That would apply to any minority opinion as well, like supporting Palestine today, or being opposed to Japanese internment camps during world war 2 or opposing the Iraq war. Or being opposed to COVID vaccine mandates or school closures. People get cancelled for this stuff all the time, and being able to speak freely is critical to derailing social movements that go too far, which they always do. Anonymity is a double edged sword, where it holds people accountable for hate speech, but also provides security to express opinions that are contrary to prevailing narratives, things that desperately need to be said.

That depends if it’s your team or not, obviously

Hmm, well I’m not sure I agree that there is a big conspiracy or campaign, but I understand the logic.

How is calling someone a groomer related to fascism? Or is it just more of a correlation thing?

In the US when you kill random people it’s murder and when you take random people who aren’t breaking any laws and child them captive, then it’s kidnapping.

Too many people in the world crave an identity that is original enough to be interesting, but not so original that it can’t be quantified or defined by accepted or understood identity templates. They need to be able to put a name to their identity so they can talk about it.

Well you got my entire backstory created. I’d ask you to roll me for stats now, but I don’t think you are playing with a full set of dice.

I can’t believe you spent that much energy creating an identity for me in your head.

Jews are native to that area and it’s not a race thing. If we can’t agree on those two facts then we have no basis for discussion.

But is that any worse than defaulting to the side with less power? At the end of the day if you have to side with one or the other, whoever happens to have power at the time seems like pretty arbitrary criteria. If instead Israel were the lesser power being bullied by a powerful Palestine, would you side with Israel? How about if Nazi Germany were getting bullied by Western powers, would you side with them? It wouldn’t make sense because Nazis are very obviously the bad guys. Anyway it’s not just about power.

Mass shootings weren’t even defined before. We didn’t talk about them because they weren’t tracked. Even now the definition of mass shooting isn’t settled, with some definitions having about a dozen per year, and others having about 2 per day.

After reading your comment I had to fight an almost overwhelming urge to buy a Nazi flag and rent out my house for the simple pleasure of screwing over renters. That’s how fast it happens.

Yes, it’s a way to move forward with incomplete knowledge, when you need to make assumptions regardless of which theory you go with. There will always be an asterisk by theories or decisions made with this method, because one of more of the assumptions themselves could later turn out to be incorrect, thereby invalidating your decision. Occams razor is very misunderstood and used or quoted incorrectly all the time.

I hate smoking stock photos. Clearly she has never smoked in her life.

Hah! I remember reddit

Centrists exist because they listen to alternative views and can empathize with those views even if they don’t quite agree with them or if they can’t decide between the pros and cons. But to an extremist on either side, it looks like they are stupid, weak, or possibly just bad people, because if they were smart, Good people, then the centrists would OBVIOUSLY agree with THEM, and then they wouldn’t be centrists. This lacking of empathy or inability to understand opposing viewpoints, and therefore assuming malice or evil as the motive of anyone not WITH them, is the hallmark of all extremists.

Oh yeah, also people hate centrists because they come across as smug. Sorry about that.

Do you actually believe this? I know a lot of conservatives, some more extreme than others, but none of them envision this kind of world, not even the ones that wanted to be at the Capitol on Jan 6. It’s contrary to virtually all Christian, conservative values. The whole premise of this story wouldn’t even hold up unless there were an extreme event causing a massive shortage of fertile women. In that case, there is no telling what kind of dystopia would emerge. Frank Herbert wrote “The White plague” in 1982 (a couple years before the handmaid’s tale), where women were nearly wiped out altogether, and it plays out similar in some respects, wildly different in others. In any event, it’s not a “goal” of any sane person, and certainly not the goal of half of the country.

The main problem with this book is in how it is applied by various people to Christianity in general (as opposed to a fringe cult), or used as an analogy of events today. It might apply in some cases, but those are so rare and unusual (back woods polygamist cults and the like), that they really don’t deserve to be discussed in context of current politics.