This is our only alternative to Trump: a regime where we will have to allow sex offenders with a long criminal history to prey on women in toilets because they’ll claim that they are diverse and non-binary:
Yes, Trump is wildly imperfect. But it’s not between him and perfection. It’s between him and whatever Melbourne is.
Clarissa's Blog 
AND the outcome is that he gets to go be a doctor, and deal with female patients.
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Clarissa, you’re worried about a hypothetical person in a bathroom while ignoring the actual elephant in the room. “Wildly imperfect” is a massive euphemism for a man whose name is all over the Epstein files. If your goal is protecting women and children, how is a regime that shielded the world’s most prolific predators a better alternative?
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My goal is to protect my right to say aloud and without fear that this is lunacy. I don’t want to be forced to confess transphobic sins at work. And I no longer am. For this I am grateful.
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Yes, the woke left is in retreat…only to be replaced by the woke right. Fun times.
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Some genius put a tampon machine in the boys’ bathroom on campus. It has no practical use because a girl who wants to pass as a boy will never use such a machine in full view of boys in a bathroom. This machine was a stupid, useless virtue-signaling thing. Boys defaced the machine. Immediately, a bias response team was unleashed to hunt them down and punish them. I find this ridiculous. I don’t want these boys to be persecuted because they have a sense of humor. It might seem like a small thing but it matters to me.
Since Trump got elected, we haven’t heard from the bias response team. I don’t know if it still exists but it’s not actively persecuting anybody. And I’m glad. Nothing has replaced it.
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If you look at what’s happening in Texas and Florida, they are literally telling you what you can and can’t teach. But you’re a conservative who doesn’t live there, so it won’t affect you. So no problem.
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Dude, I fought for ten bloody years to add the words “Hispanic civilization” to the name of my course. I was told the word “civilization” is offensive. We are told that if black students fail our courses it means we are racist. We are told not to put the words “office hours” on the syllabi because they are racist. The next meeting when we will be berated for being racisty racists for teaching courses that black students fail is scheduled for next Tuesday.
So please unclench with these stories from scary Florida. Are you really so clueless that you honestly have no idea what’s going on in academia?
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Actually, I do. It seems that you’re not aware of what’s going on in these other states. It’s not affecting conservatives, so you simply don’t care.
I think all forms of so-called wokeness–from the left and the right–and censorship are wrong. But conservatives love wokeness as much as liberals.
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The way a discussion works is that you say something, then I respond, then you respond to what I said. But if you keep repeating the same thing to what I already responded, the discussion doesn’t progress.
I have addressed in detail the claim that “it’s not affecting conservatives.” There are all of half a dozen of us in the entire academia which already tells you a lot about how easy our lives are. But hey, in addition to that meeting on Tuesday I also have to write a report on how I promote DEI at my department. I can play screenshots. Is anybody anywhere in this country forced to write reports about how they impose conservative values in their courses? Is anybody forced to write memos apologizing for hiring white men? Which I still do every time I hire as obligated by law. Obviously not. Which is why I don’t accept this false equivalency. Until there’s a law forcing people to apologize for hiring blacks, we are not the same.
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Nobody in FL outside the uni bubble seems upset about this.
Should we care if people outside FL are upset about it?
-ethyl
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I don’t even know what it is that we are supposed to be upset about. I’m collaborating with colleagues from Florida on a project. Nobody mentioned anything beyond the same budget cuts that exist everywhere.
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This is the thing people in other states are whingeing about, as though they should have a vote in how the state of Florida (where they don’t live or pay taxes) runs its public unis.
https://www.littler.com/news-analysis/asap/floridas-governor-signs-bill-defund-dei-initiatives-colleges
Somehow, people interpret this as “ZOMG now they’re dictating what you can SAY”
It was a bill defunding DEI programs, and forbidding forced speech: ie they aren’t allowed to force people to sign DEI statements as a condition of employment or admission.
The controversial inclusion was:
“SB 266 prohibits programs, majors, minors, curricula, and general education core courses from referencing theories that “systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.”
Big whoop. I don’t love the way it’s phrased (could be used to prohibit “referencing” those theories even to criticise them), but the state does have the authority to regulate course/curriculum decisions in the state uni system and this stuff has become really unhinged over the last decade. No lesser measure would have had any effect (you can’t just replace all the loopy professors between semesters), and there is general popular support for it. Most people sending their kids off to state uni are trying to make sure they have job prospects, not trying to load them up with student debt so they can write grievance studies papers and attend protests for $50/day (admittedly this is better than selling plasma for rent money like they used to). I expect it’ll be quietly shelved in a few years, and hopefully by then we’ll have had some shuffling in of newer, more moderate, more intellectually diverse staff.
Making an example of New College was… perhaps extreme, but as an experimental college model it seems to have run its course. Nothing that inherently unstable can be a good thing forever: they seem to go through cycles, and are hugely dependent on the personalities and individual abilities of the administrators. Periodically, you have to clean the grease trap or it festers.
-ethyl
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I fully agree with you on that. I’m just pointing out that bringing up Trump into an issue regarding being lenient on sexual harassers while his entire administration shields elite pedophiles is problematic. Does nobody else see the issue there?
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“The existence of one big issue negates the existence of all other concerns.”
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I care more about the quality of my life in my country than about Iran. I don’t think that’s abnormal or wrong. People who do care more about Iran without ever having been there are not right in the head, in my opinion.
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completely concur
I frequently run into this bizarre logical-bypass situation, and I’m curious about where it comes from. It needs a name.
The situation: someone mentions an item of personal concern. Taxes. Crime. Jobs. Housing. Social dysfunction. Agriculture. Infrastructure. Anything that affects them personally, and that they therefore care about. Then, for no apparent reason, one or more people are compelled to drop in and say, basically: “How dare you care about anything other than (insert *** here) which is a much larger, much more pressing problem that is more important to me, personally?” –where the *** is, invariably, something fairly abstract and distant to both parties: a foreign war, children starving in Ethiopia, Christians persecuted in Nigeria, the Epstein files, the Jooz, the Uyghurs, Trump, creeping socialism in Europe, climate change, abortion rights etc. The important thing is that it not have any direct effect on your personal life, and that there is absolutely nothing you, personally, can do about it (or worse, there *is* something they could do, but the proponent isn’t about to lift a finger on it because Someone Should Do Something– not them personally, but somebody, and somehow, magically, getting a critical number of people onboard that crazytrain = Doing Something).
Clarissa, how can you care about the harassment of women in public bathrooms, in light of the imminent heat death of the universe?
Is this one of those unconscious avoidance tactics, like the way that whenever the giant casserole dish needs washing, I find myself overwhelmed with anxiety about our inability to plan for retirement?
-ethyl
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My life definitely improved thanks to Trump. Which doesn’t mean he’s the second coming of Jesus and a picture of perfection. He’s deeply imperfect and often very maddening. But he got me some things that might be small in the grand scheme of things yet they still improve my existence. Nobody else was offering or is now offering anything better. Why shouldn’t I mention it?
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Wait, so you’re genuinely worried about sex offenders harming women… and your solution is the guy who was literally ordered by a court to pay $83 million for sexual abuse? The same guy whose administration is sitting on a list of elite pedophiles and refusing to release it? Come on. You don’t actually care about protecting women, you just care about the culture war talking point.
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As I already explained, I genuinely don’t want to be called a transphobe and homophobe at work. Thanks to Trump, I no longer am. The moment another Dem comes to power, the name-calling will resume.
I simply want to be left alone. Nobody except Trump offered me that.
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As for Epstein, Trump released a lot more of Epstein files than Democrats ever did. If Epstein is an important issue for you, you should definitely be pro-Trump.
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He was forced to by Congress, otherwise he wouldn’t have released anything. Now his DOJ is slow walking everything, redacting things that shouldn’t be redacted, and constantly lying about almost everything.
I’m sure Biden would have rather keep this under lid also because it affects both Democrats and Republicans. They’re both equally bad on this.
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Republican controlled Congress.
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He was good on pushing against the trans stuff. But your original post is on sexual harassment, something which Trump himself is guilty of, and certainly doesn’t care about prosecuting. So that’s what I was responding to.
Also, what’s that point of it all if Democrats just waltz back in, stronger than ever in November because of Trump’s own stupidity?
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ICE was doing a good job deporting rapey illegals. At least, some of them got deported. That’s better than nothing.
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Dems: Great replacement
GOP: Great replacement plus jewish wars.
I know who I’m voting for!
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