Charlie Kirk shot in Utah

[Emily Lake]

I mean... do YOU condemn cock fights?

Without question.

You don't seem to be getting the point here. We could institute a virtue inquisition and go on like this for months, demanding that everyone voice their condemnation of heresy and their adulation for dogma.

Or... we could act like adults and recognize that cock fights are 1) irrelevant to this discussion entirely and 2) pretending like someone not having spoken against something irrelevant to this discussion does not imply that they secretly support it. It's a pointless bit of virtue signalling that serves no real purpose whatsoever.

Then why did you bring them up?

TO DEMONSTRATE HOW ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT A DERAIL IT IS AND HOW COMPLETELY ABSURD IT IS TO BE CONTEMPTUOUS TO SOMEONE FOR NOT ENGAGING IN YOUR INANE DERAIL

A point that still seems to have missed you.

 

[Politesse]

2) the fuck are you talking about

That which you are apparently ignorant about, but about which Ip've gone to the capitol itself and certainly logged in the phone hours campaigning to end: the exception clause. With some success, I might add. I was involved one way or another with the campaigns in Utah, Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont, and I'm proud of that.

It's astonishing that you are so unaware of your own country's laws as to not know what I am referring to.

Alternatively, perhaps you could consider attempting to be just a teensy bit less egotistical? Slavery isn't legal in the US to the best of my knowledge.

Then your knowledge is perilously wrong. Yes, chattel slavery for general commercial purposes is illegal, but not slavery as punishment for a crime. The constitutional amendment that outlawed slavery included this as an explicit exception case, and in many states this was used as an excuse to immediately re-enslave hundreds of thousands of recently emancipated slaves on the thin accusation of various "crimes". Slavery has since been outlawed altogether in most states including those mentioned above, states in which yours truly canvassed and educated in advance of their respective votes. Slavery remains explicitly legal at the federal level, by copycat legislation in twenty states, is regularly practiced in two, and many states (including my own, unfortunately) use the exception clause to justify paying prisoners pennies on the hour for dangerous involuntary labor, which is not that much different from slavery as a practical matter.

And then there's the other slough of exception cases. You've mentioned one yourself: if a state refuses to act in any way on undocumented labor, they aren't enforcing anti-slavery laws on behalf of immigrants, either. Many states, actually most, refuse to prosecute "unpaid internships", government employees who have been forced to "volunteer" unpaid overtime, "family members" imported from overseas as labor, and many other tricks employers use to define certain kinds of unpaid labor as something other than slavery. Arguing, in short, that if you don't call it slavery, it shouldn't count as slavery. Or to put it even more succinctly, that slavery is freedom if you call it that.

 

[Politesse]

A point that still seems to have missed you.

I haven't missed your point, I just disagree with it. If you don't want to talk about an important issue, don't bring it up. If someone asks a follow up question and you don't want to answer it, ignore them. But you're not a "persecuted citizen" because you brought up slavery and then people talked about slavery for a bit. Slavery is, and should be, a serious issue, very likely to spur conversation.

 

[Politesse]

No, we have not. We have seen that people who have read Orwell get annoyed when people who should read Orwell lightly quote Orwell passages that were not, in fact, intended as thought-terminating cliches but diagnoses of the very authoritarian mindset that tswizzle himself routinely espouses, especially where the president is concerned. Jimmy's assessment was entirely correct.

I'm more inclined to think that you're trying to cover your ass instead of just admitting that you missed the reference. Because you dragging us all through a torquemada montage about how Tswizzle hasn't denounced slavery certainly isn't some high-brow and subtle commentary on Orwell being "misused" here.

Tomás de Torquemada was what passed, laughably, as a legal authority in his time and place, whose reforms resulted in the Spanish Crown putting at least 2000 people to death and dehoming hundreds of thousands. I have never put anyone to death. Or even tried to. I'm just a dude on the internet with an opinion, just like you.

And that opinion involves disdain for conservatives who cite Orwell while also ironically and hypocritically proving the central thesis of most of his political writing: that words become weapons, in the hands of those who are careless of whether their words are true. We're in this thread to discuss the life and death of a man who believed at his core that literal truth becomes optional in service of sacred Truth, and lived that principle for all of his adult life. Citing Orwell is appropriate here, but referencing him as an excuse for or deflection of political and intellectual dishonesty? Not so much.

 

[Emily Lake]

2) the fuck are you talking about

That which you are apparently ignorant about, but about which Ip've gone to the capitol itself and certainly logged in the phone hours campaigning to end: the exception clause. With some success, I might add. I was involved one way or another with the campaigns in Utah, Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont, and I'm proud of that.

It's astonishing that you are so unaware of your own country's laws as to not know what I am referring to.

Alternatively, perhaps you could consider attempting to be just a teensy bit less egotistical? Slavery isn't legal in the US to the best of my knowledge.

Then your knowledge is perilously wrong. Yes, chattel slavery for general commercial is illegal, but not slavery as punishment for a crime. The constitutional amendment that outlawed slavery included this as an explicit exception case, and in many states this was used as an excuse to immediately re-enslave hundreds of thousands of recently emancipated slaves on the thin accusation of various "crimes". Slavery has since been outlawed altogether in most states including those mentioned above, states in which yours truly canvassed and educated in advance of their respective votes. Slavery remains explicitly legal at the federal level, by copycat legislation in twenty states, is regularly practiced in two, and many states (including my own, unfortunately) use the exception clause to justify paying prisoners pennies on the hour for dangerous involuntary labor, which is not that much different from slavery as a practical matter.

And then there's the other slough of exception cases. You've mentioned one yourself: if a state refuses to act in any way on undocumented labor, they aren't enforcing anti-slavery laws on behalf of immigrants, either. Many states, actually most, refuse to prosecute "unpaid internships", government employees who have been forced to "volunteer" unpaid overtime, "family members" imported from overseas as labor, and many other tricks employers use to define certain kinds of unpaid labor as something other than slavery. Arguing, in short, that if you don't call it slavery, it shouldn't count as slavery.

Mmm... Okay, I get what you're saying. I think calling current incarcerated work force "slavery" is a bit of a stretch, but certainly involuntary labor. Not much more of a stretch than using illegal workers at illegally low wages.

Unpaid internships... that's an entirely different thing. You could probably make an argument that many internships should be paid, but the whole point of internships is to get on-the-job experience while earning college credit for it.

Or to put it even more succinctly, that slavery is freedom if you call it that.

You've got that backwards, and it's not at all what the phrase means.

All of this is again irrelevant though - because slave revolts and reparations have nothing at all to do with unruly protests against allowing conservatives to talk to college students.

I still think you're trying to cover your ass for having missed the obvious repartee.

 

[TSwizzle]

A point that still seems to have missed you.

I haven't missed your point, I just disagree with it. If you don't want to talk about an important issue, don't bring it up. If someone asks a follow up question and you don't want to answer it, ignore them. But you're not a "persecuted citizen" because you brought up slavery and then people talked about slavery for a bit. Slavery is, and should be, a serious issue, very likely to spur conversation.

You've done nothing but whine about how I won't answer your dumb derails.

Get over yourself.

 

[Emily Lake]

A point that still seems to have missed you.

I haven't missed your point, I just disagree with it. If you don't want to talk about an important issue, don't bring it up. If someone asks a follow up question and you don't want to answer it, ignore them. But you're not a "persecuted citizen" because you brought up slavery and then people talked about slavery for a bit. Slavery is, and should be, a serious issue, very likely to spur conversation.

Again, Tswizzle didn't bring up slavery. He responded to an appeal to Orwell with a quote from Orwell.

Right now, you and I are at a stage where almost without fail, if I say something, you're going to disagree with it and argue against me. Idiomatically, you'll argue with me if I say the sky is blue.

Shall we all brace for your descent into the physics of refraction and why the sky isn't actually colored blue and it's all an optical illusion and besides sometimes the sky is yellow or red especially around sunset?

 

[Emily Lake]

And that opinion involves disdain for conservatives who cite Orwell while also ironically and hypocritically proving the central thesis of most of his political writing: that words become weapons, in the hands of those who are careless of whether their words are true.

For someone who so frequently exaggerates meanings, this is some serious understatement of Orwell's premise.

It's not about people "not caring" whether their words are true, it's about willfully abusing and coercively changing the meaning of words as a means to intentionally control what people are capable of expressing. It's about the intentional misuse of language to control people.

 

[Politesse]

Mmm... Okay, I get what you're saying. I think calling current incarcerated work force "slavery" is a bit of a stretch, but certainly involuntary labor.

You know what disagrees with you? The national federal Constitution, and the state constitutions of twenty US states. If slavery in the prisons isn't slavery, why would it need an exception clause? And why is there fervent opposition to correcting the law, if it wouldn't change anything to outlaw slavery universally?

Unpaid internships... that's an entirely different thing. You could probably make an argument that many internships should be paid, but the whole point of internships is to get on-the-job experience while earning college credit for it.

How twee and lovely of you to think that. I disagree. Labor laws mean jack shit if they don't apply to all workers.

All of this is again irrelevant though - because slave revolts and reparations have nothing at all to do with unruly protests against allowing conservatives to talk to college students

Which was itself a derail to a thread about Charlie Kirk's assassination, and also the prelude to tswizzle asking me a million fucking times whether I support or denounce "violent thugs outside Berkeley", then ignoring my responses and either asking again, or wrongly accusimg me of an answer I have not provided. But when he does it, I suppose that's just good old-fashioned academic inquiry on his part?

 

[Politesse]

A point that still seems to have missed you.

I haven't missed your point, I just disagree with it. If you don't want to talk about an important issue, don't bring it up. If someone asks a follow up question and you don't want to answer it, ignore them. But you're not a "persecuted citizen" because you brought up slavery and then people talked about slavery for a bit. Slavery is, and should be, a serious issue, very likely to spur conversation.

Again, Tswizzle didn't bring up slavery. He responded to an appeal to Orwell with a quote from Orwell.

Right now, you and I are at a stage where almost without fail, if I say something, you're going to disagree with it and argue against me. Idiomatically, you'll argue with me if I say the sky is blue.

Shall we all brace for your descent into the physics of refraction and why the sky isn't actually colored blue and it's all an optical illusion and besides sometimes the sky is yellow or red especially around sunset?

I mean, it's definitely true that the sky is not always blue. But not that I am some cruel villain who disagrees with whatever you say. In this very thread, you denounced slavery and I thanked you for doing so. Tres simple.

 

[TSwizzle]

Which was itself a derail to a thread about Charlie Kirk's assassination, and also the prelude to tswizzle asking me a million fucking times whether I support or denounce "violent thugs outside Berkeley", then ignoring my responses and either asking again, or wrongly accusimg me of an answer I have not provided.

Charlie Kirk was scheduled to be talking at this TPUSA event in Berkeley but he was assassinated. So it’s not a derail. The event went ahead despite the best efforts of the violent thugs you support. I asked you a few times sure but your responses were bullshit deflections and then you went totally off topic.

 

[Politesse]

Which was itself a derail to a thread about Charlie Kirk's assassination, and also the prelude to tswizzle asking me a million fucking times whether I support or denounce "violent thugs outside Berkeley", then ignoring my responses and either asking again, or wrongly accusimg me of an answer I have not provided.

Charlie Kirk was scheduled to be talking at this TPUSA event in Berkeley but he was assassinated. So it’s not a derail. The event went ahead despite the best efforts of the violent thugs you support. I asked you a few times sure but your responses were bullshit deflections and then you went totally off topic.

What does "support" mean, here?

 

[Arctish]

I mean... do YOU condemn cock fights?

Without question.

How about texting while driving? Or double parking or parking next to a fire hydrant?

War is Peace.

Global warming is global cooling,

Using Orwellian language does not mean you use Orwellian language if you use it ironically.

Also, irony is dead. Long live irony!

 

[Patooka]

The last 10 pages of this thread is all the proof one needs to show that the MAGA "outrage" over Kirk's murder was never anything but kabuki theatre.

 

[Jarhyn]

Another thing I find quite telling is the way some use the Orwellian concept of "Newspeak".

Orwell, being an author, wasn't really interested, after all, in discussing "new" tools of fascism, but rather discussing all the old ones in a new context that might expose them for what they are.

Newspeak, from this perspective, would comport to an already extant behavior, namely the control of language to demand controversial concepts cannot be discussed using those senses of the word.

One such example of a more classic version of this phenomena is in the use of the word itself over time: it was almost immediately co-opted by fascists as a term meaning, based on their usage "any evolution of language that brings in new concepts and which reveals old concepts as not aligning well with reality".

The idea for example that not all "women" have "vaginas" or even "ovaries" is a much more complex and nuanced view than "woman = female; all humans are one or the other".

Of course, often this introduction of new language gets labeled newspeak. It's language (speaking) and it's NEW, after all!

But that's not what makes something newspeak. Newspeak is the use of language to prevent the very expression of concepts you disagree with... So using language to prevent this concept from being discussed, assuming it isn't provably nonsensical, using the insistence that "woman only means female" is real, authentic Orwellian newspeak, accomplished with pedantry and conservatism over language.

These people though have been abusing it for so long that the "newspeak" definition of "newspeak" is all people tend to use these days. Meaning at fascists used Newspeak to prevent people from understanding what Newspeak originally meant.

Oh, the irony.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I mean... do YOU condemn cock fights?

Without question.

You don't seem to be getting the point here. We could institute a virtue inquisition and go on like this for months, demanding that everyone voice their condemnation of heresy and their adulation for dogma.

Or... we could act like adults and recognize that cock fights are 1) irrelevant to this discussion entirely and 2) pretending like someone not having spoken against something irrelevant to this discussion does not imply that they secretly support it. It's a pointless bit of virtue signalling that serves no real purpose whatsoever.

Your defense of someone that called for women to not get educated so they can serve man is quite remarkable. Though you seem to get upset when Muslims suggest women wear a hijab. Odd inconsistency there.

 

[TSwizzle]

Which was itself a derail to a thread about Charlie Kirk's assassination, and also the prelude to tswizzle asking me a million fucking times whether I support or denounce "violent thugs outside Berkeley", then ignoring my responses and either asking again, or wrongly accusimg me of an answer I have not provided.

Charlie Kirk was scheduled to be talking at this TPUSA event in Berkeley but he was assassinated. So it’s not a derail. The event went ahead despite the best efforts of the violent thugs you support. I asked you a few times sure but your responses were bullshit deflections and then you went totally off topic.

What does "support" mean, here?

You approve of the violence and harassment towards the TPUSA attendees. What did you think I meant?

 

[Politesse]

Which was itself a derail to a thread about Charlie Kirk's assassination, and also the prelude to tswizzle asking me a million fucking times whether I support or denounce "violent thugs outside Berkeley", then ignoring my responses and either asking again, or wrongly accusimg me of an answer I have not provided.

Charlie Kirk was scheduled to be talking at this TPUSA event in Berkeley but he was assassinated. So it’s not a derail. The event went ahead despite the best efforts of the violent thugs you support. I asked you a few times sure but your responses were bullshit deflections and then you went totally off topic.

What does "support" mean, here?

You approve of the violence and harassment towards the TPUSA attendees. What did you think I meant?

I do not. You are knowingly and directly telling lies about me at this point. Why? Do you think it helps your "cause" to tell obvious lies about other people? Do lies become truths if you say them enough times, in your worldview?

 

[TSwizzle]

Which was itself a derail to a thread about Charlie Kirk's assassination, and also the prelude to tswizzle asking me a million fucking times whether I support or denounce "violent thugs outside Berkeley", then ignoring my responses and either asking again, or wrongly accusimg me of an answer I have not provided.

Charlie Kirk was scheduled to be talking at this TPUSA event in Berkeley but he was assassinated. So it’s not a derail. The event went ahead despite the best efforts of the violent thugs you support. I asked you a few times sure but your responses were bullshit deflections and then you went totally off topic.

What does "support" mean, here?

You approve of the violence and harassment towards the TPUSA attendees. What did you think I meant?

I do not.

Sure, Jan.

You are knowingly and directly telling lies about me at this point. Why? Do you think it helps your "cause" to tell obvious lies about other people?

You’re one of the worst offenders for this type of bullshit.

Do lies become truths if you say them enough times, in your worldview?

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

 

[Politesse]

Which was itself a derail to a thread about Charlie Kirk's assassination, and also the prelude to tswizzle asking me a million fucking times whether I support or denounce "violent thugs outside Berkeley", then ignoring my responses and either asking again, or wrongly accusimg me of an answer I have not provided.

Charlie Kirk was scheduled to be talking at this TPUSA event in Berkeley but he was assassinated. So it’s not a derail. The event went ahead despite the best efforts of the violent thugs you support. I asked you a few times sure but your responses were bullshit deflections and then you went totally off topic.

What does "support" mean, here?

You approve of the violence and harassment towards the TPUSA attendees. What did you think I meant?

I do not.

Sure, Jan.

You are knowingly and directly telling lies about me at this point. Why? Do you think it helps your "cause" to tell obvious lies about other people?

You’re one of the worst offenders for this type of bullshit.

Do lies become truths if you say them enough times, in your worldview?

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

I've never said anything remotely in support of "violent thugs outside Berkeley". In El Cerrito, I presume?