How is that presumptuous? "Qualifications" are often bullshit; there's no reason to need a highly-qualified data-entry monkey over a less-qualified one, and pregnancy/maternity leave is a significant negative impact on productivity. What statistics favor the idea that women are more productive?
The ones that suggest as much.
A search on men, women, and productivity in the workplace yields multiple results.
And blacks vote for Democrats that have hardly at all narrowed the white-black gap (in income, victimization, health, etcetc). Your first mistake is in assuming that democracy holds politicians accountable for their actions more often than not. Your second is in assuming that you know what poor whites value more than they do (that article Dak posted a few weeks back regarding self-interests was nice).
Actually, I don't think democracy holds politicians accountable; but voters are a part of democracy, and voters often don't hold politicians accountable.
I don't think I understand what poor whites want. I just think I know when certain policy decisions would yield net positive results for them. That doesn't mean I know what they want.
Everyone does. Do you think that the blacks strongly over-represented making a reasonably decent and safe wage at the USPS see their work as a "handout"? Do you think Joe "MURRICA" Sixpack the soldier that gets free boarding, healthcare, and college tuition for shooting at things in the desert for a few years sees himself as receiving a "handout"? One of the most unethical things a politician can do is to take away the shame component of a free lunch by giving the unproductive the opportunity to tip a quarter, because that's what breeds entitlement.
No, I wouldn't say they perceive those things as handouts; but then, I was never talking about people who are actually working for a wage...
The point is that there are people who need help, and not because they're lazy or don't want to be productive. This can be done by getting them jobs, but until a job is available I don't see the problem with providing financial assistance. Refusing assistance because it's "communist" is just plain ignorance.
Because they're working class. I hope that was a joke.
Poor choice of words. I actually just meant the welfare of black people--not welfare programs that benefit black people.
On a separate note, health insurance is for saving already sick people. It has absolutely fuck all to do with creating a population which doesn't need to use it. As derived, it simply keeps sick people alive longer.
While I may not disagree, I think this has to do with more than just what kind of health care system we have.
One could say the left are all about secularism, opposing fundamentalism and fascism yet they suddenly bend over backwards to apologise for Islam and its practices and single out critics of Islam as worthy of ostracisation and even violent opposition.
Yes, the right are playing into identity politics and much of their doing it is due to the left's insanity with identity politics. The right is classically considered reactionary after all and the left have created something for them to react to.
Anyway, I'm not sure how this relates to what I said as I was specifically trying to criticise your mentality from a left-wing pov. It's an extension of the feminist contradiction that wants men to soften and be more open, dismantle "toxic masculinity" etc but at the same time men aren't ever allowed to complain, have problems that need to be addressed or be vulnerable.
That final point is a good one. I do think there is some difficulty of maneuvering for men, in some cases. But I don't think it's debilitating, intellectually or otherwise; that's probably where we differ.
Everybody knows that, history didn't start in the 2000's. I would counter a point like that by simply saying the left shouldn't justify doing something because the opposition does it, it's exactly why I harp on about people being unprincipled as fuck.
I don't think the left justifies it because I don't think they perceive it as a consciously orchestrated phenomenon. As a general cultural shift in response to historical circumstances, the rhetoric and sentiment breeds itself, so to speak. The underlying tendencies are just, in my opinion, even if the language manifests as hostile and divisive.
In the particular case we've been discussing--i.e. women in the workplace--I think that, generally speaking, most women are rational and level-headed about what they want (more rational than men in many instances). I think there are media that contribute to a growing sense of feminine animosity, but I don't think that most women in the workplace feel that way. I know this isn't a realm of experience for me, but even in academia I'm friends with numerous women who do teach courses in the gender studies department or women's history, etc. and they actively resist this idea that contemporary feminism is about degrading men. That's a limited perspective, but I still think it's important.
