Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 25, 2019 6:15:48 GMT -5
Also, fair warning: If the full report is released and by some miracle Pres. Trump and his family all come out smelling like roses (excepting anything highly speculative), I pledge to write a bot to comb through the YMAM Mueller threads from the past three years, compile the 1,000 most hyperbolic "Here comes the whammy!" statements along with names and dates, and then craft them into a giant 4K "goose egg" infographic, with the egg made up of (just a fraction of the) 3+ years of insufferable Mittmentumism the statements represent. Republican board members can use it as a desktop background. It will stand as a somber reminder to all that neither wishful thinking, nor the fervent assurances of the MSM, nor the express certainty of hundreds of millions of people can ultimately change the nature of reality. But... let's not get ahead of ourselves. The war ain't over yet. So, how is that different from what you usually do? Not much of a pledge. Oh Weltz. I do know how much you hate it when things aren't flushed down the memory hole. Give us one of your "Virgil is so neurotic, I just can't..." barbs, do. For old times' sake.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 24, 2019 20:44:47 GMT -5
I believe the news thus far is limited to: no additional federal indictments, no obstruction (as determined by AG Barr). All I can say is that the MSM had better hope either i) the report is heavily redacted before being released, or ii) the report isn't redacted before release and includes powerful circumstantial evidence (in the eyes of 2020 swing voters) of wrongdoing that for whatever reason didn't rise to the level of indictable offenses. Failing either of those, the MSM just shot the few lingering shreds of public faith they have left since 2001. As I've said since 2016, I personally expect there will be some skeletons in the report. Not related to Russian "collusion", but conflicts of interest, backroom business deals with Russian heavies, false testimony, graft, etc. Suffice it to say I'll be astonished if Pres. Trump, Mr. Kushner, and the Trump family all come out squeaky clean. And of course, NY state may still indict any or all of them--or at least try to. Assuming I'm correct, the MSM gets a slight reprieve. They still look hopelessly biased (the report outcome wasn't going to change this), but at least they won't look like tinfoil-wearing dark web conspiracy theorists. Reread the Obstruction of Justice section in the summary letter in the link I posted. trump has not been cleared of obstruction of justice. No determination of guilt or innocence was made by Mueller and his team and therefore, Barr. ibid.: Mr. Mueller’s team drew no conclusions about whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed justice, Mr. Barr said, so he made his own decision. The attorney general and his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, determined that the special counsel’s investigators had insufficient evidence to establish that the president committed that offense. This sounds to me like A.G. Barr et al. clearing Pres. Trump of obstruction. If by "clearing" you mean "determined to be innocent", then neither Mr. Mueller nor Mr. Barr has cleared Pres. Trump... of anything. The report and Mr. Barr's follow-up letter are equally clear on that. "Insufficient evidence to establish...", etc. Not necessarily "Zero evidence of any indictable offense was found." So I agree with you: the war ain't over yet.
Presently the only reason the MSM has egg on its face is because they pushed the idea of Pres. Trump being perp-walked out of the White House for so long and with such fanatical certainty that literally anything less seems like a nonevent by comparison. They bet the horse, the farm, the kids' college fund, the company payroll, and grandma's china collection on indictments, impeachment, and Pres. Trump not serving a full term, and the way Washington insiders are behaving, they've almost surely lost that bet. If the MSM had been calm, rational, and objective since November 2016, Trump supporters would presently be nervously awaiting the publication of the report, not dancing in the streets. Architects of their own doom. I hope they enjoyed their ratings bump.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 24, 2019 19:10:16 GMT -5
Also, fair warning: If the full report is released and by some miracle Pres. Trump and his family all come out smelling like roses (excepting anything highly speculative), I pledge to write a bot to comb through the YMAM Mueller threads from the past three years, compile the 1,000 most hyperbolic "Here comes the whammy!" statements along with names and dates, and then craft them into a giant 4K "goose egg" infographic, with the egg made up of (just a fraction of the) 3+ years of insufferable Mittmentumism the statements represent. Republican board members can use it as a desktop background. It will stand as a somber reminder to all that neither wishful thinking, nor the fervent assurances of the MSM, nor the express certainty of hundreds of millions of people can ultimately change the nature of reality. But... let's not get ahead of ourselves. The war ain't over yet.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 24, 2019 18:52:09 GMT -5
I believe the news thus far is limited to: no additional federal indictments, no obstruction (as determined by AG Barr). All I can say is that the MSM had better hope either i) the report is heavily redacted before being released, or ii) the report isn't redacted before release and includes powerful circumstantial evidence (in the eyes of 2020 swing voters) of wrongdoing that for whatever reason didn't rise to the level of indictable offenses. Failing either of those, the MSM just shot the few lingering shreds of public faith they have left since 2001. As I've said since 2016, I personally expect there will be some skeletons in the report. Not related to Russian "collusion", but conflicts of interest, backroom business deals with Russian heavies, false testimony, graft, etc. Suffice it to say I'll be astonished if Pres. Trump, Mr. Kushner, and the Trump family all come out squeaky clean. And of course, NY state may still indict any or all of them--or at least try to. Assuming I'm correct, the MSM gets a slight reprieve. They still look hopelessly biased (the report outcome wasn't going to change this), but at least they won't look like tinfoil-wearing dark web conspiracy theorists.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 22, 2019 16:23:34 GMT -5
I've seen pictures inside of NK. A Bk Whopper and Netflix movie night would seem like paradise to those poor souls. Exactly so. In colonial times, the French and Dutch often wrested control of native and half-native settlements from the English by bringing in all kinds of goodies and making everyone's lives comfortable. Once that comfort is there, people have something to lose, and people who have something to lose are a lot less likely to rebel against their benefactors when push comes to shove. That would be the theory behind lifting sanctions and cementing trade/ties between NK and the USA. If NK is getting goodies from Uncle Sam, has investments in Uncle Sam, has close ties to US businesses, etc., the ruling class might think twice about taking actions that threaten those boons. ...in theory, at any rate. It worked well with colonial settlements. Not so much with the Nazis.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 22, 2019 16:05:29 GMT -5
... Lifting sanctions on North Korea: I have no idea if it's a good idea ... I don't either. But after reading President Trump's explanation, I think ... wait President Trump didn't give one. Question for you Virgil Showlion , what is the difference between no explanation and a censored explanation if none cares if there is no explanation? I think he's approaching NK diplomacy like a business deal. It's not uncommon for a stalled deal to lead to threats, saber rattlings, etc. to get an intractable party to blink, then a rescinding of the threat a short while later. We saw the same thing with with Jeff Bezos and Gov. Cuomo a few weeks ago. Pres. Trump is a showman. His supporters would call it '4D chess', but it's just theater hoping to exploit the vagaries of human psychology. That's my best guess.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 22, 2019 15:35:53 GMT -5
Another @#$%^&*()*&^%$%^&* tweet announcement that I think shoulda/coulda been a fully explained decision.
Can you rationalize this one away like you did the one on Syria?
2018 Virgil said: " The formal press conference, I agree with. I've never understood why anyone uses Twitter for anything, much less world leaders. ... If I could get a perfect world, I'd take it. But in the world we've got: either a savvy man knowing full well the stakes, or a reckless man doing (what is undeniably) the right thing in his ignorance, I'll take the latter. Especially when tens of millions of lives (both ended and permanently "displaced"), trillions of dollars, and possibly WWIII hang in the balance." Lifting sanctions on North Korea: I have no idea if it's a good idea or if it even matters. Since it doesn't qualify as "a reckless man doing (what is undeniably) the right thing in his ignorance," therefore, there's nothing really to redeem it. This said, it rates a 3/10 on the Virgil-care-o-meter. I doubt sanctions ever hindered NK's nuclear ambitions much; I doubt lifting them will dissuade them much. The rationale is self-explanatory.
Who knows, though. Maybe Chairman Kim will get hooked on Netflix and BK Whoppers, and realize nuking America would come with some steep consequences indeed.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 22, 2019 10:55:44 GMT -5
If Nunes was being picked on it twitter because he was gay, you would be right. "Hard right conservative lap dog to a very unpopular president' is not a 'class' that has protection. That's the funny thing about the law, isn't it? Some judge or jury agrees with me and I can suddenly have a 'right' that didn't exist 20 minutes ago. "Conservative rights". Not a real thing one day. A real thing the next. If you say so. I'm sure you're basing that conclusion on at least 25 seconds of research. It's possible to check whether you're shadow-banned on Twitter using various tools [ 2], some of which archive their findings along with a timestamp. Many shadowbanned conservatives had the foresight to use these tools to document their shadowbanning in 2018. I don't know if Rep. Nunes is one of them, but it stands to reason he might be. But if you're only interested in articles, does VICE suit you? (Not exactly a right-wing site.) The NYT verified VICE's findings, although they argued the practice in question wasn't 'true' shadowbanning because many of the affected accounts weren't blacklisted from all search features. Still, they didn't deny discrimination was taking place--at least as of 2018. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey confirmed this in June 2018, although he argued it wasn't intentional. There's also the famous undercover footage of Twitter employees explaining how shadow banning conservatives worked on Twitter circa Jan 2018. As for whether Twitter is still engaged in the practice, well... This article links to the infamous interview with Jack Dorsey from earlier this month. He didn't do himself any favours. Hence I daresay Rep. Nunes can make a compelling case. Especially so if he had the foresight to make a record of his own ban using one or more of the detection tools. You have to look at the specific misconduct and examples of misconduct alleged in the lawsuit. Somebody using a parody account (which isn't a tort) can engage in defamation (which is a tort) in addition to satire. I wouldn't say "has almost no chance", but I agree the odds are stacked against him. As for attention, he's getting a lot of it, both good and bad. ...your legal system rewards, your cultural ethos condones, and that emulates the lesbians in Oregon suing the bakery owners despite lack of tangible harm. My point in a nutshell. 1) It may not fail. 2) Even if it does fail, "the process is the punishment" in your system. And 3) Just like the perennially malcontent LGBT lobby, I suspect a legion of eager litigants are waiting in line behind Rep. Nunes to keep coming back at Twitter again and again until they get what they want. Maybe these are more 'nips' than 'bites', but they get the job done. And you thought progressives were the only ones who could be vindictive, self-righteous pains in the neck.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 21, 2019 19:03:21 GMT -5
So instead of a MAGA hat, I decide to get a teardrop tattoo on my face right under my outer eye where tear drops would fall. I think it looks really cool. In fact, I'll get 4 of them in a row, in different colors, with fancy designs on the teardrops. People then start calling me a murderer, I can't find employment, and people are afraid of me. It's just a pretty decoration, I don't get it. Why am I being shunned and treated badly? It's because the vast majority of the people that get that type of tat have killed people in prison. I may not have, but I've certainly co-opted their chosen look. Just because I don't think the teardrops mean what a large chunk of people do, doesn't mean I'm not going to be treated like the majority of people who choose to sport a certain tattoo, hat, shirt, or flash white supremacy signals. I missed this earlier, and it bears responding to.
We're going all the way back to Reply #135. To wit, "Ask yourself whether this the hill you want to die on before wearing the hat; people can be unreasonable and irascible." In other words, I well understand that wearing the hat will agitate certain groups. Anyone wearing it should take this into account. But the debate we're having here is: Should we, the readership, participate in this hat shaming? The answer is 'no'. Regarding your teardrop analogy: the tattoo has a long-established symbolism entirely defined by those who use it. That is, the tattoo was designed for a specific purpose, and tattoo wearers plainly acknowledged this purpose from the first, much like the white hood of the KKK. It wasn't the case that a bunch of progressives wandered by, beheld prisoners with teardrops, and thought to themselves, "You know what? I hate prisoners, and I'll bet they all murder people. So wearing a teardrop means you've killed somebody. We have spoken it, therefore it is true."
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 21, 2019 17:04:56 GMT -5
Bing? Come on. Who uses Bing? Use Duck Duck Go, or Google if you don't mind helping one of the most insidious corporations on Earth.
All exercising their non-white white privilege to declare to the world how racist they are.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 21, 2019 16:59:21 GMT -5
Hmmm, no.
You can't differentiate against different classes of people by refusing them the same service you offer to all other classes simply based on the fact that they belong to that class.
Exactly what Rep. Nunes is suing over. The class in this case being conservatives, and the selectively denied services being i) providing public access to/listing of tweets (i.e. not shadow-banning accounts), and ii) enforcement of the rules in the Twitter ToS prohibiting libelous or defamatory content. Hence, assuming he can prove his allegations (I don't know about the selective enforcement of the ToS, but the shadow-banning he certainly can), it sounds as though you ought to be in camp Nunes when it comes to the legitimacy/necessity of the lawsuit. Warnings from years ago that waging war on private companies (offering nonessential services) for discriminating on moral grounds would come back to bite you in the butt. And here we are. The first of many bites in the butt you have to look forward to.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 21, 2019 12:43:02 GMT -5
Nunes is in the Trump school of self promotion, which means that all attention is good attention, even if it's negative attention. Perhaps. I'm not a mind-reader.
What I do know, based on personal experience, is that if Rep. Nunes was two lesbians, and Twitter was a wedding cake bakery in Oregon, the consensus on this board would be that anti-conservative (or rather, anti-LGBT) discrimination is quite simply the most terrible, unjust, inhuman act in the universe, lawsuits are great for fixing injustices, and Nunes ought to be awarded a million b'jillion dollars for emotional suffering even if he fails to prove Twitter caused him any tangible harm. Hence at least you now know what it feels like when a private company discriminates, baby gets his feewings hurt, massive lawsuits start flying, and half the nation's heart bleeds for the plaintiff. Also: I told you so.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 21, 2019 12:24:07 GMT -5
OMG Virgil! Proof of your stand in THIS discussion. Seriously, I am this close to blocking you. Proof of my stand in this discussion? First of all, a preface: Your claim is in this thread is that there is no such thing as a non-racist MAGA hat wearer. Equivalently, there is no such thing as a MAGA hat wearer who wears the hat for any reason except to surreptitiously advertise support for racism. Compile your many arguments in this thread (which now amount to well over a page), they lead to this conclusion and this conclusion alone. If you deny this, I will, time permitting, compile a litany of quotes making it clear this is the only logical interpretation of your arguments in toto. Perhaps it's not your intended meaning, but if so, that is your very big problem. My claim is simply the converse of your claim: Not everyone wearing the hat is a racist or is supporting racism by wearing it. Accordingly, nobody should be harassed for simply wearing the hat. Furthermore, if a wearer denies the hat is a symbol of racism and claims to be wearing it for other reasons, their claim should be treated as truthful and sincere unless/until they demonstrate an overt act of racism, such as shouting slurs, march in KKK rallies, etc. Are we on the same page so far? If so, I'll present to you my proof.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 21, 2019 9:15:58 GMT -5
BTW this would be more evidence of your bias. You are demanding "proof" for the liberal stand without insisting on "proof" for your Conservative stand. Not one week ago I asked 'x =' for proof of his statement regarding murders being classified as disappearances and it was you needled me about it for four straight days. You don't think 'x =' is a conservative? He immediately recognized the fact might be shaky, explained its origin, and disclaimed certainty in it. Have you ever thought that's why conservative v. conservative warfare is such a rarity on YMAM? Because we're too damn reasonable?
But I will be happy to point out every instance of it I see from now on. Your welcome. I'll be on pins and needles. I recommend you work on your own sexism and white privilege in the meantime.** You see, it occurs to me that surely you must know Betty Boop is derided as a sexist icon and a symbol of the male patriarchy by many quarters on the Internet. Some of these also point out that sexily-dressed Betty is identified as being 14 or 16 years old in some of her cartoons, making her an underage sexualized figure for men. Yet year after year you've persisted in using this sexist symbol in your avatar, and you've been getting away with it. It's time your white privilege ended. It's time the rest of us stopped smiling and pretending we believe you when you say you don't think of Betty Boop as a 14-year old sexualized girl and relic of the 1930's patriarchy. Legions of people swear she's a sexist icon, your opinion is irrelevant, and hence I have no choice but to respect the legion's claims. Betty Boop has got to go, Later, I'm sorry. Well, actually, I'm not sorry. I think you're a sexist, white privileged, woman-hating bigot, and nothing you can conceivably say will change my mind on the matter, but you know what, you're white and you deserve it. Now that I've made the world a happier, more just place by telling you off, I'm off to bring social justice to other bigots. Perhaps I'll succeed in scouring Betty Boop and all her foulness from the Internet all by myself. Ta for now. **Please note that this paragraph and the subsequent 6 paragraphs are a rhetorical device and not a genuine critique. They are meant to be analogous to laterbloomer's critique of MAGA hat wearers. I do not believe laterbloomer hates her own gender, or that Betty Boop is a sexist icon. It is worth mentioning, however, that all claims presented in the second paragraph (regarding Betty Boop) are factual.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 21, 2019 8:20:43 GMT -5
Let me ask you this - if you think Nunes is aware that filing suit would make him more of a target, what do you think his ultimate goal is, in filing it? You've acknowledged he probably won't win, you've acknowledged he's brought a lot of unwanted attention to himself, so why did he bother? If I had to speculate, take your pick among any of the following: - he expects he'll win (at the very least, he believes there's a chance he might)
- he's drawn welcome attention from various quarters in addition to the unwelcome attention; he feels morally obligated to file suit to draw attention to Twitter's (mis)behaviour, not unlike Dr. Ford or the women coming forward in the #MeToo movement
- he wants to punish Twitter, particularly the CEO Jack Dorsey, for bias and censoriousness; likewise, he wants to punish the specific Twitter users named in the suit for (allegedly) defaming him and causing him grief
- he believes the suit may further his political career
- he wants a good chunk of the $250M in damages the suit asks for
- he expects Twitter will be more mindful of censoriousness, partial enforcement of their ToS, etc. even if the suit is dismissed; possibly he hopes to inspire other US conservatives or Republicans to file suit
There are plenty of more obscure reasons too. Personally, I have no use for the lawsuit. I don't like shadow-banning, but I believe sites like Twitter ought to be able to do it. I don't believe Twitter should be held liable for harm resulting from libel except in the event they ignored repeated take-down orders for content violating their ToS (and, of course, the challenged content legally constitutes libel). I don't in any way support awarding plaintiffs money for "emotional damages". I'm categorically opposed to punitive damages, and to citizens using civil law courts to punish misbehaving businesses. I'm categorically opposed to juries. But I'm not America, and I've seen half the people on this board swear by your system. It seems to me that Rep. Nunes is doing exactly what your cultural ethic says he ought to do: punish a big, mean corporation by suing them for an absurd amount of money, crying injustice and emotional damage while 6-12 random yahoos decide how many hundreds of millions of dollars the mean corporations ought to fork over. 7th Amendment and all that. Apparently it's also American to treat plaintiffs you disagree with like human garbage despite this fact. Yours is truly a... unique set of cultural values. Hard for Canadians to understand. We're "nice and law abiding," as you say. Also, $250M lawsuits aren't a thing here.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 20:38:09 GMT -5
You've been called out on bias repeatedly but will never see/admit to it and I refuse to get directed down your appointed rabbit hole. It might have something to do with the Texas two-step I get whenever I ask for evidence. If there are threads with conservatives cheering on Twitter troll mobs (or Facebook troll mobs, or whatever), it's the simplest thing in the world to say, "Oh yes, I remember. Conservative posters were laughing about Twitter ripping into [insert name here]. There was a thread about it." Presto! You've given me something tangible to verify and refute my claim.
If by 'bias', you mean I go after progressives far more often on YMAM than conservatives, this much is true. Even so, i) YMAM is a sea of progressivism; somebody has to take it on, and ii) conservative misbehaviour is broadly and harshly criticized on YMAM, and my piling on is nearly always redundant.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 20:15:58 GMT -5
I think you and I read different AOC threads. I saw a lot of people making fun of her, claiming she's hardly smart enough to be able to walk down a street successfully, calling her stupid, etc. Maybe you just skimmed over those posts. Maybe we are talking about different threads. I'm talking about this one--the only one I've participated in. The only one whose existence I'm aware of. It doesn't contain anything like you describe. And this is 100% Nunes' fault. If he never filed the lawsuit, that stupid Nunes cow twitter account would still be at 15K. Now that he's made it publically known that it gets under his skin, it's jumped to what - 300K? This is like saying that Pres. Trump calling Rep. Schiff "little Adam Schitt" was 100% Schiff's fault because he was being critical of the Acting Attorney General. Whether or not Rep. Nunes lawsuit has any merit (a topic that's been going largely ignored in this thread), there are mature responses and there are immature responses. There's criticism and there's malice. If you read through this thread and conclude it isn't firmly inside the immature/malicious quadrant of that rubric, I beg to differ. My Mom always told me that if someone was teasing me, I should ignore them, because they will get bored and stop. Respond with anger or cry, and they'll tease you even more. Someone should have clued Nunes in about that, before he ran for office. Defamation and teasing are separate things. The suit is alleging the former. Specifically, Nunes is claiming Twitter overlooked lies, harassment, impersonation, and allegations of misconduct that harmed his political career. While the courts probably won't find Twitter legally responsible, his allegations appear to be completely true. He's also alleging that Twitter harmed his political career by shadow-banning conservative ideologues. Again, the courts probably won't find against Twitter, and again, the allegations are completely true and provably so. You're mocking him under the assumption that his filing suit is about nursing a bruised ego and getting back at Twitter trolls for hurting his feelings, but he's not a stupid man. I highly doubt he wasn't aware filing suit would make him more of a target in this regard. Obviously he has other priorities.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 19:28:29 GMT -5
The red hat has been identified as a symbol of racism by a majority of Americans, and a good number of citizens of other countries. Show me a poll or study backing this up and I'll concede the argument.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 15:22:06 GMT -5
Virgil the difference between Kaepernick (sp?) and the Hat is that self proclaimed white supremacists wear the hat and proclaim Trump as their champion. The US is a nation of 320 million people, nearly half of whom are Republican. You're going to get a lot of unsavoury groups claiming a Republican president as their champion. Their use of a symbol (such as a campaign hat) doesn't make their claim to it legitimate. It certainly doesn't mean that other Americans have to respect the claim. It means they like you more than the Democrat.
We've been over the guilt-by-association argument before too. The white hood has hundreds of years of history behind it,. More importantly, the organization that uses it (i.e. the KKK) has always acknowledged it as a racist symbol. It was designed as such, not merely co-opted by sundry groups after the fact.
I agree with you, but it is a matter of opinion.
Furthermore, if certain anti-American movements appropriate the gesture this year but Mr. Kaepernick continues to use it with the symbolism he intends, that doesn't make him anti-American. He's simply refusing to respect the anti-American group's claims.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 14:24:04 GMT -5
Are you guys going to spam the thread with follower counts every hour? Like on election night? You're a country of 320 million people, and the lawsuit has been front-page national news for 3 days. The fact that 300K angry people (< 0.094% of your population, even assuming all followers are American) have clicked a "follow" button on Twitter is hardly noteworthy. If/when this parody account makes it up to 6.5M+ followers (indicating 2%+ of the American public), start spamming us then.
Plz just stop trying to police people's conversations. Seems like you only do it to liberal/women. TheHaitian is a man. And progressives are the only ones on YMAM who pull this crap (see Reply #50 and dispute it if you can). Sorry for violating the sanctity of your cow joke echo chamber.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 14:11:13 GMT -5
It's an opinion piece. I'm not saying you can't find millions of people who'll agree with you that the hat is a racist symbol. I can find millions of people who'll swear on a stack that it isn't. The difference between our positions is that: i) I'm not asserting that everyone who wears the hat does so for the same reason, and ii) I'm not asserting that the suspicions of people offended by the hat outweigh the declared motives of the hat wearers. In all, I'm saying you're overgeneralizing, you're ignoring inconsistencies in your hypothesis, and you have no evidence to support it (excepting the opinions of like-minded people, which aren't evidence).
You work hard to ignore the point don't you. Reread the quote a few times. Acknowledging that millions of people say it's a racist symbol reaffirms the point. The level of your denial is truly awesome. What about "I'm not saying you can't find millions of people who'll agree with you that the hat is a racist symbol." suggests denial to you? You're taking us all the way back to Reply #152. I pointed out that millions of people say Mr. Kaepernick's taking a knee at football games is anti-American symbolism, but their say-so doesn't make it true. I raise three important questions (as of yet unanswered) in the final two paragraphs of Reply #175 that would go a long way to bridging the gap between us if you took them on.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 11:13:48 GMT -5
It's an opinion piece. I'm not saying you can't find millions of people who'll agree with you that the hat is a racist symbol. I can find millions of people who'll swear on a stack that it isn't. The difference between our positions is that: i) I'm not asserting that everyone who wears the hat does so for the same reason, and ii) I'm not asserting that the suspicions of people offended by the hat outweigh the declared motives of the hat wearers. In all, I'm saying you're overgeneralizing, you're ignoring inconsistencies in your hypothesis, and you have no evidence to support it (excepting the opinions of like-minded people, which aren't evidence).
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 10:51:02 GMT -5
Virgil if you keep taking my comments out of context and misrepresenting them I am going to stop talking to you. That was a response to you saying don't talk to you about numbers until it reaches 6 million or so. The humour is that next to nobody was reading the sites until he decided to sue them. If that's what you meant, then I apologize for mischaracterizing your view. It seemed to me as though you'd adopted the same attitude as oped, eagerly waiting to see how popular this "shitposting" (pardon the expression, but it's the most accurate term) of Rep. Nunes would become, hoping for big numbers. And Virgil here is one of the sneaky ways you express your biases. You pretty much always come out in defense of the Conservative. I have yet to see you do this for a Liberal. I've never seen this kind of behaviour from conservatives. I'm trying to remember all the times YMAM has egged on social media mob behaviour. Excluding one member who does it routinely, the only instances that come to mind are: Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin, Dave Ramsey, Todd Akin, and Josh Duggar. All of those have been YMAM cheering on social media mob campaigns organized by the left, attacking personalities on the right. If I'm missing any, let me know. ETA: I spoke too soon. At one point in 2016 there was a (doctored) viral video of Hillary Clinton being hit by a golf ball circulating, and a few YMAMers were laughing at that. It wasn't an organized social media campaign like the one we're seeing here, but it's in the same vein. I condemned it at the time. ETA (x2): I spoke too soon again. After reviewing that thread, there actually wasn't anyone on YMAM laughing at it or sharing it. The discussion was about people sharing it elsewhere on the Internet.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 9:42:52 GMT -5
No I haven't. I'll say like you, show me where I said that. "I can't wait to see what today's count is. " Because you're torn up about the campaign? I'm sure it does. It's called 'cyberbullying', and the least any of us can do is avoid endorsing it in other circumstances so that we can condemn it sans hypocrisy. Again, I'm not saying Rep. Nunes shouldn't be criticized. There's plenty of room for discussion around the suit itself and Nunes' fitness to file a complaint.
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 9:12:55 GMT -5
This thread is an open celebration of some of the worst in humanity. Malice. Online bullying. Schadenfreude. Mockery of authority. I'd be lying if I said it didn't disturb me at least a little. I'll leave you to it. It doesn't appear as though anyone's interested in discussing the suit anyway. I know, you prefer your mockery to be deniable like wearing MAGA hats to Native American demonstrations. Open mockery that people own up to doing is not something Conservatives own up to. You and I disagree on whether MAGA hats are inherently racist. But suppose I agreed with you. In this thread you've made it clear that mocking and bullying the people you resent is something to glory in. Why would any rational person pay any heed whatsoever to your concerns about racist MAGA hats? If Mr. Sandmann is a racist as you contend, and he were to follow your example, he and thousands of others would be finding Native Americans online, creating parody accounts, and harassing them en masse while racist forums counted followers and competed to find the most hyperbolic language to describe how hard they're laughing.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 8:59:25 GMT -5
This thread is an open celebration of some of the worst in humanity. Malice. Online bullying. Schadenfreude. Mockery of authority. I'd be lying if I said it didn't disturb me at least a little. I'll leave you to it. It doesn't appear as though anyone's interested in discussing the suit anyway. What are we supposed to do when a buffoon like Nunez does something stupid? Discuss it without malice, schadenfreude, and glorifying online bullying. Even if you want to go beyond criticism of the lawsuit, beyond personal criticism of Rep. Nunes for filing the lawsuit, to general criticism of Rep. Nunes, you can do so without cheering on mobs bullying the man on social media. Look at the AOC thread. There's no love lost between her and the American right, but 90% of that thread was criticism of her policies, and nobody went so far as to cheer on trolls harassing her on social media (assuming there are any).
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 8:49:05 GMT -5
I'm not sure I follow. Are you talking about a type of censorship where a company or a website is throttled as to how much daily content they can upload/download to viewers? If so, these kinds of restrictions are (generally speaking) impossible to implement with the way distribution of content occurs over the contemporary web. For individual consumers, there is still a chokepoint at the ISP (that is, your ISP can technically throttle your access to specific sites) but this is also easily circumvented for those willing to put in the effort.
I am talking about net neutrality (the term escaped me when I wrote that in the bolded.) RichardInTN and I debated NN at length a year ago, although the discussion was mostly about an absurd Burger King parody that purported to "explain" NN. NN issues do intersect soft censorship issues in part, but ISPs are one place where soft censorship truly wouldn't work. Any ISP that started throttling content at the level of conservative vs. progressive sites would instantly lose legions of customers. Switching ISPs is as easy as switching phone companies. It's not like Twitter or Facebook where everybody is more or less stuck with the same platform.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 8:27:29 GMT -5
You seem a little touchy about the subject This thread is an open celebration of some of the worst in humanity. Malice. Online bullying. Schadenfreude. Mockery of authority. I'd be lying if I said it didn't disturb me at least a little. I'll leave you to it. It doesn't appear as though anyone's interested in discussing the suit anyway.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 7:33:17 GMT -5
Are you guys going to spam the thread with follower counts every hour? Like on election night? You're a country of 320 million people, and the lawsuit has been front-page national news for 3 days. The fact that 300K angry people (< 0.094% of your population, even assuming all followers are American) have clicked a "follow" button on Twitter is hardly noteworthy. If/when this parody account makes it up to 6.5M+ followers (indicating 2%+ of the American public), start spamming us then.
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Virgil Showlion
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Post by Virgil Showlion on Mar 20, 2019 7:13:29 GMT -5
Is the government mandating that certain things are pushed off platforms? Or is that a decision a company makes so it doesn't lose customers and advertising? Both. I'm looking at all three types of censorship mentioned in the OP: hard bans (government edicts), soft bans (deplatforming), and propaganda (governments/companies front-loading warnings/recommendations/filters into computers, web browsers, etc.). You mean censorship like not live streaming a mass shooting? I think someone should police stuff like that. To what extent? For example, do you believe somebody who makes the footage available for download should face fines or a prison sentence? Likewise, do you believe somebody who possesses the footage on a home computer without the intention to distribute should face fines or a prison sentence? Are the fines ($200,000) and prison sentence (10 years) in New Zealand appropriate? Too harsh? Too lenient? One caveat: Don't assume persons in possession of the footage are watching it because they find the massacre entertaining. Sites hosting it thus far tend to be conspiracy theory sites, mainly interested in analysis. They variously suspect the footage is doctored, the attack is a false flag, the attack is military-related, etc., and they comb through the footage looking for evidence and inconsistencies. It's also a topic of discussion on pro-2A sites where people analyze tactics, etc., and theorize "what if" a good guy had a gun, "what if" we were present and had only a few seconds to react, etc. Footage like this is the only non-simulated mass shooting scenario most civilians have access to, and they use it as a training tool (in a sense) to gauge what to do and not to do if facing such a gunman. I don't know if any of this makes a difference to you, but if it does, you should consider that most people who'd be punished for distributing or possessing the footage would fall into the above two categories.
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