Anonymous:What do you mean by 'ironic racism'? I've never heard the term before and am not sure what it means. Thanks :)
pervocracy:

Okay, here’s something that happens every five minutes on Reddit:

Someone posts a picture of a black man for whatever reason.  Maybe he’s in the news or doing something funny or holding a cute kitten.  Doesn’t matter.

The second or third top-voted comment is a white person joking about how he probably abandoned his children.  (If the picture is of a black child, the joke is about how their father probably abandoned them.  If the picture is of a black man with a child, the joke is about how amazing it is he didn’t abandon them.)

A few of the people doing this are just straightforward white supremacists of the sort who ruined Pepe memes.  But most of them, if called on it, would say that they’re not racist and they don’t really believe that, but it’s funny because that’s the sort of thing a racist would say.  Get it?  Isn’t it great?  Get it?

…You don’t get it?  You must be some sort of triggered SJW.

(from pervocracy)

hunterstheorem:

tw: culture war

Suppose literally any senator, governor, or other competent politican, of either party, stood up nine months ago and said “Hi, my name is X.  I am scandal-free, technocratically competent and unoffensive, and by the way, I support a wall on the Mexican border and a hard moratorium on immigration.”

Would this politician not win in an enormous landslide?  

Say what you will about Flight 93, and there’s some interesting arguments there, but Trump is clearly a loathsome person and a generally poor choice. And yet he’s hugely popular based almost entirely on one policy plank: no more immigrants.  

If you see two equally good baseball players, and one runs with terrible form, you draft that one; once you fix his form, he’ll smoke the other guy.  Dramatic immigration limits are winning despite the worst candidate in quite some time, despite complete alignment of the Cathedral against them, despite other factor.

Why is there not one sane & sober person willing to endorse borders?  One starts to wonder about conspiracies.

I actually disagree with this. I think that type of candidate would get asked point-blank, “Given that this is your policy, we think it makes sense to ask: do you think Mexicans/Muslims are bad people?” and if he unequivocally says no and cites statistics or economic mechanisms or something, I think that would get almost zero resonance.

(from hunterstheorem)

slatestarscratchpad:

Last night I had a dream that I was at a scientific conference. I had discovered some genes involved in multiple sclerosis and I was presenting a paper about them. I made sure to stress that there were probably thousands of genes involved in the disease and these were just a few of them.

Hillary Clinton was in the audience and stood up and objected that it was a waste of time to discover just a few genes if there were thousands of others. I retorted that it was like deleting emails on a server: you can delete the important ones first, and then go back and delete the others later. She got really embarrassed and didn’t ask any more questions.

(from slatestarscratchpad)

The distinction between “pro-choice but personally pro-life” is useful for people that can have children, because they’re two separate pieces of information. They’re both “I’m gonna vote for that guy for governor” but also “if you knock me up, I’m keeping it,” which is, like, an important and useful thing for people in your personal life to know.

But what about people that can’t have children? Then, “personally pro-life” means … there are people in your personal life that don’t get to choose? So like, “my wife doesn’t get to choose” or “if you knock up my daughter, I’ll make her keep it.” Uhhhmm. 

I guess it could also mean “if you knock up my daughter, then I’ll try to communicate my values and influence her decision through nice, polite discussions and then hope she makes the one I agree with.” But, like, that’s sort of the universal position for all decisions made by people who aren’t you; you can try to influence them up to a point and then it’s out of your hands. So, I feel like, if this is what you mean, then you might as well just not have a position since it’s not your decision to make anyway.