Random Rants: --... ---.. Don't expect others to convert it for you.

[Takhisis]

Well, yes, pizza is a/the main course and pineapple is the dessert.

Do I have to explain everything around here?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Well, yes, pizza is a/the main course and pineapple is the dessert.

Do I have to explain everything around here?

Apparently, because I have no idea what brought on this snark.

 

[Takhisis]

Look at the timestamps, I was answering cardgame.

 

[cardgame]

dessert is a treat for after eating. pizza is a food I won't stop eating.

ergo, pizza is already a dessert - pile on the pineapple!

 

[Takhisis]

*sigh* They say that you cannot teach a man about taste, and I am a teacher…

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Look at the timestamps, I was answering cardgame.

"X" number of minutes ago is not a timestamp. It might help to quote people directly when answering them. It saves confusion.

 

[Takhisis]

Eh, you basically ninja'd me and CFC had one of those funny hiccups where it doesn't show the earlier post.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Eh, you basically ninja'd me and CFC had one of those funny hiccups where it doesn't show the earlier post.

Okay.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I have got another round of biopsies tomorrow morning. They are going to stab me in the throat with a bigass needle and then check the resulting cell smear for cancer.

Regardless of the outcome of the biopsy, the surgeon's recommendation is that they just take what's left of my thyroid. It sucks that I have to consider her profit motive in her recommendation.

It was a real roller coaster of a day on this front.

I show up at 10am to find out that I was only meeting with my endocrinologist at that time and that my biopsy wasn't until 1pm (surprise!). The endocrinologist had nothing really to say until I had the biopsy, so it was a wasted trip and I was a bit mad about it all.

Then I get home and get a call from the clinic, my surgeon had finally gotten around to looking at the ultrasound I took back in February. It turns out that my tumors have shrunk since I was first diagnosed and the surgeon said she doesn't need to do a biopsy at this time and we'll do this all again in 6 months. So I'm happy they didn't have to stab me in the throat a bunch of times but mad that you know, they didn't do their job 3 months ago to save me a doctor's visit that is going to cost a couple hundred split between insurance and my copay.

 

[H4run]

Every day when my roommate wakes up, he loudly moans and snorts for over half an hour every few seconds.

I don't really get it.

Maybe it is years of habbit, you may tell it by making a light joke about it when the situation is fit. Because if this keep happening one day at a wrong tiring morning it may trigger you in a most wrong and annoying way.

 

[Takhisis]

It was a real roller coaster of a day on this front.

I show up at 10am to find out that I was only meeting with my endocrinologist at that time and that my biopsy wasn't until 1pm (surprise!). The endocrinologist had nothing really to say until I had the biopsy, so it was a wasted trip and I was a bit mad about it all.

Then I get home and get a call from the clinic, my surgeon had finally gotten around to looking at the ultrasound I took back in February. It turns out that my tumors have shrunk since I was first diagnosed and the surgeon said she doesn't need to do a biopsy at this time and we'll do this all again in 6 months. So I'm happy they didn't have to stab me in the throat a bunch of times but mad that you know, they didn't do their job 3 months ago to save me a doctor's visit that is going to cost a couple hundred split between insurance and my copay.

Two thumbs up then, for now.

Every day when my roommate wakes up, he loudly moans and snorts for over half an hour every few seconds.

I don't really get it.

I know you've already brutally murdered him (possibly while shouting ‘the, Tak, the’ in German) but I was going to say you should watch his hands.

 

[Cutlass]

It's too late, the body's already been buried.

Human disposal should always be at sea.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that "the centre" exists only as a position from which to attack the left, and not as any coherent political perspective in its own right.

 

[cardgame]

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that "the centre" exists only as a position from which to attack the left, and not as any coherent political perspective in its own right.

yes.

 

[choxorn]

 

[rah]

Actually centrists attack both sides, but people only notice the attacks against their side. And as this place has shown many times, both sides mock centrists.

 

[Cutlass]

Game is always crashing at same point...

 

[Traitorfish]

Actually centrists attack both sides, but people only notice the attacks against their side. And as this place has shown many times, both sides mock centrists.

You're rebutting a slightly different point than the one I'm making.

I don't disagree that people who call themselves "centrists" criticise the right as well as the left. What I contend is that the specific posture of attacking "from the centre" is primarily oriented against the left. Criticism of the right is framed in more traditional terms of moderation and radicalism, it does not take as a premise the superior wisdom or objectivity of the "centre". It does not seek to problematize "the Right" as a monolith.

Even an electoral level, only the left are told that they must pursue "the centre" to win. The right are told that they need to pursue women or minorities or union workers or any other number of specific constituencies, but not "the centre", because it is generally understood that "the centre" is a province of the right, that "centrists" naturally vote to the right, and that left-wing parties can only win elections by distancing themselves from the substance of left-wing politics.

 

[rah]

You said.

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that "the centre" exists only as a position from which to attack the left, and not as any coherent political perspective in its own right.

Pretty insulting if you're a centrist. No coherent political perspective. Really.

 

[Traitorfish]

You said.

Pretty insulting if you're a centrist. No coherent political perspective. Really.

I didn't say that people who identify as "centrists" do not have a coherent political perspective. (However much I may privately suspect it.) What I said was that "centrism" itself does not represent a coherent political perspective. My contention is that the "centre" is something which only exists in relation to the left, that when people say "centre" what they actually mean is "to the right of the left", more or less regardless of where the actual politics of the speaker may fall on any left-right continuum.

Clinton ran as the centre candidates in the 2016 primaries, but the left candidate in the election. The "centre" lost its value as a position when no longer faced with a challenge from the left, even while a lot of the virtues which centrists attribute to themselves- expertise, civility, tolerance- remained staples of her self-presentation. Perhaps this is simply the inherent dynamics of a two-party system, but I don't believe that a Republican who ran as a moderate in the primaries would re-orient themself as a rightist in the election: they would continue to present themselves as a moderate, instead attempting to conflate the political middle-ground with "commonsense conservatism". This is essentially what Romney did in 2012, even if the outsize influence of the evangelical right forced him to offer deference to certain sacred cows. Even McCain's status as a "maverick" candidate, his identity in both primary and election, represented his willingness to buck party lines in pursuit of cross-party consensus; moderation dramatised as a John Wayne movie. The value of a moderate identity persists across primary and general elections in a way which does not seem to be reflected on the left.