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19th August 2019, 03:38 PM | #441 |
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19th August 2019, 03:42 PM | #442 |
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19th August 2019, 03:53 PM | #443 |
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The meme was the explanation. I don't believe you didn't understand the first post.
What part did you not understand? The part where squeeg liked something? The part where one should like their own work? The part where it would be weird if squeeg didn't like the thing he liked? The part where stitching those three things together into a conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader? |
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19th August 2019, 04:41 PM | #444 | |||
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The sad thing is that half the audience was a reporter, and the other half was a Democrat supporter who went to challenge him on policies.
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19th August 2019, 05:20 PM | #445 |
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Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty. Robert Heinlein. |
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19th August 2019, 05:32 PM | #446 |
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19th August 2019, 05:59 PM | #447 |
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Ah, I see. You mean that Squeegee created the narrative he said he liked.
That was fairly opaque to me. Perhaps I'm slow. But obviously, Squeegee's narrative was referring to Tanabear's post about historic tyrannies and one fictional barbarian. It didn't come out of nowhere. If you think his summary was inapt, perhaps you should've said why. You could write clearly and convey your objections explicitly, you know, rather than insisting we go back and try to suss your meaning. ETA: And no, the meme was not an explanation in any sense I can see. But, you know, I could be slow again. |
19th August 2019, 06:15 PM | #448 |
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I do that quite a bit, too. I get about the same results either way, though, so I'm not committed to the practice. Sometimes I'm in the mood for something a little longer and clearer. Sometimes I'm in the mood for something more... Laconic. Since the membership here doesn't really offer me any real benefit to choosing one over the other, I don't see why I shouldn't just follow my mood.
Quote:
Anyway, I'm feeling generous, so here's your closure: I deployed the meme to signal my disdain for your pose of not understanding my meaning. I hope this helps. Have a nice day! |
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19th August 2019, 06:18 PM | #449 |
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20th August 2019, 03:03 AM | #450 |
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20th August 2019, 03:05 AM | #451 |
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Sufficiently advanced Woo is indistinguishable from Parody "There shall be no *poofing* in science" Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Force ***** on reasons back" Ben Franklin |
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20th August 2019, 03:16 AM | #452 |
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20th August 2019, 05:58 PM | #453 |
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I am obviously not defending rape or incest. I was merely commenting on the historical veracity and accuracy of Steve King's statement. He is more right than he knows. There is a quandary today when a public figure makes a true statement but it offends the sensibilities of the Left. Whether or not the statement is true doesn't matter. Is the Left offended? That is what matters.
p.s. Go back to the great Eurasian Steppe during the Bronze age or the Great Plains after the arrival of the horse. They knew what was best in life and it certainly wasn't being a farmer. |
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20th August 2019, 06:05 PM | #454 |
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20th August 2019, 06:20 PM | #455 |
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I guess we should be grateful for our ancestors, who worked the land that has served as the solid foundation for modern developed countries to emerge from. Meanwhile, in Mongolia, Conan's descendants live in tents without access to basic sanitation and squalid conditions.
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20th August 2019, 06:51 PM | #456 |
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Uh, I think (most of?) Conan's descendants live in Cimmeria. According to some nerds on the internet, Cimmeria likely stands in for Ireland or Wales.
I can't tell you anything about the state of sanitation in Ireland or Wales. For what it's worth, Inner Mongolia wasn't squalid, but I don't know about Mongolia proper. |
20th August 2019, 07:32 PM | #457 |
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20th August 2019, 09:54 PM | #458 |
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Well, Howard intended Conan's people to be proto-Celts. But the quote tanabear is so fond of isn't anywhere in Howard's writing, it's (probably erroneously) attributed to Genghis Khan. It was included in the film Conan the Barbarian, but as a quote slave masters taught to Conan as a parlor trick. As a way to have a joke at the expense of someone they deemed less than human because he was a slave. It clearly isn't meant to be taken literally in the context of that film (unless you have no idea how themes work), and isn't really the point of Howard's representation of the character, either; Howard thought civilization was a corrupting influence on humanity, but his Conan always got by through wit and instinct gained trough experience, and with a goal in mind that he worked to achieve intelligently - he didn't value pillaging and rape for the sake of it, he always had clear motivations. Howard's valuing of "barbarism" was mostly based around wanting to return humankind to what he saw as it's natural and right state of existence (where people could exist and do whatever they want, without a veneer of civility to mask their true intentions), not necessarily a "might is right" worldview.
Either way, it's another example of tanabear completely misunderstanding something he uses as proof of his claims. |
21st August 2019, 03:33 AM | #459 |
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21st August 2019, 05:20 AM | #460 |
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21st August 2019, 05:47 AM | #461 |
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To the extent the history is accurate, it's besides the point. This barbaric history is not a sensible justification, at least so far as the sane (and vaguely sane) are concerned.
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Back to the OP ... Yes, there are people who care to defend Steve King. |
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21st August 2019, 05:58 AM | #462 |
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21st August 2019, 03:39 PM | #463 |
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But the farmers always win in the end. Nomadic hunter gatherers always end up getting absorbed by communites based on Agriculture or getting wiped out entirely. I give you the Mongols in China as an example of the first...Kubla Khan was more Chinese then the Chinese..and the Sioux Indians as an example of the second.
But you are just indulging in Macho fantasies from the safety of a computer, I doubt you can ever ride a horse, frankly. |
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21st August 2019, 03:43 PM | #464 |
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That depends on who was writing the comic book at the time.
Some were very faithful to Howard's writing;the original run of Conan in Marvel comics back in the 70's altenated between original stories and straight up adaptations of specific Howard stories; some of the later runs got pretty far from Howard's ideas. |
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Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty. Robert Heinlein. |
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22nd August 2019, 06:54 AM | #465 |
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And if you're a Christian, the story that underlies your belief begins with military occupation, oppression and crucifixion. Why stop with incest and rape? We're the products of a history of conquest, murder, slavery and genocide, too.
Some of us, of course, have that odd idea that history need not be repeated. Silly liberal fantasy. |
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22nd August 2019, 07:50 AM | #466 |
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BTW it's been a while since it's been the core issue surrounding this dickcheese but is the GOP's standard line of apologetics on Steve King still some variation on they just can't kick him out of the party because... I have no idea, I guess apparently the largest and oldest political party in America has less control over their IP then a mid-rate Youtube channel?
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22nd August 2019, 08:28 AM | #467 |
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I don't know that the discussion of King's comments are really addressing his point. He wasn't saying that rape is an okay way to procreate.
Here's how I regard his comments. I haven't looked at them in detail, so I could be off here. Most or all of us are ultimately the product of rape somewhere in our lineage. If abortion had been an option for the rape victim, most or all of us would therefore not exist. At least one of our ancestors would have been aborted. On the one hand, I think that a rape exception is inconsistent with the most common pro-life arguments. Most politicians accept that inconsistency due to political expediency. Most pro-life voters want that exception even though it cannot be squared with the notion that abortion is wrong because a fetus has a right to life. On the other hand, King's argument is just ****. Yes, perhaps if abortion in rape cases were an option in the distant past, I wouldn't be alive today. So what? Others would be alive. Surely, rape pregnancies always accounted for a small percentage of births, so the human race would go on, but without a person of my particular genetic makeup[1]. My birth is the result of a long string of events and had any one of those events gone differently, I wouldn't be here, but so the heck what? Am I supposed to think that I was lucky I dodged the bullet and I should make sure abortion is illegal so that others can do the same? I'm not offended by his claim that most of us are ultimately the product of rape. I don't know if it's true, but it's not obviously implausible to me. It's just that this claim is totally irrelevant to whether or not there ought to be a rape exception. It is the product of an addled mind. [1] Which would make the world a bleak and cold place, a land without laughter, of course. |
22nd August 2019, 08:36 AM | #468 |
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This is pretty much my take on it, also.
I see King's statements as him trying to come up with some way to resolve the conundrum. I don't think it has any really good resolution, and I'm not surprised that his attempt is fumbling and unsuccessful. Like you and Meadmaker, I don't really think King needs defending on this one. His detractors are mostly just making stuff up (good old days of rape, etc.). Defending King isn't really going to put a stop to that, so why bother? |
22nd August 2019, 10:25 AM | #469 |
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22nd August 2019, 11:51 AM | #470 |
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I'm going to object to this, because Steve King's statement isn't true in any meaningful sense of the word. He hasn't spoken the truth about a subject. He has simply made a statement that is true in a very limited sense, but is utterly meaningless.
His statement wasn't absolutely clear, but I took it it mean something like "every one of us has at least one ancestor that was the product of rape or incest". That isn't verifiable, but it seems fairly likely, so it is in some sense true. However, he didn't even actually say that. The quote was more like "If you took out everyone from our family tree that was the result of rape or incest, there would be no one left". Now, is that a true statement? Well, it is, sort of, but it suggests that somehow the human race wouldn't exist if it weren't for rape and incest. Suppose we could go back in time and at every point in history where a rape was about to occur that resulted in impregnation, we intervened and somehow prevented impregnation. When we returned to the present day, would there be no humans? Of course not. It is true that the specific humans (i.e. us) wouldn't be here, but there would still be humans. It would not be "no one left". It would be different people than the ones who are here now. As someone noted, the same would be true if you didn't fight World War I. Not one person who is alive today would be alive if we had stopped the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand*, and yet there would still be people. So what was the meaning behind King's statement? Was there anything about it that was true in any meaningful sense? Could we take some message from his statement and, offended "sensibilities" aside, can we say that he said anything worth saying? I think not. I think what he was getting at, peeling back one more layer of that onion, was that the children of rape or incest can make meaningful contributions to the world, and so we shouldn't abort them. Of course, it is true that they can make meaningful contributions to the world, and no one on left or right would deny that. That's not really important. I'm not going to get into justifying a pro or an anti abortion stance right now, but the point is that the potential but unknowable future isn't really a good justification for setting policy today, and the fact that there were ancestors in our past with certain characteristics matters even less when we consider whether abortion ought to be legal today. *Ferdinand might be a bit too recent. After all, a few people are still alive who were already born in 1914. If we go back another 100 years so, though, we're in the clear. Despite various time travelling works of fiction, it would take very little change to have quite a drastic effect on the future. Consider how different the world would be if one sperm cell got to an egg instead of another, and how easy it is to affect that, and you'll realize that any change at all would ripple rapidly through the population. |
22nd August 2019, 12:51 PM | #471 |
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Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty. Robert Heinlein. |
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22nd August 2019, 12:56 PM | #472 |
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22nd August 2019, 12:57 PM | #473 |
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22nd August 2019, 01:04 PM | #474 |
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22nd August 2019, 01:32 PM | #475 |
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Suffering is not a punishment not a fruit of sin, it is a gift of God. He allows us to share in His suffering and to make up for the sins of the world. -Mother Teresa If I had a pet panda I would name it Snowflake. |
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22nd August 2019, 03:56 PM | #476 |
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23rd August 2019, 08:57 PM | #477 |
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That's right.
After Conan was freed from his captors he decided to forgive his enemies, not crush them, lay down his sword and shield and live life as an ascetic. He then devoted his life to the practice of transcendental meditation while living on a diet of raw cabbage and carrots in a small mountain hut. The movie ends with Conan discovering inner peace. Or not....I think the movie actually ends by Conan crushing his enemies. At the end the narrator says: "Many wars and feuds did Conan fight. Honor and fear were heaped upon his name and, in time, he became a king by his own hand. And this story shall also be told." So it sounds like Conan continued to pursue what is best in life. Yes, in the long run farmers win out over the hunter-gatherers, not because they are better fighters but simply because there are more of them. But farming is not what is best in life. Purification of world! Revolt of the damned! Destruction of the cities! |
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