Far from the best

No, not really. I think Karl Marx would still be considered a leftist today. I also think leftists of his time, Marx included, were generally pro-racial equality and aware that racial slurs were wrong.

I’m not sure if it makes me look smart or correct. It’s true, though, these are the words of Karl Marx, who I think most people consider to be a leftist.

Was leftism somehow a different philosophy then? Was calling people racial slurs acceptable? Of course not, no less than Marx himself would have told you that. Yet he did it nonetheless!

I agree that we should have high expectations for senate candidates, and for leftists. I also think it would be foolish to deny that platner is, objectively speaking, both of those things even if he doesn’t meet our standards for them. The decision is whether he is someone we want representing us.

If you are using a definition of “leftist” that would exclude literally Karl Marx I’m going to gently suggest it’s not a useful one.

I have no issue with not supporting him, or even straight-up opposing him! What he said was horrible! I just think we on the left need to acknowledge that “leftist” is a political descriptor and not a moral one. Leftists sometimes say and do immoral things.

Because it’s not up to you and I to “tolerate” who is and is not a leftist. We can demand better from platner, or we can choose not to support him. But we can’t say he’s not a leftist—it’s dishonest, and shies away from doing the hard work to improve ourselves and our movement.

You shouldn’t accept racism or sexism in any context, on the left or not. But you do have to acknowledge that leftists are human beings and can be racist or sexist without no-true-Scotsmaning them. The only way to fight these things in leftist spaces is to confront the reality that they exist.

Modern leftists: racism is antithetical to leftist politics and if you’re racist you’re not a real leftist!

Literally Karl Marx:

Folks really need to separate “having the wrong politics” from “being a shithead” in their heads, not just because it gives you a simplified picture of others, but also because it is very easy to assume that YOU are definitionally a good person if you have the right politics.

I meant what I said. Defining any political movement by saying that it cannot contain immoral people/ideas reduces it to nothing, practically speaking. Having racist beliefs can no more disqualify platner from the political left than it did Marx.

You are never going to succeed in collapsing your political movement into “things that are good” and should probably stop trying.

“Buying a slave via a bet” isn’t really unethical at all if you don’t intend on keeping the slave.

Does “inducting the slave into a monastic order millions of light years away from his home” really count as free, is the question.

Eh it’s very difficult to draw a line from the German scientists we recruited to our current political crisis. The fact is even before the war wealthy Americans were fascism-curious, with Henry Ford and the Business Plot. They’ve just reverted to type.

He was not just a “good hitter”, he was such a good hitter that it made whatever negative impact his defense had mostly irrelevant. Yes, he should have moved to third base in 2004. No, that does not make twenty seasons of .310/.377/.440 somehow unimpressive.

Derek Jeter is one of the hundred best players of all time why are people like this

It’s a very high bar they’re two of the 100 best players of the oldest organized American sport.

There were also women in these Nazi chats, just saying

Morrison understands that if an LLM does get to the point where is can adequately make actual art that will prove that it is ensouled and worthy of treating as a peer.

This is more or less what I’d expect from Morrison on AI, and quite frankly more thought-through than the positions of the people bashing them

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD ***************** Investigation of: LOSS OF THE SUBMARINE TITAN IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN ON JUNE 18, 2023 * * * * * * Accident No.: *********** * * * * * * Interview of: Co-designer/Pilot Deepsea Challenger DCA23FM036 via Microsoft Teams Friday, July 26, 2024

INTERVIEW OF 10 BY LCDR 11 Q. So how did you get yourself started into submersible 12 operations? 13 A. Well, I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic. When I 14 set down the path to make that film, the first thing that I did 15 was arrange to be introduced to the head of the submersible 16 program at the P.P. Shirshov Institute in Moscow, a guy named 17| Professor I. I did that through a mutual friend 18 of ours, a guy named , who is one of the preeminent underwater cinematographers in the world. And had been on a 20 submersible expedition out to Titanic the previous year with the 21 Russians. And that was organized by a Canadian company that was 22 doing an IMAX film which was released under the title Titanica.

Learned that an anonymous outside expert on submersibles did an interview with the OceanGate Titan investigation, and they released a transcript, with all the names redacted. The first line of his first answer? "I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic."

Eh this is a pretty silly statistic that obscures more than it reveals about fossil fuel consumption.

If only one of the teams still in the playoffs had an above-average hitter at shortstop, widely considered a team leader, who was the longest-tenured player on the team and a gold glove winner to boot.

I honestly think it was just comically bad timing. He sold out to AIPAC as a way of covering his right flank during his election, when Israel/palestine was relatively low salience, so nobody noticed at the time. After 10/7 it became very high salience, but he refused to move off that mark.

These protests are great opportunities to build movements on the left. But not if you go into them with the starting position that the thing that brought people to the march is incorrect and wrong.

*shows up to no kings protest* hey have you guys considered this whole “no kings” thing is wrong? Do my thing instead.

Why Did the Harrowing Personal Essay Take Over the Internet? A few months ago, Natasha Chenier submitted a piece to Jezebel about her sexual relationship with her dad. She described meeting her biological father ...

This is a good piece on it, both because it covers one of the more noteworthy examples but also because it somewhat serves itself as an example of the genre www.slate.com/articles/lif...

You’re right. Specifically he said “an order of magnitude bigger”. I’m not sure where the implied insult is there.

He hasn’t downplayed the civil rights movement at all, he just said “there were fewer people involved,” a factually correct statement. Otherwise, he’s been very clear that the civil rights movement was massively important and that No Kings should strive to match that level of impact.

False. We have no idea which caucus or primary will be first, in 2024 it was South Carolina.