Andrew Parker

It’s fascinating (in a “this is why we’re fucked” sociological way) that so many people who otherwise wouldn’t have said we should go to war will, now that we’re in war, attach their sense of wellbeing to whether we “lose”.

Why do you assume other people aren’t engaged in a similar calculus, and just weigh “has a Nazi tattoo for which there is evidence he knew its meaning for at least years” more heavily (to the point that no amount of electability or “he said stuff I like in on a podcast” can outweigh it) than you do?

Fuck it, let’s play.

What’s on the other side of Platner’s ledger other than what he himself has said about his own or intent?

Sure, there are definitely assholes like that. If your goal is to excise religious morality from politics or policy, leaving only secular morality as a valid basis for politics and policy, isn’t that also saying there are only certain correct ways to find morality?

Let’s say you’re right and by some Anubis-like accounting for the weight of his heart he has good that outweighs the bad.

Are you obliged to support every candidate who is not in totality “a bad person”?

Not in a way that disallows morality (regardless of source) being involved in politics.

We can’t effectively distinguish my support for free school lunches because “I don’t like kids going hungry” from someone else’s “Jesus said feed the hungry”, and it’d be kind of fucked up if we did.

That’s possible.

Which would make the defense: “if he’s telling the truth about half his family being Jewish and that no one ever said anything about it, that might be because they didn’t recognize it and/or didn’t think he was bad because of it”?

It’s one of the biggest areas where I’d say we’re legitimately condescending.

We approach the right-wing as having the same beliefs, the same goals, the same motivation, and just need to be redirected.

And then we’re constantly befuddled when they’re just assholes instead.

2/2

I don’t mind it, but I do think the strategy will once again be all sizzle and no steak.

We love the idea that the Christian right just needs to hear the right framing of progressivism as Christian to see the light. At this point it’s better to see the Christian right as a schismatic movement.

1/

I feel like this is underselling the scariness of a missile being able to prep itself, launch itself, select a target, and detonate without any humans being involved.

What do you mean “there were obviously US troops involved but we have to pretend the missile did it not the people who fired it”?

Let’s take the factual claims at face value: half his family is Jewish, but none of them told him about the meaning of his tattoo.

Anyone want to offer an alternative explanation for why someone could recognize “that’s some Nazi shit he tattooed on his chest” and still might not bring it up?

There is no NSDAP, so already the term must refer to people who aren’t literally members of the Nazi party. We infer association from other facts.

Do you really want to claim that someone can knowingly keep a Nazi emblem on their body or in their home while being “good people”?

I wouldn’t.

It’s wild that with everything else Democrats could be trying to run on in the midterms, or even looking ahead to 2028, the best they’ve come up with is “well we could do more tax cuts.”

Let’s assume you’re right, we risk “dumbing” the definition of Nazi to include “people comfortable with knowingly keeping Nazi emblems on their body or on things they own (excluding inherited trophies won by soldiers in WWII).”

What, exactly, do you see as the harm in that?

Also brace for the inevitability that (even if Democrats win big in the midterms) if the crisis persists the Democrats will wind up signing onto a big relief bill that Trump will take credit for

I can’t speak to whether you’re a member of any neo-Nazi groups.

But if you’ve decided to keep something you know has Nazi imagery or emblems on it without a damned good reason, I know you’re a piece of shit.

It depends on what you define as a metaverse.

If it’s the sane version of “any online hangout spot which pretends to have real geography” they exist already.

If it’s the laughable “it’ll be like Neuromancer/SAO/.Hack/Ready Player One” version I have absolute certainty it’s not happening.

Yes, I also heard that about the prior inevitable futures.

It turns out that when something is so useful it actually is the future you don’t need to sell it based on nebulous future potential and FOMO.

I could at least respect this dude if he was upfront about “hey, we took the LGBTQ representation out because bigot money spends as good as anyone else’s.”

Not this “we’re making a movie and those shouldn’t intersect with real issues in the world” bullshit.

Not that any of this is useful for most people, not that mass adoption would help the planet or anyone other than the people hocking it, just a vague threat of “it’s the inevitable future, resistance is futile, you will use multiple slurp juices on a single ape.”

2/2

It’s fascinating how the chatbot apologia always has to take this vague form of “it’s not going anywhere”. Necessary to engage with only because it’s an inevitability.

What makes it fascinating is that’s exactly what crypto bros and NFT dudes and metaverse goobers were saying, too.

1/

What kind of idiot would want to see a bunch of people dressed in costume pretending to be characters, doing stunts, and engaging in choreographed fights which progress a preplanned narrative?

What do you mean "theater audiences going back literal millennia"? That can't be right.

And did you guys *see* Hamilton? Lin Manuel Miranda didn't even actually get shot, what a complete ripoff. It's totally fake. That shit is absurd.

Cropped image of Norman Rockwell's painting "Freedom of Speech", which depicts a man in working clothes standing during a meeting surrounded by people in suits, with papers folded in the pocket of his jacket. It is used as shorthand for someone expressing an unusual or unpopular opinion, usually with the self-deprecation that they think their opinion makes them look pedestrian or low-class, but with the implication that they're correct.

It's valid criticism of a show to point out that it failed to communicate its intended message for a large portion of its audience. And ignoring the interpretation of a work by a wide swath of its audience because "oh well they're just dumb" isn't a sign of superior media literacy.

No problem! I try not to go on at length about this because eventually I start to sound like a maniac who's blaming House, M.D for the downfall of American democracy.

Oh, I meant it more as a trailing off because it's kind of evident in a lot of the world around us.

It's baked into a ton of the last 15 years of right-wing rhetoric. It's part of the archetype of the tech CEO that leads people to think goobers like SBF are smart.

Thanks! It's totally clear that both "is old" and "has a Nazi tattoo" are part of what determines your support for a candidate.

Do all candidates have "flaws" comparable to having a Nazi tattoo?

In your assessment, is "being old" more, or less, of a flaw than "having a Nazi tattoo"?

I think you're describing how most viewers experience their own moral and ethical codes.

The problem is more in how media teaches us to view other people being unempathetic. We learn that if a character is an unempathetic jackass he's probably a genius, which when applied to the real world...

There’s an entire era of shows that treated sociopathy as a sign of intellect, and we are in some ways living the result of a society being convinced that if someone doesn’t give a shit about how their actions affect others it’s probably because they’re a genius too smart for our silly empathy.

I’m saying he has a Nazi tattoo and there is more evidence, and more reliable evidence, for him knowing what it was long beforehand rather than learning about it suddenly during the campaign.

Whether he’s a 4chan edgelord, a Wheraboo, a Nazi, or just an asshole doesn’t change that.