Reconciliation

[Ratman_tf]

I don't see any problem with trans people being teachers or whatnot

Your attitude is exactly why the public school system is failing. No "sane person" with small children wants demonspawn teaching their kids. Oh look, more "extreme rhetoric," right? If I don't like pedophiles teaching my kids, just means I'm a bigot.

So here's the conundrum.  Are there transgendered people who you'd never know are transgendered unless you're bumping uglies with them?  Yes - there are - and they're quietly passable and monogamous . I have no issues with them living their lives. I have no problems with them teaching. They've clearly decided they're going all the way to become the other - including cutting off body parts, adding body parts, etc. Which is clearly a form of mental instability - but they're not pushing their crazy on anyone else and claiming that it's both normal and desirous for anyone else to do so.

The problem is that the transgendered that are teaching children are pretty much men in dresses or manly wimmenists with blue hair and nose rings and they're activist crusaders who have a compulsion to try and tell everyone around them about their private lives and convert others to their cause - and that's a problem when dealing with highly impressionable children. It's even more of a problem when the statistics show that the reason that many of them *are* trans is *because* they were molested as kids and *will* go on to molest kids themselves.

And it isn't even the "standard M2F" trans that this manifests as - it's stuff like the "can't tell what it is because it's purposely chosen to be confusing by growing a mustache and wear a dress and then demanding redress when someone can't figure out whether it's a man or a woman" like the DoE secretary currently in the news for stealing luggage and who is currently rumored to be under investigation for having sex with *actual* dogs.  We don't need someone who is clearly mentally ill in any position of authority of any kind - whether nuclear waste or teaching kids.

Look into desistance. It's a tragedy that the trans activist community turns on people who regret their transitions. The running theme is that a young girl who is having issues with her puberty is presupposed to be trans, given hormones and surgery, and then whoopsie, doodles, they desist and turn out to be bi or gay or had some kind of mental trauma and/or abuse behind their desire to transition, instead of being actually trans.

And there are trans people, like Buck Angel and Blair White who rightfully are calling this nonsense out.

[Mistwell]

Folks, earlier in this thread  I said that for reconciliation to happen, you have to be talking to rational people. Just by reading the weasel-worded responses of jhkim and Mistwell, you can tell that the "opposition" is not rational and unwilling to discuss the issue in good faith.

I said hey, work with moderates if you want to get somewhere. I was told moderates are "worse than" leftists because we don't believe anything. I explained how we do believe things just as principled and passionately as anyone else, but here we are again. We're irrational and not discussing in good faith if we don't just agree with what you say. You want to put us in a black and white firm label and place for everything and when we say that's not reality it's called "weasel-worded".

Just admit you are not interested in reconciliation and it's your way or the highway. At least the extremist progressives are willing to say that.

[jhkim]

To "I", I think a big issue is the question of fact, not policy.

Of course graduation rates and educational attainment have improved -- the school have been dumbed down to achieve just such a thing.  Look, I worked in a public library for nearly ten years and one of my main jobs was to help connect students to resources they needed in order to complete assignments.  And it wasn't at all uncommon for me to encounter high school and even college students who had no frigging idea how to even begin writing a paper. They couldn't even find a book on a shelf.  How the hell did they get that far into school?  Students like that make up those positive-seeming statistics of yours.

I taught in public schools in from 2010-2012 and again in 2019, and I also encountered plenty of terrible students. Many of them just couldn't get through the basics of writing. I think the U.S. educational system is terrible. But the question being asked isn't whether it is good or bad, but how it has changed over decades. Personal anecdote is often not a good measure of national trends over decades.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was established by Richard Nixon precisely to measure how basic educational standards like math and reading were being taught. They administer the exact same test every few years at randomly selected schools to observe general trends.

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38

The NAEP trend is not uniformly up. There have been downturns, and especially a big downturn with the pandemic. But it also isn't the uniform dumbing down that you describe.

A lot of national statistics aren't the same as people's anecdotal feeling for them. I often find the same in crime statistics, for example. Many people are convinced that crime has gotten uniformly worse decade after decade, which is not the case.

------

Going back to policy questions.

I'm implying no such thing -- as I went to pains to point out, the allocation of resources wasn't equal.  The resources should have been equalized as nearly as possible and that was all, though.  The other stuff -- discriminating against qualified white teachers, holding black students to different educational and disciplinary standards -- is equity bullshit and I am definitely against it.  It's your side that discriminates against whites and Asians these days, not mine.

I don't disagree about most of this, as are many people on the left. Discriminating against white teachers and/or holding black students to different standards does happen, but they aren't universally supported among Democrats. Even in California, attempts to support affirmative action have been shot down - like the defeat of Prop 16 in the 2020 election. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, makes a strong argument against affirmative action.

The thing is, even today, the resources aren't equal. U.S. schools are largely locally funded, and per-student spending varies hugely from district to district. I've taught at rich suburban schools that have carts full of laptops, and seen the difference from poor inner-city schools that struggle for pencils. The racial gap in resources is much smaller than it once was, but there are major differences depending on state and district.

People have different strategies to try to address these continuing disparities in schooling.

I also don't buy the "disparity of resources" argument, since the kids of poor Latin American peasants, poor Southeast Asians, etc. routinely do as well or even outperform kids of my own WASP ethnicity.  There certainly seems to be a disparity of how much the parents of various ethnic groups value education, though.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "disparity of resources" argument, since it sounded like you were in favor of equality of resources. Overall, what school a kid goes to is only one factor in how they will turn out. Regardless of what we do to schools, there will be a lot of trends because kids home environment, genetics, and other factors are hugely important for how they turn out.

[Bruwulf]

And that should be horrifying to you. That you think that distinction makes this "OK" is fucking horrifying. WTF could conceivably be wrong with your brain that you think the rules in the US Constitution regarding elections should be "disregarded" concerning a matter of elections? You understand THAT'S THE ENTIRE UNDERPINNING OF A CONSTITUTION-BASED DEMOCRACY, right? That if the rules regarding how to elect the leader of the nation for which that Constitutional applies should be disregarded because some fucker claims fraud but cannot prove it using the very court system set up for that issue, THAT IS FASCISM. There is no two ways about it - that is exactly how a Democracy dies and Fascism begins, where you override the very governing Constitution to put a leader in place.

Okay, but - setting aside whether or not it *has* been proven to your satisfaction... What if it *were* to be proven to your satisfaction? Plenty of people on the left have, very smugly, pointed out that the constitution doesn't provide for redress or correction adequate for such a situation.

Yes. It should be terrifying. It should also be terrifying that people should have even reached the point it's being seriously discussed, and yet here we are.

[jeff37923]

Folks, earlier in this thread  I said that for reconciliation to happen, you have to be talking to rational people. Just by reading the weasel-worded responses of jhkim and Mistwell, you can tell that the "opposition" is not rational and unwilling to discuss the issue in good faith.

I said hey, work with moderates if you want to get somewhere. I was told moderates are "worse than" leftists because we don't believe anything. I explained how we do believe things just as principled and passionately as anyone else, but here we are again. We're irrational and not discussing in good faith if we don't just agree with what you say. You want to put us in a black and white firm label and place for everything and when we say that's not reality it's called "weasel-worded".

Just admit you are not interested in reconciliation and it's your way or the highway. At least the extremist progressives are willing to say that.

You are correct. I am not willing to reconcile with the "opposition" when they are not rational and unwilling to discuss the issue in good faith.

I'm sorry that calling out your behavior makes you angry. Truth hurts.

[jhkim]

And that should be horrifying to you. That you think that distinction makes this "OK" is fucking horrifying. WTF could conceivably be wrong with your brain that you think the rules in the US Constitution regarding elections should be "disregarded" concerning a matter of elections? You understand THAT'S THE ENTIRE UNDERPINNING OF A CONSTITUTION-BASED DEMOCRACY, right? That if the rules regarding how to elect the leader of the nation for which that Constitutional applies should be disregarded because some fucker claims fraud but cannot prove it using the very court system set up for that issue, THAT IS FASCISM. There is no two ways about it - that is exactly how a Democracy dies and Fascism begins, where you override the very governing Constitution to put a leader in place.

Okay, but - setting aside whether or not it *has* been proven to your satisfaction... What if it *were* to be proven to your satisfaction? Plenty of people on the left have, very smugly, pointed out that the constitution doesn't provide for redress or correction adequate for such a situation.

Yes. It should be terrifying. It should also be terrifying that people should have even reached the point it's being seriously discussed, and yet here we are.

In the U.S., there have been a long history of people being unfairly denied their vote. This has happened many times over U.S. history. Sometimes such denial has been met with armed rebellion, but more often and more successfully, it has been met by sustained activism to push others to elect those who pass laws to change the situation - like the 19th Amendment, the Civil Right Act, and so forth.

In other countries, there have been many examples of when the government has been overthrown by the military or other armed forces, under the claim that the government's elections were not fairly handled. However, in almost all cases of this, I feel that it was an excuse and there was no effort to give fair voting rights to the opposition after the takeover.

[Eirikrautha]

No dumbass moderates are as principled as anyone else they just don't fit in the perfect little model you fit yourself in. They can be pro-choice and pro-gun-control but against higher taxes and business regulations, etc.. Saying you have to line up exactly with all the conservative issues or else you're unprincipled is nonsense. Your principles are no more or less valuable and consistent as a moderates, you just have a unified label for yours that you're satisfied-enough with.

Thank you for proving my point.  Those are policy positions, not principles

There are consistent principals behind every one of those policy positions. Obviously.

A principle is an overarching belief that informs all of your policy positions. 

No you extremist twat, it's not ONE principal which is overarching all your beliefs. Most humans have multiple principals which guide their beliefs.

Please elucidate the overarching principle that manifests as "pro-choice and pro-gun-control but against higher taxes and business regulations."  You don't even recognize how badly you played yourself.

That's not how principals work. You don't have just one and that's it, and if stuff doesn't fit in that one principal then it's an ignored issue or you try and force it into that principal even when it doesn't fit. Traditionally, the chief principles are accountability, justice, nonmaleficence, autonomy, beneficence, fidelity, and veracity., though even that list has expanded over time.

Every time you type, you make it worse.  Nowhere did i say that people have only one principle.   What I stated was that a principle affects every policy you have.  So, if you believe in freedom,  every policy should maximize freedom,  along with any other principles that you have being maximized in that policy as well.  Only a squishy principle-less moderate could assert that people should have dozens of principles which only affect certain policies where  convenient.   I'm still waiting for the overarching principle that fits with your stealth liberal examples...

What does "overarching" mean in your "overarching principle that fits with your..." sentence if you're not trying to force all policies into one principal? And where is YOUR list of principals for each of those policy issues?

They were your list of policies.  You first.

[MeganovaStella]

What the fuck is going on here?

[Brad]

What the fuck is going on here?

Some people trying to have a reasonable conversation being interrupted by a CCP apologist and a filthy Marxist.

[Bruwulf]

In the U.S., there have been a long history of people being unfairly denied their vote. This has happened many times over U.S. history. Sometimes such denial has been met with armed rebellion, but more often and more successfully, it has been met by sustained activism to push others to elect those who pass laws to change the situation - like the 19th Amendment, the Civil Right Act, and so forth.

There is no way to vote a remedy for an illegitimately installed POTUS, though. There's no mechanism for a recall. Even impeachment doesn't work, it doesn't install a legitimately elected POTUS, just gets rid of (half of) an illegitimate cabinet.

[Ratman_tf]

In the U.S., there have been a long history of people being unfairly denied their vote. This has happened many times over U.S. history. Sometimes such denial has been met with armed rebellion, but more often and more successfully, it has been met by sustained activism to push others to elect those who pass laws to change the situation - like the 19th Amendment, the Civil Right Act, and so forth.

There is no way to vote a remedy for an illegitimately installed POTUS, though. There's no mechanism for a recall. Even impeachment doesn't work, it doesn't install a legitimately elected POTUS, just gets rid of (half of) an illegitimate cabinet.

How would such a mechanism work without it being weaponized as a political tool?

[Grognard GM]

In the U.S., there have been a long history of people being unfairly denied their vote. This has happened many times over U.S. history. Sometimes such denial has been met with armed rebellion, but more often and more successfully, it has been met by sustained activism to push others to elect those who pass laws to change the situation - like the 19th Amendment, the Civil Right Act, and so forth.

There is no way to vote a remedy for an illegitimately installed POTUS, though. There's no mechanism for a recall. Even impeachment doesn't work, it doesn't install a legitimately elected POTUS, just gets rid of (half of) an illegitimate cabinet.

How would such a mechanism work without it being weaponized as a political tool?

It couldn't, that's why the voting process must be unimpeachable, so that sour grapes don't metastasize in to a belief that the losing side was cheated.

I'd argue the U.S. hasn't had such confidence in a generation.

[oggsmash]

  people cheat on their wives, their taxes, admission exams, college tests, sports, etc.   Anything where there is a "reward" possible for cheating, some people will cheat.  When we are talking complete power....I find it odd folks have such a hard time with thinking people are cheating around elections.  Rest homes have 100 percent turn out, ballots get harvested like wheat in certain parts of certain states.  All sorts of shady shit.  I can understand there will be shady shit.  My issue is everyone gets to vote, this IMO is bullshit.  When my kids were 3 they did not get to decide what we had for meals, cars we bought, grocery lists, etc.  They were incapable of making those decisions.  We have A LOT of people in the country that are net negative tax payers.   They get to vote/decide on matters that affect me yet they are doing ZERO regarding effort in moving society along.  I think if your life in such a state you are a net negative tax payer, you should not be allowed to vote.  This is similar to stories I see where the local news will have a story about some severely mentally handicapped person (severe mental retardations) always so happy they get to go and vote.....this person is just barely above playing with their own feces and they get to vote?   What sort of meaning does it have if people who are useless get to decide matters?   

[3catcircus]

.....this person is just barely above playing with their own feces and they get to vote?   What sort of meaning does it have if people who are useless get to decide matters?

You could have just said "the Democratic base."

[Bruwulf]

How would such a mechanism work without it being weaponized as a political tool?

As opposed to how impeachment hasn't been weaponized?

I mean, I get it, in our current political climate everything gets weaponized, but the alternative is the situation where we have now, where even if we proved malfeasance, there isn't anything we could legally do about it.

I mean, fuck, that was literally the justification one court (I forget, Ohio, Pennsylvania, one of those) used for shutting down an investigation of election irregularities... That it was too late to matter.