If Mort Divine ruled the world

[CiG]

I'm pretty much a center-right moderate with perfectly ordinary and mundane worldviews.

Maybe the most delusional thing you've ever said.

"Duties" are left-wing.

What? Alcohol was threatening the tradition of the male gender role in the US, wives got involved with prohibition in order to conserve said tradition. How is any of that left-wing?

Cultural and moral norms change but wokeism is a reaction to the rejection of norms. People are punished for rejecting wokeism, not accepting it.

No it's a rejection of norms, not a reaction to a rejection of norms. The gender binary is a norm, the dominance of white/male voices is a norm, "wokeism" is a rejection of them. I don't know what the hell you're on about here. "Wokeism" cannot be social conservatism if it's not trying to conserve anything.

There is so much Gish galloping going on here. For example I randomly chose something to look up from your comment; I chose your claim that the NYC draft riots "killed more free blacks than any Southern massacre ever did" but according to Wiki the highest recorded amount of fatalities is 120 and I don't see anywhere a racial breakdown of those fatalities, but let's say they were all black people who were killed during those race riots, that's definitely not larger than massacres of black people that have happened in the south. 'Black Wall Street' in Oklahoma was burned to the ground in 1921, 100 businesses destroyed, 300 approx. black people killed. That's just from a very cursory search on my behalf.

Does that reflect the laziness of your post or an anomaly? How the fuck am I supposed to know the veracity of the billion references you make with each paragraph?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

What? Alcohol was threatening the tradition of the male gender role in the US, wives got involved with prohibition in order to conserve said tradition. How is any of that left-wing?

Yeah that newfangled alcohol, prohibition was all about returning to monke

No it's a rejection of norms, not a reaction to a rejection of norms. The gender binary is a norm, the dominance of white/male voices is a norm, "wokeism" is a rejection of them. I don't know what the hell you're on about here. "Wokeism" cannot be social conservatism if it's not trying to conserve anything.

Wokeism is conserving the status quo of the last few decades. Questioning wokeism gets you disinvited from talks, shut down by the mob, etc.

There is so much Gish galloping going on here. For example I randomly chose something to look up from your comment; I chose your claim that the NYC draft riots "killed more free blacks than any Southern massacre ever did" but according to Wiki the highest recorded amount of fatalities is 120 and I don't see anywhere a racial breakdown of those fatalities, but let's say they were all black people who were killed during those race riots, that's definitely not larger than massacres of black people that have happened in the south. 'Black Wall Street' in Oklahoma was burned to the ground in 1921, 100 businesses destroyed, 300 approx. black people killed. That's just from a very cursory search on my behalf.

Does that reflect the laziness of your post or an anomaly? How the fuck am I supposed to know the veracity of the billion references you make with each paragraph?

If you were familiar with the Tulsa race riot longer than one hour ago you would know that it has become highly overblown in recent years. Just use the Wikipedia history function, go back several years, and you'll see that that no one even called it a 'race massacre' until fairly recently. There was also a laughable failed attempt at finding mass graves just last year in order to fuel the George Floyd frenzy. The Tulsa race riot was on a somewhat larger scale than other contemporary riots and it was certainly bad, but it was resolved within less than two days, and the original estimates (not the bullshit revisionist ones) put the death toll in the dozens. By contrast, the draft riots required several regiments including federal troops to be contained, which took twice as long.

Also, I never said that the single draft riot in New York was larger than the cumulative sum of every single Southern race riot or lynching in history, obviously. I gave an example of a riot that was explicitly grounded in the intersection between 1) left-wing class motives, and 2) Southern slavery motives.

If you really had a disagreement with my assertion on the left vs right wing nature of the various things I said, you wouldn't be arguing piddling over nearly impossible to verify death counts.

 

[Einherjar86]

Not to any meaningful effect, clearly, but credit for at least reading the Wikipedia page, albeit not honeslty.

Thought I'd try using what appears to be your main source of info. Turns out it has a lot of stuff that contradicts your weird sense of history.

The difference is that communist spies in America dictated hearings and wrote policy, e.g. Harry Dexter White being assistant to Morgenthau, or the Agriculture Adjustment Act (one of the quintessential New Deal programs) being largely run by the Ware group. Communists were extremely and visibly influential on American policy in the 1930s and 40s.

Which made them easier to weed out, ironically.

Twentieth-century U.S. policy wasn't drastically impacted by the presence of Soviet spies. It was influenced in large part by a conservative "moral majority" (anachronistic use of the term, but still fits) that wanted to resist what it saw as the contaminating force of modern industry, urbanization, and politics.

This isn't something you're going to disprove by collecting random factoids on the internet and drawing constellations between them like stars, all the while ignoring the rest of the sky. Yes, it's true that communism was a political force in early-20thc U.S. politics; and yes, it's true that Soviet spies infiltrated at various levels; and yes, it's true that the New Deal was an unprecedented reach of government intervention in a time of equally unprecedented economic crisis.

None of this qualifies or justifies your absurd characterization of U.S. left-liberalism as "further left than Marxism." This would be satire if its author didn't actually believe it.

Who said anything about diplomatic relations? Nothing here responds directly to what I wrote about the impact of FDR's term nor the significance that imported communism had on it. Reads like an AI-generated response tbh.

I'm responding to your suggestion that FDR seemed to want to import communism to the U.S.--which I took to be your meaning regarding his sympathies to Stalin.

I think you're making very big assumptions in everything you say, and I'm objecting to them. Simple as that.

lmfao, in what world is politically-imposed moral progressivism not political progressivism? One's the body the other's the arm. The rest is pure invention and dishonesty again which you admit by omission in failing to actually quote my post, where I do not mention contemporary progressivism a single time. The point isn't about "progressivism" which is as arbitrary as any political term and a pedantic discussion not worth having. The point I am clearly making is that the early progressive movement has ALWAYS been considered left-wing movement, and that it rests substantially on government/collective intervention in private affairs.

To the extent that eugenics is now a dirty word you are correct, the vocabulary has changed somewhat, otherwise, absolutely wrong. Henry Ford awarding/punishing workers for their private alcohol use is literally no different from today's corporations awarding/punishing workers for their private tobacco use. The Evangelical movement is not intrinsically right-wing either; founding-father of American progressivism William Jennings Bryan was pretty much Evangelical Christianity's political bannerman, which you would know if you knew the slightest bit of what you were talking about. Evangelicals voted Democratic all the way until Ronald Reagan (which I already acknowledged), over reasons of abortion. Globally-speaking, more religious sectors tend to be associated with the economic-left, not the economic-right.

This is such horseshit.

How is the owner of a private company telling his employees what they can or can't do "leftist"? Furthermore, how is that in any way "collectivist"? Your application of leftism is sheer fantasy.

Where did I mention protectionism? You ignore the several well-established examples I gave, including public healthcare and anti-gun legislation, and then throw out protectionism as if I've ever denied the reliance of left-liberalism on neoliberal economic policies.

I'm saying your examples don't amount to what you think they do. You have a misguided idea of what constitutes an argument.

Small business ownership has been in constant decline since FDR, and civil liability has never been higher. The civil rights act of 1964 and subsequent EEOC basically criminalizes business ownership for those with the wrong opinions. Government bailouts overwhelmingly go to banks and "too big to fail" corporations (another Reagan-era accomplishment) while small debtors are told to pound sand. American households are renting more and owning less, particularly among younger generations. The tax burden of the middle class reached a plateau under the left-wing Reagan era. Private ownership has hardly ever been less-rewarded, unless you think Putin-style oligarchy is economic liberalism.

It seems to be that you're associating the decline in American entrepreneurship with a hostile left-wing politics, which I still say is largely unfounded. This article from the Atlantic gets at the point. The decline in small business start-ups/ownership has less to do with economically hostile policies than it does with the general trajectory of U.S. economy toward large-scale establishments (e.g. chains). These tend to out-perform smaller businesses, but not because of politics; in fact, it has to do with that most lauded of capitalist tenets, competition.

As job growth tends toward larger businesses with more staying power, the economy calms down; and this means less room for new businesses to grow, because they have to compete with more situated and familiar entities.

You seem to have some outsized dystopian vision of U.S. politics working against small business. This is very much not the case in a widespread, general sense.

As I said, Marxism is to the right of left-liberalism.

As I said, horseshit.

Weird because you have hardly cited anything beyond the meme end of history guy.

Dude, you're leaving it to me to fact-check you. Look up stuff I mention if you care to.

If you were familiar with the Tulsa race riot longer than one hour ago you would know that it has become highly overblown in recent years. Just use the Wikipedia history function, go back several years, and you'll see that that no one even called it a 'race massacre' until fairly recently.

Why do you think that is? You act like this is evidence that it's been "highly overblown." Why isn't it the case that, when it occurred, it was significantly ignored, dismissed, and erased from history? Do you remember learning about it in secondary school? I sure don't.

The Tulsa massacre was under-reported and dismissed after it happened. The increasing attention over the past decade isn't the result of it being overblown, but of historians' work on the subject finally being given the time of day. Academics have studied the history surrounding the event for a while now; the U.S. just didn't care or want to hear about it.

 

[CiG]

Yeah that newfangled alcohol, prohibition was all about returning to monke

The implication being that social conservatives promote anything as long as it's old? Also suggesting alcohol and leftism are incompatible? You've not really addressed my point here; wives were complaining that men were faltering in their husbandly duties, it wasn't about healing society for them, it was about preserving their family and household by any means necessary. It was conservative activism.

Wokeism is conserving the status quo of the last few decades. Questioning wokeism gets you disinvited from talks, shut down by the mob, etc.

This is some slimy af reframing of the subject. "Wokeism" is "conserving" LGBTQ+ culture therefor it's socially conservative? lmfao what the fuck are you on about?

And what does getting "disinvited from talks, shut down by the mob, etc" have to do with social conservativeness? Bigotry (whether perceived or real) has slowly become untenable for many corporations and organizations and to the credit of activists and loud voices willing to boycott and engage in pressure campaigns; when you fuck around you find out. Something the right used to be good at when it had much more social credibility to wield pre-1990's.

If you were familiar with the Tulsa race riot longer than one hour ago you would know that it has become highly overblown in recent years. Just use the Wikipedia history function, go back several years, and you'll see that that no one even called it a 'race massacre' until fairly recently. There was also a laughable failed attempt at finding mass graves just last year in order to fuel the George Floyd frenzy. The Tulsa race riot was on a somewhat larger scale than other contemporary riots and it was certainly bad, but it was resolved within less than two days, and the original estimates (not the bullshit revisionist ones) put the death toll in the dozens. By contrast, the draft riots required several regiments including federal troops to be contained, which took twice as long.

Don't know why you're taking a shot at me for only just reading up on the Black Wall Street massacre when I admitted as much in the same comment. The point was that a few minutes in Google and I've already found holes in what you're saying but I assume your tactic is to just reference as much obscure shit from US history as possible knowing nobody save the most autistic fuck online will fact-check every single one of them.

I'll leave the decision as to whether the massacre was overblown up to the experts. There's actually a documentary on the subject coming out very soon (exec-produced and financially backed by Russell Westbrook).

Also, I never said that the single draft riot in New York was larger than the cumulative sum of every single Southern race riot or lynching in history, obviously. I gave an example of a riot that was explicitly grounded in the intersection between 1) left-wing class motives, and 2) Southern slavery motives.

I didn't say shit about cumulative massacres in the south, I cited 1 example to counter your 1 example. It was a 1:1 comparison. If my example chafes your tits so badly I'm sure I could easily find other massacres of free blacks in the south that number more than 120 fatalities.

If you really had a disagreement with my assertion on the left vs right wing nature of the various things I said, you wouldn't be arguing piddling over nearly impossible to verify death counts.

The point is that if even the more mundane elements of your comments are this badly framed what the fuck else will I find?

FYI it's dishonest to refer to something as having "left-wing class motives" when the nature of the event was poor whites murdering poor blacks. That's just right-wing populism, not left-wing class politics you retard.

 

[rms]

https://twitter.com/xlucymoorex/status/1369760178493620236?s=19

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

To be brief, I would say that aesthetic efforts absent any political or social considerations whatsoever don't qualify as art. Art connotes something more than mastery of craft/technique. Someone can paint an immaculate landscape piece that looks like a photograph, but that technical proficiency alone doesn't make it art.

I disagree

Art can be art with out the piece being social commentary

I then have to follow this thought by saying that social commentary doesn't need to be art

The two are separate ideas
One doesn't need to be the other

But in addition to being separated ideas
There can easily be things that are both art and social commentary simultaneously

Such as The Watchmen comic

 

[CiG]

Art can be art with out the piece being social commentary

Examples?

 

[Einherjar86]

 

[CiG]

Sarcasm or actually trying to debunk your own claim?

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

Examples?

I think I am still just a little bit high

The list of specific things that instantly hit me were all of those 90's Marvel and DC issues and story-arcs of superhero comics that the comic's writer(s) needed to referr to as being "not social commentary"

 

[Einherjar86]

Sarcasm or actually trying to debunk your own claim?

 

[CiG]

I think I am still just a little bit high

The list of specific things that instantly hit me were all of those 90's Marvel and DC issues and story-arcs of superhero comics that the comic's writer(s) needed to referr to as being "not social commentary"

Yeah I highly doubt those were actually devoid of social commentary.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Organization says sharing Oprah interview memes is ‘digital blackface’

 

[Einherjar86]

Organization says sharing Oprah interview memes is ‘digital blackface’

I'd like to hear more from a cultural theorist on this, but I feel like most would say this is reaching. I think there are various intervening issues that preclude this from being blackface.

 

[CiG]

Black reaction gifs/memes online have been called "digital blackface" for a bunch of years at this point.

Personally I think it's a stupid concept (black reaction gifs/memes are a natural byproduct of the culture diversifying) but that article is perfectly consistent with it.

 

[Bloopy]

I could understand whites being called out if they share GIFs/memes of black people excessively or almost exclusively. But otherwise the GIFs are usually just a pick of the best reaction for the situation, and most of them are of actors, so arguably it's a compliment to their skills. I could imagine Facebook eventually overstepping and blocking a whole bunch of GIFs/photos of black people or something moronic like that.

Oh yeah, I got my first warning on FB recently for suggesting kicking Bolsonaro in the balls.

 

[CiG]

Oh yeah, I got my first warning on FB recently for suggesting kicking Bolsonaro in the balls.

That's a badge of honour my guy!

 

[Bloopy]

Zuckerberg gets the badge for nipping my antifascist tendency in the bud and saving society again.

 

[CiG]

Saving the balls of fascism from the vicious Bloopy.

My account is considered a risk because I've been tempbanned 4 times for sharing Youtube links with nipples in the thumbnail. Such a shitty site.

 

[Blurry_Dreams]

To be brief, I would say that aesthetic efforts absent any political or social considerations whatsoever don't qualify as art. Art connotes something more than mastery of craft/technique. Someone can paint an immaculate landscape piece that looks like a photograph, but that technical proficiency alone doesn't make it art.

This block of text looks so ridiculously pretentious and elitist that I initially thought it was sarcasm

I was as high as a kite when I wrote the post about the superhero comics

Your Bob Ross reference is hilarious because it actually does a much better job of debunking your own claim than my intoxication-induced reference to superhero comics

Bob Ross' art show specifically purposely didn't show any kind of social commentary or political views

The art was just merely art and nothing else
The art was pretty and that's all it was because that's all it needed to be

There was no social commentary or political views in the art or the show because the show was merely a display of the prettyness of the art

What if the social commentary is super subtle or something that a person disagrees with??

Is the horribly unobservant person not allowed to enjoy the prettyness of the art with super subtle social commentary??

And let's not forget the fact that 99 percent of "social commentary" is done in a way where there is going to be a ton of Americans who will vehemently disagree with what ever the fuck the author believes, so then,
If the social commentary in a work of art makes the creator's opinions clearly unistakabe, then, are we not allowed to enjoy the prettyness of the art while simultaneously disagreeing with the social/political views of the creator?? For example, there are a lot of people who vehemently disagree with the clearly unistakabe opinions of the principal protagonist of their favorite movie or novel

If you found all of the people who love Bob Ross' art and if you found 2 who would agree with each other about which one is their favorite Bob Ross painting, you could easily have found 2 people who vehemently disagree with each other about everything else
If one Bob Ross fan is a Trump supporter and the other is super excited about Kamala Harris being vice president, why can't they both love the same Bob Ross painting??

And, further more, social commentary is not always art
Sometimes social commentary is clearly "not art" written in a way that is unartisticly attempting to get the whole world pissed off at the status quo or pissed off at the possibility of the status quo changing, are these text-only, non-fiction, almost-propoganda articles actually art??
Of course not, but why does art need to be social commentary instead of merely pretty??

Think of your favorite porn-clip
Think of a clip so erotic that you just can't stop yourself from getting a boner
Don't over-think the art here
You don't need to over analyse the art of porn
You don't need to psychoanalyse the porn star to enjoy the prettyness of her body, you don't need to know why she is so eagerly doing the specific fetish thing that your sex partner will never do in a million years
Porn doesn't need to have political views or be social commentary any more so than Bob Ross' Paintings needed to be anything else but "pretty art"