protesters shouldn't have run the cops out, a talking point I noticed you dropped after I pointed out their crimes. Is it really so hard for you to grow the fuck up and admit you were wrong? 02:25, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

??? Are you hallucinating? Where did I say that? 02:48, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "Yeah, abolishing the police is not a good idea." Now, given they didn't actually abolish the police, they just surounded the station and protested until they left, you might be tempted to argue semantics. But see, here's the thing. When you vaguepost, you don't actually involve these little nuances, nor do you really engage in anything constructive. You were wrong, admit it. I've owned up to mistakes in the past, and so has almost every user currently active on this site. Just fucking do it and get it over with. 02:56, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * This isn't semantics, it's basic reading comprehension skills! Just because I say that the police shouldn't be institutionally abolished doesn't mean I am in favor of against CHAZ in principle. My only take on CHAZ is that I love far-left failings in real time and I find the memes about CHAZ and it's disorganized and mostly white teenager anarchist section hilarious! I support police reform, I support divesting from the police to fund social services that are far more lacking than a militarized police as it is now the case in the US. If you think those two statements are the same, you gotta read some books, man. 03:31, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You literally responded to an article about the CHAZ with "Yeah, abolishing the police is not a good idea. Another example of failure of a certain ideology on the left." You vagueposted, and now you're arguing semantics. Just admit you fucked up. Why is this so hard for you? 12:09, 11 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Here's the thing, the "anarchists" there weren't mostly white, and only a minority of them were actual anarchists. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  10:13, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * How do you know? 10:15, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * If Anarchists aren't able maintain a safe society in a place where they make up a larger fraction than in the general population, that kind of disproves Anarchism as a legitimate societal ambition. The simple truth is that when Anarchists build a town up from scratch, they are never able to make it past the tribal stage of likeminded individuals, and when they take over anything larger, it all goes to shit.
 * I also don't understand why You, Oxyaena, would advocate for Anarchism. You may be right that under a Capitalist framework, autistic people have a disadvantage compared to non-ASD, but the harsh reality is that the difficulty in working with others or developing personal relationships means that autistic people have a disadvantage under EVERY framework, and in an Anarchist framework the same issues that prevent you from holding a job in Capitalism will only be magnified a thousandfold. CoryUsar (talk) 13:12, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I recommend educating yourself on anarchist theory. — <font color="Purple">Oxyaena <font color="Red">Harass  13:43, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I recommend getting involved in hobbies, learn how to get along with people, make some friends, maybe find a boyfriend/girlfriend/non-gender-binaryfriend. CoryUsar (talk) 14:14, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

there is a certain amount of dishonesty surrounding the reporting of chaz/chop and its dismantling that is difficult to take much that has been written on it seriously, its difficult to take the conversation here seriously, with same dishonesty. i dont mean the all the fake news and photoshopped images that sort to defame the thing early on, i refer to the dozens of articles, earnestly and hyperbolically, declaring it a failure of the left, a failure of anarchism, or of socialism, and a warning against abolishing or defunding the police. to be a failure of any of these things it would have needed to have been a determined and focused attempt at some kind of left wing utopia that could not overcome the inherent failings of their ideologies. this was never the case. its portrayed as some kind of dangerous threat to american values and indicator of the ruin to befall the us if these foolish reds had their way. the threat and significance has been built up to make its failing seem all the more damning, more crushing for these leftists, with a smug resounding told you so as they assert their world view is thus proven.

this is false. there was no diabolical plan by a nefarious cabal of socialists, or anarchists, or communists or whoever the fuck you want to check off on your who you hate bingo card. there was no long term plan or strategy or even any plan at all. a disparate group of protestors found themselves in stand off and thought it would be jolly to declare a no police zone. the police will take back the ground in a couple of hours, enjoy it while lasts. it would have ended there had the mayor not thought it good publicity so put the police on a leash. the failure, such as it is for something never meant to last, lies with this same group of disparate protestors now suddenly having to form a government and provide amenities and security for a small town. thats a big ask when most had come to chant slogans at the police.

there was never any cohesive group. never any clear goals. no clear leadership. with goodwill providing supplies, they could muddle along for awhile, but security was the big problem. fear the police would attack at any moment, opportunistic criminal gangs making the most of things. far right groups had attacked them. security was not one single entity but several groups. armed. untrained. unaccountable. no one in control, different groups butting heads, and the no police label attracts elements of human detritus. it was always going to implode. ideology had fuck all to do with it.

it made good press and gave all the usual suspects a chance to lay into protestors that didnt make them look like racist. a few scary words like anarchist and socialist is all that was needed for people to create their own narratives in their heads. now its all over we are seeing lots of crowing and talk of the failure of this or a warning against that, pretending something significant had happened, or that we have learned important lessons. the reality is far less definitive. its mundane. too much was responsibility was given a group of random strangers there was never any reason to think were a cohesive unit that was up to the job. criticism has been harsh and too much was expected. in truth, it did well to last a month. it shouldnt have lasted a day AMassiveGay (talk) 13:46, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I never understood the "educate yourself on X" mentality. Do you or do you not want to convince the person that your ideas are actually worth anything? First, oxy refuses to debate an actual socialist who has similar and maybe even harsher criticisms of Cuba and the other red fascist states; then, she tells people "go educate yourself"? Do you want anarchism to just pop into existence? There has to be some effort. 14:32, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, I assumed that most of the anarchists in the CHAZ were white teenagers because (essential) working people actually don't have time for this nonsense. They aren't busy editwarring about some white cishet two centuries ago, they just want to survive and have a decent living. I am open to have my mind changed that it wasn't just a white teenager anarchist camp provided that there is evidence on the demographics of CHAZ. 14:34, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see you're trying to pivot again. Just say "I was wrong to try to imply that the CHAZ was an attempt at an anarchist commune, and to carry water for abusive cops." 14:42, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

15:07, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Based on your passive aggressive and sarcastic response, I can only conclude that you are indeed ok with police abuse, and that you are too cowardly to admit such. 15:24, 11 August 2020 (UTC)