Politics And Current Events

[shmenguin]

The_D got quarantined on Reddit today. People are melting down throwing around all kinds of conspiracies, but they were banned for calling for violence for the Oregan situation.

depending on the definition of "they", this is a strange line to draw.

[Troy Loney]

Seems like the reddit folks were looking for a reason to take action.

Over the last few months we have observed repeated rule-breaking behavior in your community and an over-reliance on Reddit admins to manage users and remove posts that violate our content policy, including content that encourages or incites violence. Most recently, we have observed this behavior in the form of encouragement of violence towards police officers and public officials in Oregon. This is not only in violation of our site-wide policies, but also your own community rules (rule #9). You can find violating content that we removed in your mod logs.

As we have discussed in the past, and as detailed in our content policy and moderator guidelines, we expect you to enforce against rule-breaking content. You’ve made progress over the last year, but we continue to observe and take action on a disproportionate amount of rule-breaking behavior in this community. We recognize that you do remove posts that are reported, but we are troubled that violent content more often goes unreported, and worse, is upvoted.

[shmenguin]

The_D got quarantined on Reddit today. People are melting down throwing around all kinds of conspiracies, but they were banned for calling for violence for the Oregan situation.

https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2 ... ans/224018

those comments are weird. the system has been cultivated to benefit these types of fine people, but they still need to spark some sort of revolution? like what's the goal here...we talkin' basic genocide or insurrection against the government that protects all the stupid things they like?

[shmenguin]

Seems like the reddit folks were looking for a reason to take action.

they don't need a reason. they could have squashed that forum hundreds of times because of other violent rhetoric. or they could have squashed it just because they felt like it - like they have with other subs before. wonder what's really prompting this new signaling.

[Troy Loney]

Seems like the reddit folks were looking for a reason to take action.

they don't need a reason. they could have squashed that forum hundreds of times because of other violent rhetoric. or they could have squashed it just because they felt like it - like they have with other subs before. wonder what's really prompting this new signaling.

I think these platforms are doing everything they can to stray from any move that might seem political.

The free speech advocacy stuff on the right is basically the dumbest collection of arguments going.

[shmenguin]

This was published this week

https://thenextweb.com/opinion/2019/06/ ... thedonald/

Seems like it was a, “I can’t believe we’re getting away with this” thing. People within Reddit understood what t_d was but I don’t think there was any mainstream pressure. Now they got caught and are pretending like this is new rhetoric. Even though it’s all just a result of a profitability algorithm.

[Dickie Dunn]

Extremely short article but with some good info that reinforces how our entire economy is reliant on people spending more than they have and we're all ****.

A worrisome 22% have less than $5,000 in savings earmarked for retirement, according to new data from Northwestern Mutual’s 2019 Planning & Progress Study. Another 5% have between $5,000 and $24,999 put away and only 16% have saved $200,000 or more.

Additionally, 46% of respondents say they don’t know how much they have saved for retirement.

The numbers are just as bleak when divided by generation. Although many baby boomers, defined here as those ages 55 to 73, are nearing retirement, 17% have less than $5,000 in retirement savings.

Many Americans are aware of their lack of savings, yet few are doing anything about it. On average, survey respondents say there’s a 45% chance they’ll outlive their savings, yet 41% haven’t taken any actions to address the issue.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/26/how-muc ... ement.html

[Factorial]

The free speech advocacy stuff on the right is basically the dumbest collection of arguments going.

I can't use the "N" word anymore. Waaahhh!

[Troy Loney]

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/ ... 20-1384037

What now?

Ahead of his expected meeting with Putin on the sidelines of this weekend’s G-20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, the president told reporters that while he expected to have a positive conversation with Putin, he would not divulge whether he will press the adversarial leader about election interference.

“I will have a very good conversation with him,” Trump said, adding, “What I say to him is none of your business.”

[count2infinity]

The_D got quarantined on Reddit today. People are melting down throwing around all kinds of conspiracies, but they were banned for calling for violence for the Oregan situation.

I like this comment on r/subredditdrama's thread on the matter:

First the came for the fat people haters, and I said nothing because another person's weight isn't really my business.

Then they came for the racists, and I said nothing because I was not a racist.

Then they came for the Nazis, and again I said nothing because, seriously, **** Nazis.

Then they didn't come after me because I'm not a hateful little shitgoblin. Turns out they were just going after awful people and things are much better now.

[MWB]

One thing I will say: I'm generally empathetic to the anthem protests at professional events, because I think the whole 'please rise and remove your hats' thing is silly in the context of a pro sports event. But when you are in an international competition on foreign soil as a representative of the country, it's a bit of a different scenario. That's more of a hard-to-defend affront, and I do not like it. That said, her protest consists of not singing the **** song, so....

This is where I stand

[tifosi77]

shitgoblin

I lol'd

[Factorial]

From The_Donald:

Looks like Reddit is itching for a chance to be investigated for election meddling.

We all know they delete incriminating information though and don't store it per the FTC guidelines.

Force them to hand over the servers and we'll find deleted segments they attempt to hide with software. This alone is enough to bring the FBI (the version that actually does their jobs) in and arrest the higher ups responsibl

[Factorial]

This seems to have triggered them:

Wow, Veritas certainly struck a nerve...

[Troy Loney]

From The_Donald:

Looks like Reddit is itching for a chance to be investigated for election meddling.

We all know they delete incriminating information though and don't store it per the FTC guidelines.

Force them to hand over the servers and we'll find deleted segments they attempt to hide with software. This alone is enough to bring the FBI (the version that actually does their jobs) in and arrest the higher ups responsibl

So these dinguses think that reddit is making campaign contribution by banning people that break their rules?

Like i said, the alt-right free speech people are the dumbest. But they take their queues from grifters, so that's to be expected.

[tifosi77]

Dinguses? Dingi? Dingae?

According to Chrome spellcheck, it is indeed dinguses.

[tifosi77]

Also, what are these FTC guidelines pertaining to 'incriminating information' to which the good redditor makes reference?

[Dickie Dunn]

How delusional do you have to be to believe the entire world is a conspiracy against you?

[Factorial]

They seem to be coalescing around this as an explanation of the offending posts:

Probably some leftist made an alt and posted anti-police stuff.

[MR25]

That's some impressive cognitive dissonance.

[Shyster]

This seems to be a good time to mention that I just picked up this book: When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice by Jason Brennan, professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business, and Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. Really thought-provoking thus far.

An excerpt:

The Moral Parity Thesis holds that democratic government agents, property, and agencies are as much legitimate targets of defensive deception, sabotage, violence or “vigilante” justice as civilians are. The principles explaining how we may use defensive violence and subterfuge against civilians and the principles explaining how we may use defensive violence and subterfuge against government agents are one and the same. Government agents (including citizens when they vote) who commit injustice are on par with civilians who commit the same injustices.

To some, this may not sound like a controversial thesis. However, if we combine A) the Moral Parity Thesis with B) commonsense moral thinking about defensive lying, sabotage, and violence, plus C) frank and realistic appraisal of how governments tend to behave, a number of controversial claims follow, such as:

- It can be permissible to assassinate presidents, representatives, generals, and others, to stop them from waging unjust wars, even if those wars enjoy widespread popular support and are ratified through legal means. It is also permissible to kill them to stop them from issuing certain unjust orders even if the war they are fighting is, overall, justified.
- It is permissible to hurt or even kill a cop trying to arrest you when you have broken a bad or unjust law, such as laws criminalizing marijuana or homosexual sex.
- If you are imprisoned for doing something which should not be a crime, you may hurt the guards and break free.
- Political candidates may sometimes lie to ignorant, irrational, misinformed, or malicious voters in order to stop them from getting their way.
- Corporations, and private individuals or businesses, may lie about their compliance with wrongful or punitive regulations.
- A person may join the military or a government bureaucracy in order to sabotage some of its operations from within.
- You may engage in tax evasion to avoid unjust or excessive taxes.
- Soldiers may ignore unjust orders, and, in some cases, subdue or even kill the officers who issue them. They may also, in some cases, kill their fellow soldiers who try to follow those unjust orders.
- You may hurt a police officer to stop excessive violence.
- It can be permissible to find, steal, and publicize certain state secrets, such as some, if not all, of the secrets Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning revealed.
- Supreme Court (or equivalent) justices may lie about what the written or unwritten Constitution allows or forbids. They may refuse to enforce or apply unjust laws.

And so on.

These seemingly radical conclusions follow from commonsense moral principles plus the Moral Parity Thesis. While lying, sabotaging, hurting, destroying, and killing are usually wrong, commonsense holds that we may do these things, either in self-defense or defense of others, under the right circumstances. This book’s conclusions seem radical only because we tend to assume that government agents are to be held to a lower moral standard than we hold civilians, and we tend to assume that government agents enjoy a special immunity against defensive action. These assumptions are unfounded. Philosophers have spent 2500 years trying to justify these assumptions, but their arguments fail badly.

And an interview with the author:

https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts ... on-brennan

[shafnutz05]

I've spent too much time on Reddit. Some of the left wing subs on there are extraordinarily hateful too. But yeah, this was coming for a while.

[shmenguin]

lol...there’s no lefty equivalent of the_Donald. No need to score keep here. That sub was full of psychopaths. No one is conflating those clowns with bog standard conservatives. They’re their own category.

[Kaiser]

Beto is such a phony.

[Factorial]

Beto is such a phony.

When it's you against Ted Cruz it's not hard to get fans.

He's not ready or qualified, like most of these people, and should drop out.