“Liberals, You Are Not As Smart As You Think” by Gerard Alexander is the first article in the NYTIMES that I agree with completely. It’s a weird feeling to see something one thinks being said in the press.
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Garbage article. A rebuttal:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/05/stop-hitting-argument-oddly-not-improve-endless-repetition
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The snarky smugness of the rebuttal article unwittingly demonstrates how correct the NYTIMES article is.
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‘Don’t be smug at me or I’ll become a Nazi’.
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Here is the problem. This is precisely it. Anybody who timidly disagrees or even just accidentally fails to use the correct terminology is immediately called a Nazi, a racist, a mass murderer, etc. And people who do it seem so sincere. They are pulsating with self-righteousness.
That committee people were planning to start to discuss the graduation rates of black male students has now been tabled because one person has been aggressively and repetitively accusing everybody on the committee of being racists. Why did it need to happen? Other than to make the accuser feel good about himself, I see no reason.
This doesn’t mean that people who encounter this will immediately go vote for Republicans. But I, at least, am a lot less interested in voting for anybody any more. The only reason, literally the only one, that I wanted the US citizenship was to vote. And now I have it, I will probably not vote at all. Because the argument of well, at least there are no Nazis on this side, is not good enough. And judging by how many people in this country don’t vote, I’m guessing I’m not alone.
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“Because the argument of well, at least there are no Nazis on this side, is not good enough.”
I give this comment 6 million down votes.
If people are so offended by bad arguments that they will quit voting entirely, there’s really no hope at all.
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It’s not about bad arguments. It’s about living in fear. I live in fear. And it’s not a fear of arguments, that’s for sure. It’s the exact opposite. There are no arguments any more. You parrot the rhetoric with no deviations from the script of the day or you are a Nazi.
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Well, I even agree with many of the basic statements in the script, and my criticisms of it come from the left not the right, but it is SO tiresome to be asked to recite it so often, and listen to it, and to have to fear retribution for not vocalizing it often enough, and of course to be in a situation where repeating it is what matters and what you actually do doesn’t.
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Either you partake in the current crop of social-engineered grandstanding propaganda or you’re obviously a cultural heretic, subject to being crucified by any modern-day Pharisee faction.
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That’s precisely the problem. Not only can’t you contradict the ranting fanatics, but you also have to parrot their bizarre speech patterns and ideological obsessions or you are deemed a Nazi, a human reject, and somebody who deserves any punishment they get.
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That’s why it’s important to distinguish between liberals (think Nancy Pelosi)–i.e., those who are part of the elite, have abandoned the working class, and only care about using the right language–and the left (think Bernie Sanders). Liberals are useless.
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A hundred times this.
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Liberals may be useless — you won’t get any argument from me about that — but hard-core socialists will never win a national election in the U.S. People deluded enough to believe that a majority of the American electorate support such policies should watch and read media outlets besides MSNBC and “The Nation.”
Sanders would have been totally wiped out if he’d been the Democratic Party nominee in 2016. And if the Dems are stupid enough to run a Sanders clone of any age in 2020, Trump won’t even have to campaign to get re-elected.
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Only an old dumb fuck like you would believe Sanders represents ‘hard core socialism’. But then you’re part of the idiot generation who shat their pants, on demand, every time they heard the S word so maybe we should give you a break.
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Thank you, Stringer Boy! Readers of Clarissa’s blog can always depend on you to entertain by “shat[ing] their pants, on demand, every time” someone dares to disagree with your political opinion.
We all know that you can’t vote in this country, but if you’d like to contribute to the coming Democratic defeat in 2020 by donating money or time to get a non-electable lefty on the party ticket, please be my guest.
And your contribution should be money — nobody’s going to pay any attention to your hysterical adolescent ravings.
(Excellent GIF, by the way. I saved it for my collection!)
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Also, I was told that one of reasons behind trump’s ascendance was this whole political correctness thingy. I mean, he literally mocked people with disabilities on stage to the wild cheers of his adoring crowd.
So, why do these people get their feelings so hurt when their alt-right nazi heroes are criticized or — even worse! — mocked by those smug libtards? They act so fucking scandalized when a standup comedian makes a couple of jokes at an inconsequential dinner.
What they really want is the freedom from being criticized. Oh my god, the whining.
Reading the NY Times opinion pages, one would think the only problem afflicting the world is college kids and political correctness.
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Campus PC is out of control.
http://wjla.com/news/local/george-mason-university-koch-foundation-hiring-firing-professors
Newly released documents show Virginia’s largest public university granted the conservative Charles Koch Foundation a say in the hiring and firing of professors in exchange for millions of dollars in donations.
The documents’ release follows years of denials from George Mason University that the donations inhibit academic freedom.
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Snowflakes.
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Interesting fact: Alexander wrote effectively the same column ( “Why are liberals so condescending?”) in the Washington Post 8 years ago. There have always been condescending liberals, full of themselves. On the other side are people who don’t want Democrats to vote, women to have bodily autonomy, and who are willing to vote for a serial adulterer and sexual harasser while calling themselves moral.
https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.js
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And there are crowds of wonderful people “on the other side”, too. Like the colleague who suggested we get together and discuss the reasons why black male students are graduating at such poor rates. For a week after that, he was relentlessly harangued and accused of being a racist and denying the humanity of black people. I’m seeing this develop right now and it doesn’t help to know that it was just as bad in 2008.
I’m in academia, so a week doesn’t go by without a story of this kind.
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Your colleague was harangued for his suggestion – that’s not right, I agree.
But Alexander is talking about verbal aggression by liberals in a world where right-wing and conservative rhetoric is openly derogatory and eliminationist. Where McConnell led a successful effort to prevent Obama from nominating a SC Justice and blocked dozens of federal judicial appointments. Where Republicans at every level of government enact laws and enforce rules to block the right to vote by PoC and Democrats. Where the current President is gutting effective governance by the administrative state while allowing his Cabinet to grift at unprecedented levels.
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I like the cut of libraryguys jib.
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. . . And where Democrats can’t get enough people to vote them into state legislatures, governorships, or the national office on a pretty consistent basis. So it might be a good idea to stop scaring away potential voters with verbal aggression. You obviously can’t get any less successful politically than the Democrats have been for quite a while. So it might make sense to do something about it. It shouldn’t be all that hard to cut down on self-righteous ranting.
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Doesn’t the verbal aggression actually come from T-boy and those fake blondes on Fox?
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TV can be turned off. Administrators who have learned the progressive lingo and are using it to bully you in the workplace can’t.
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Oh, I don’t think that’s liberalism, though, that’s some perversion and cooptation of language of civil rights, now being used to CYA. I feel threatened by it because it is threatening, and I note that this pseudo-tolerant language is used against those it allegedly protects.
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I give this comment two Sieg Heils.
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Liberals, You Are Not As Smart As You Think” by Gerard Alexander is the first article in the NYTIMES that I agree with completely
Really?
Racist is pretty much the most damning label that can be slapped on anyone in America today, which means it should be applied firmly and carefully. Yet some people have cavalierly leveled the charge against huge numbers of Americans — specifically, the more than 60 million people who voted for Mr. Trump.
Actually “racist” is not the most damning label. I can think of more damning ones like “child molester” or “pedophile.”
That reminds me that Trump voters voted for a man who endorsed a senate candidate credibly accused of child molestation. Trump voters in that state overwhelmingly favored that dude.
It is only with the massive GOTV effort that counteracted voter suppression efforts that the dude who was a civil rights attorney barely won.
So, no, I’m not going to go around tiptoeing the delicate sensibilities of such people nor am I going to give the moral benefit of the doubt to a bunch of strangers who have their fee fees hurt over being lumped in with “racists” because they voted for Trump. Especially not on the say-so of some rancid suet bag poli-sci professor who has time to hector “liberals” but nothing to say about the Unite the Right Rally that took place in his own backyard last summer.
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