hpslugga

It’s possible to hate a political party for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with why someone else hates that party.

Oh I remember. Followed all the way through and even remember watching a Boston Legal episode that focused on it and it captured the mood of the whole thing quite well.

You know, as appealing as that sounds, you probably just gave that guy grounds to shoot you.

He always was a champion Clintonite

Well Obama was a piece of performance art in his own right, but he wasn’t exactly wrong there. Just seems odd coming from him as I figured those types had a modicum of professional courtesy, especially when they play for the same team.

That doesn’t make him better.

Different stories, yes, but not different in their motive to pass themselves off as something that they weren't. As to which was worse, I think that's fairly obvious. No point in cockfighting those two. They were both nightmares, but the whole Lenin/Trotsky/Stalin thing was a much preferred nightmare to Hitler, who took the word "nightmare" to a whole other level. But my point is that with one, we're supposed to take their self-promotion seriously where as we're supposed to call bullshit on the other. My only point is to call bullshit on both in as far as the S-word is concerned.

Ashtray soda pop dingo? It’s funny because everyone here agrees that the Nazis were fascists, even though fascism is diametrically opposed to socialism in every conceivable way. And yet we still agree on that point, despite the fact that “Nazi” is slang for “National Socialist.” We all agree that they were not socialists in the slightest, and we all agree that they were merely using that word to boost their credibility with the broad population (since back in those days, the concept of socialism had a very real moral appeal globally). Why do we not afford the same cynical mentality to the Soviet Union? As hayden said a moment ago, “i don't think many on this board would disagree that nazi fascism and communist russia didn't have a lot in common. they were both authoritarian states that purged a significant number of their population in order to retain power. they didn't even dress that differently.” And why is he correct? Because they were both whoring the terms socialist/communist to appeal to the populations of both societies. But both were fascistic. How do we know this? Easy: apply the actual definitions of each concept, juxtapose them to what actually took place in Germany/Russia and see what you get. Please feel free to do your own research, but it’s been my observation since I began looking into this 14 years ago that what took place in those two countries had almost everything to do with fascism and hardly anything (if at all) to do with socialism. Socialism is an anarchic movement that seeks to restore "workers control of the means of production," which is the core definition of the term. And it's very hard to imply either society was even remotely befitting to that concept when you consider the kind of union/council busting that went on (Russia was particularly awful and it was done almost immediately under Lenin, so Stalin can't even claim credit for that). Yeah, they flew the flag, but if all you do is fly a flag, you're not socialist, fascist, capitalist, etc. You're just a fan of a fucking team, and as a fan of that team, you will follow that team down every weird ass road...like when Republicans offer apologetics for covfefe. So why didn’t they simply call themselves the “Fascist Party?” Simply put, fascism had no broad appeal. It never has, does not, and likely never will. Yes, there are fringe elements of each society to support that crap, but it isn’t nearly enough to literally take over an entire country. If the Nazis were called the Nationalfaschistische Deutsche Partei, and if what became of the Bolsheviks were called the Fashistskaya partiya Sovetskogo Soyuza, my guess is hardly any of us would even know who Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin even were, much less would they’ve built the horrid legacies that they did. tl;dr: I've never offered this before because I struggled to find an example that UT fans could clearly understand, but here it is: Nazi Germany/USSR promoting themselves as "socialist countries"=30 year old Ron Weaver passing himself off as 23 year old Ron McKelvey

When you begin with a premise that the Soviet Union had even the vaguest connection to the concept of socialism, the inevitable answer to your question is, obviously, "snausages."

Again, that's adorable.

Well he actually doesn't need to say the BCS isn't the CFP. He just needs to point out that neither one of those teams lost the SEC championship game. Which is true; neither did. LSU won it, Bama didn't play in it. Georgia, on the other hand, did lose it 42-10 and were punished by being sent to the Outback Bowl, which they also lost to a 3-loss Michigan State.

That's adorable

You’ve known me long enough to know I’ve an allergy to bullshit. If I read that drivel, here’s what happens:

They were lying in that they were pretending to know what herd immunity actually is, yes. I live in a wealthy area of Dallas, TX so I've heard this shit. When they said "herd immunity," and I asked them to explain, the overwhelming comparison was pox parties. Two words that Chris Rock would use to describe that: Ig Nant

Yeah well speaking of Aaron Carter, he's actually a case study in the myriad logical disconnects it had to have taken for an electorate that size to come out for a Donald Trump. "Aaron Carter ultimately decided not to vote for Trump Musician Aaron Carter tweeted his support for Donald Trump's candidacy in February 2016, which sparked a contentious back and forth with his fans. The Hollywood Reporter detailed Carter's now-deleted jabs at fans who admonished him for supporting Trump. The rapper told People in April 2016 that the fans harassing him for his support of Trump don't understand politics, saying, "I'm too intelligent for you guys." He admitted, though, that he didn't support all of Trump's policies like those on immigration and LGBTQ+ issues. It seems Carter was amid a change of heart when he spoke with People because, later that month, The Hollywood Reporter highlighted the musician's 180° turn on the issue. In a since-deleted tweet, he wrote, "I have decided I will not be voting for Donald Trump. I've seen a lot and to ME. it's just something I can't take part in. Too many reasons." In October 2016, after the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which Trump brags about grabbing women "by the p*ssy," the singer/songwriter reiterated his lack of support for Donald Trump's candidacy (via Billboard), by writing in another since-deleted tweet, "No. I'm not supporting Donald trump anymore." Yeah...this is the same Aaron Carter who, to this day, continues to defend Lou Pearlman. Poor guy could never identify a con-man, yet he prattles on about how he's "too intelligent" for the millions who did actually know better.

I seriously think he just shops around positions and pretends to adopt them. He’s in favor of universal healthcare and UBI, but he’ll also have Tim Pool and nod in total agreement when he whines about how Twitter, Facebook, et al have some institutional bias against “conservatives.” He also supports legalizing marijuana and then expresses admiration for Alex Jones...or again, he used to admire Jones. Fucking silly man either way.

Hey, he’s an admitted moon landing denier (or used to be, I can’t be sure). Anything is possible with people like that.

I mean to me that seems to be the central question in this micro-controversy. Furthermore, when Rogan says "I'll go no," on what is he basing that choice? Ultimately it gets boiled down to the same aforementioned pseudo-scientific and pseudo-intellectual bullshit that people like Rogan live to defend. I'm about as anti-establishment as it gets, so I'm very sympathetic when dissenters make themselves heard. But where he's coming from isn't a position of dissent; it's a position of what's called "being a contrarian little asshole."

Well what else could it be about? It's not like they have an actual intellectual compass. It's not like they have a moral compass. It's not like they literally promote an ideology. Their entire function is to parrot talking points proposed by an entity that is, as Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it, "an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition." There's no ideology behind that. There's no intellectual principle behind that. It's kinda like what Hitchens said about Ayn Rand's absurd notion of "objectivism:" There are some ideas that need no further reinforcement. But you can't run a 24-hour "news" station by having the first guy on and say "guys, remember: be a giant dick and piss off liberals," so they have to spend the next 23 hours, 59 minutes and 55 seconds of the day coming up with bizarre stories and explanations that show how supercoolawesome they think they fucking are.

Apistevist

There's that word again!

Alan Dershowitz

That would be asserting baseless speculation as if it was a matter of fact, and it would be done so on insufficient evidence. Again, that’s very different from “chocolate is better than vanilla.”

“grounds insufficient to produce complete certainty.” And, if there are grounds sufficient to produce complete certainty, that would make it a fact, would it not?

There’s no one source for that. It was common knowledge in the pre-post-modernist period, which is why “opinion” is its own word. Otherwise we’d just be using words like “belief” or “perception” or things of that sort completely interchangeably. It’s not hard to figure out. Here are two statements: ”I believe the Holocaust was a real event.” ”I believe blue is better than red.” Do you really not see how those are radically different? Yeah they both begin with the speaker’s preface of “I believe,” which is obviously reflective of belief (duh), but that’s where the comparison stops. But if you want an actual source, just read dictionary.com’s first definition of the word “opinion.” And I should preface that with the disclaimer that the dictionary is very vulnerable to defining words in a contemporary sense. In other words, some definitions are merely a reflection of the time they were established (ex: socialism). Nonetheless, they define opinion as “a belief or judgment that rests on grounds insufficient to produce complete certainty.” That's more or less exactly what you’re quoting.