Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
- Thread starter GasBandit
- Start date
You monster.
So it turns out my wife has never watched George Carlin. Fixing this at the moment.
'7 dirty words' was my pick as the intro.
Necronic
Staff member
You know I have to hit disagree on the anti-southern comment because, hey, I'm from the south. But god damn we actually are a huge fucking lodestone on the US. Most of the south and Midwest contribute very little compared to what they take away. Kind of tired of being from a taker state that constantly bitches about the supposed welfare queens of the north east and west coast.
That said I will be in a god damned coffin before I leave Texas and move to California.
That said I will be in a god damned coffin before I leave Texas and move to California.
Fine by us. Too many damn people here already.
You should've built a wall.
I live in Florida, and I can confirm we are the cause of everything bad. Sorry about Trump, guys.
GasBandit
Staff member
Hey, they had their chance to be rid of us in 1860, but they had to be babies about it so now we're all stuck together.
Just another case of advanced people failing to civilize the savages.
In all seriousness I don't really have a problem with the south. I didn't think my comment would touch a nerve and was just trying to make a joke. Sorry if I actually upset anyone.
GasBandit
Staff member
60 year old white Trump supporter just got into a loud discussion about immigration in the break room with a another coworker, who is a latino in his late-20s that I'm 90% sure has relatives living here illegally. Latino coworker ended up storming out, with the white guy hollering after him "It's upholding the laws of our country, as simple as that!"
Fun times.
Fun times.
Yeah, let's make a registry of people we disagree with politically!
Let's make a registry of people who use the current political climate as an excuse to reveal how they've secretly hated other people, and who have sounded their mating call for others of a similar mind.
--Patrick
Aye. As long as we can keep it to the actual hateful, mean people, and not extend the net outwards and snag decent people (the way @DarkAudit is directing his frustration at @stienman - I really wish you could ease up on him, DA. Please rant away about this but we're your friends and none of us are hateful, mean people, )
Hey! Sure we are!
No skin off my back, I've been much happier since I turned off the politics subforum, and while I occasionally stick my nose in to smell what's up, it only serves to remind me why I dropped it awhile ago.
But if for some reason anyone wants my perspective on a specific point of discussion just @ me and I'll pop in, as I have here.
@steinman Steak[DOUBLEPOST=1485734708,1485734673][/DOUBLEPOST]Apparently I don't know how to do that.
It would help to spell his name right.
Son of a bitch ...
No, see, this is wrong, and also impossible. You are making people guilty of thought crimes. And Grue has inadvertently hit the nail on the head. What is 'actual' hateful and mean? Denying women abortion rights? Many would say so. Who is in charge of this list? When the government changes, are we okay with a new ruling class maintaining this list? Who will they think are mean? People who punch Nazis?
(By the by, I'll happily state that Richard Whatevernazi is a piece of shit, but the crime committed there was assault, and I only support one of those people being charged, and put on some kind of list - we'll call it a criminal record.)
I disagree. I have no problem with any crime a person may commit in their fertile imagination, nor with how many times they commit it. Do you secretly dream of blasting the neighbors' yappy little dog into a snot smear with a shotgun? Go right ahead and dream, I'm not going to have any problem with that unless you actually act on that. BUT...if you spout off about how all brown people need to go back to where they came from and aren't fit for more than menial labor because their intellectual capacity is so obviously below yours, well, I'm putting you on that list I mentioned.
Now you might think my list is one of people who need to be killed or sterilized or something, but that's not it. It's more about knowing what might happen if you allow too many of these people to stay together for any length of time, or get into any sort of position where they'd have influence over the people they hate. That's what I meant by "mating call." Once you accrue a certain critical mass of like-minded thinkers, and they start validating one another, then the odds of those thought crimes getting translated into action goes up, and that's gonna be a problem when they start yelling, "Who's with me?!" And before you get on my case about "freedom of assembly," remember that getting together to discuss illegal things is itself illegal, even if you're not found out.
...and yes, I realize that this is a scary concept. A person in power might use this technique to, I don't know, prevent scientists from talking about climate change, or something. I know that tastes change, that things go in and out of vogue, but some things (to me, at least) would warrant inclusion on some sort of list, if only so *I* would know what I'm dealing with. I want to know if the company I'm interviewing with refuses to hire LGBT folks, for instance. Not because I fall into any of those categories (I honestly don't), but because I don't want to work for someone I consider so narrow-minded, backward, and prone to being sued out of business on EEOC grounds.
--Patrick
Well, to put it another way, you aren't cataloguing people's thoughts but you are cataloguing their speech. So then the question becomes a matter of protecting that speech. Does creating such a list hamper speech?
Well, people make lists of physicians who provide abortions, their names and addresses. Others make lists of people who donated to Proposal 8 advocacy organizations.
The fact that Obama's administration made a list, then Trump's administration used that list as the basis of their immigration ban (read the executive order, if you haven't yet) should be chilling. Lists, in and of themselves, can be dangerous and we can't always control the outcome.
Saying, "I only painted a target, I didn't pull the trigger," may make some feel better about their list making, but they still share responsibility for how those lists are ultimately used.
Regardless, when the government does it it's a special case, and like the Sex Offender Registry it has to pass constitutional muster. I (and many others, and 3 of the 8 on the supreme court) still have very deep reservations with such lists.
It's a double edged sword, and while it's legal for you to make and share your own lists, and even act on them, tasking the government with making a list and publishing it should require a much higher standard before it's allowed.
The fact that Obama's administration made a list, then Trump's administration used that list as the basis of their immigration ban (read the executive order, if you haven't yet) should be chilling. Lists, in and of themselves, can be dangerous and we can't always control the outcome.
Saying, "I only painted a target, I didn't pull the trigger," may make some feel better about their list making, but they still share responsibility for how those lists are ultimately used.
Regardless, when the government does it it's a special case, and like the Sex Offender Registry it has to pass constitutional muster. I (and many others, and 3 of the 8 on the supreme court) still have very deep reservations with such lists.
It's a double edged sword, and while it's legal for you to make and share your own lists, and even act on them, tasking the government with making a list and publishing it should require a much higher standard before it's allowed.
So Obama should've done nothing with foreign policy? I don't know what you're saying here. You know the whole reason they used that list (aside from it excluding Trump's business partners) was so when people complained they could pretend that Obama did the exact same thing. Nothing was stopping them from coming up with their own list of countries.
I used to work for Mars Music, which would collect your data under the promise they would never sell it to other companies or use it for advertising. When they went bankrupt, that list was auctioned off as part of the assets, and was ultimately sold to Musicians' Friend/Guitar Center, the very place that people would come to Mars Music to avoid. Nobody was happy about it. Except Guitar Center.
I really think that depends on the speech, itself. Should the phrase "The only good <class> is a dead <class>" be considered "protected speech?" Sure, if you're* talking about woodchucks/squirrels, then there's likely no problem. But if you're talking about black people/republicans/DMV workers/or other actual human beings, should you really expect to be able to spoutvertise your thoughts like that without someone making a note of it, and possibly putting you on some watch list or taking you to task for it later? If a neighbor moves in and tells you to keep your kids off his lawn, "...or else I might have to shoot one of 'em," are you going to say to yourself, "Well, I'm 100% positive that was hyperbole and I guess that could be considered protected speech?" If you post a video online narrating the fun you have running over small animals on a stretch of dirt road and how much pleasure it brings you, do you really have a right to be surprised or offended if that comes back to haunt you later at at a job interview for a position as a school soccer coach? Threats and immoral behavior are still reprehensible even if nobody finds out about them, and saying, "Well, I didn't expect you would find out about me doing that" is not a legitimate defense.
I agree 100% that it is a double-edged sword, and that it almost requires someone incorruptible be in charge of the list making, and that incidents like abuse of the no-fly list means that this would be an extremely challenging undertaking.
--Patrick
*I'm gonna use "you" and "you're" a lot, but I don't mean any specific person, just so we're clear.
The Boy Scouts go against history and allow a transgender boy to get his Eagle Scout badge.
I'm not going to lie here, I teared up. It makes me proud that the organization which was such a huge part of my life and allowed me to get through a very tough time in my life is now being more accepting of others.
I'm not going to lie here, I teared up. It makes me proud that the organization which was such a huge part of my life and allowed me to get through a very tough time in my life is now being more accepting of others.