What does a MAGA hat stand for?

[Patine]

Cis/trans is the proper "us vs them", dualistic, confrontational, "black and white", absolutist, biformal, twofolded, bipolar neo manichean term

In the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary from 1867-1918, if you lived in the Austrian Crownlands (also including what is now the Czech Republic, most of Slovenia, part of Croatia, Voivodina, part of Southeastern Poland, the Southwestern corner of Ukraine, and parts of the Northeast corner of Italy), and voted for the Imperial Council in Vienna, you lived in Cisleithania, whereas if you lived in the Crownlands of St. Stephen (which included what are now Hungary, Slovakia, more than half of Romania, and the rest of Slovenia and Croatia), and voted for the Diet in Budapest, you lived in Transleithania. Fun fact...

1. It's merely one aspect of transphobia, and one of the easiest and most recent to prove. The whole example came out of people demanding proof from a trans poster, in this thread.
2. Plenty of people better-informed than me on the American military's impact on someone's life have pointed out that this isn't actually the case. Being a member of the armed forces comes with a bunch of benefits, and people frequently enlist for those benefits.
3. I never claimed it was a fundamental right. That doesn't mean it's not discrimination. There are plenty of other things that aren't "fundamental human rights", like the ability to donate blood (that gay people are prevented from), but still are examples of discrimination in society.

I consider severity to not just be relevant to the scale and impact of a particular type of activity, but also the demographic it affects. A demographic that is arguably one of the worst off (like trans people frequently are, in various aspects of society) is more at threat from measures like these, which is why I class it as more severe, than, say, unfair medical rules that exempt people who want to serve. Despite being the same kind of thing, the demographic being unpunished is already worse-off, which makes the lack of support created by this ban more devastating to anyone who was considering it (or already serving!).

The most disturbing aspect of this, for me, is the fact it came from the federal government. I honestly thought this would be a good example for conservative, libertarian, or other anti "big-government" (sorry for the quotes, it's a bit different here in the UK to in the States) position that I know folks on CFC can hold.


Good old-fashioned behaviour from you here, so, whatever. Remember this the next time you're complaining at anyone on here for being unfairly maligned for what they presume your behaviour to be, because my good faith in your return is exhausted.

Are gay men still banned from donating blood in the UK and/or U.S., there? That ban was lifted in Canada long ago by Trudeau - and I mean Pierre Elliott, not Justin.

 

[Patine]

What is your point

It seems that you derisively and coldly dismiss all points, all other people's problems and suffering, and anything else wrong with the world outside your own myopic, narrow view of gripes - but everyone else is supposed to pedistalize yours, even subordinating their own to do so. Don't you see how utterly unrealistic, demanding, uncompromising, lacking all perspective and proportion, pompous, and strictly demographic (rather than individual or personal) thinking you are? And don't you realize that these traits are classic seeds to grow into fascistic thinking? You need to stop, and view things in a more sober and realistic way.

 

[Synobun]

It seems that you derisively and coldly dismiss all points, all other people's problems and suffering, and anything else wrong with the world outside your own myopic, narrow view of gripes - but everyone else is supposed to pedistalize yours, even subordinating their own to do so. Don't you see how utterly unrealistic, demanding, uncompromising, lacking all perspective and proportion, pompous, and strictly demographic (rather than individual or personal) thinking you are? And don't you realize that these traits are classic seeds to grow into fascistic thinking? You need to stop, and view things in a more sober and realistic way.

Cloud merely points out that people should deal with fallout if they decide sacrificing trans rights is worth their personal enrichment. This seems mostly fair. Cloud is trans, so it's obviously personal for her to be told her rights are optional so long as someone's wallet is a little heavier.

The counterargument that some have given, that you can not support some of a candidate's views but still vote for them because of the benefit they bring you, does not mean as much as people think. That these aren't deal breakers for you (general you) is the issue, as you're making the definitive statement that a demographic's oppression is ultimately less meaningful to you than some other benefit you expect to receive from supporting that candidate. You are consciously deciding that one group's misfortune is worth whatever it is you expect to gain.

Everyone, to an extent, makes these calculations. Someone mentioned Biden. Most of the big names have things they fall on the wrong side of, and everyone has to make a decision what they're willing to accept in exchange for a perceived benefit. Cloud is trans and faced with people telling her that laws and state-backed sentiments against people like her is acceptable to them. Is it truly so unreasonable that she insists people be forced to face that while engaging with her? It is not a debate of two detached positions. This isn't a marketplace of ideas where everything is merely theory. It's Cloud being threatened by another's position, even if that person isn't directly trying to harm Cloud. Their actions, voting for and supporting a candidate with anti-trans sentiment, enable harm to come to Cloud. It seems both logical and understandable for Cloud to not take this on the chin with a smile.

You don't have to put trans rights on a pedestal. But you can't comment on trans issues and trans identities with any sort of benefit of the doubt if you openly profess to considering their empowerment to be optional and unimportant. You can't defend your support of someone or something by citing your own assumed tolerance and acceptance if your support of that someone or something directly leads to harming those you claim to tolerate or accept. That you didn't vote for them because of their intolerance is irrelevant; you don't pick and choose what things of a candidate you allow. If you support a candidate who hates the gays but lowers your taxes, but you yourself profess to like gay people, you're still telling those gay people that their rights are less important than your taxes. And this, obviously, is harmful, even if you aren't directly intending to harm them.

 

[Berzerker]

Vote for the warmonger cuz she supports Cloud's rights?

 

[Synobun]

Vote for the warmonger cuz she supports Cloud's rights?

I'd prefer you not vote at all, actually.

Also, from my post: Everyone, to an extent, makes these calculations. Someone mentioned Biden. Most of the big names have things they fall on the wrong side of, and everyone has to make a decision what they're willing to accept in exchange for a perceived benefit.

 

[bernie14]

As Part Of Settlement With Nick Sandmann, CNN Hosts Must Wear MAGA Hats During All Broadcasts

 

[Patine]

Vote for the warmonger cuz she supports Cloud's rights?

If I had lived in, and been able to vote, in the United States in 2016, I'm afraid I would have had to vote for a Third Party or Independent candidate, or make a cheeky write-in vote, because I could not of, with all good, conscience, put my vote of endorsement on either of those monsters. The 2016 General Election was the worst failing in years of the rigged and corrupt electoral system in the U.S. to it's voters, and a betrayal of the voters. Someone should have suffered legally for that election being allowed to occur, and it SHOULD have a big wake-up to the American public to demand real and comprehensive electoral reform and to call the corrupt party bosses, plutocrats, and media manipulators who have stolen American choice away at the ballot box for decades to account - even legal punishment for what's tantamount to treason against their own nation, people, and Constitution.

 

[Pwnzerfaust]

You are consciously deciding that one group's misfortune is worth whatever it is you expect to gain.

Well, geez, when you put it that way, you're right: I definitely do consider my own wellbeing to be more important than that. I voted Clinton in 2016, but put that way, I might just have to flip my vote!

 

[Berzerker]

I'd prefer you not vote at all, actually.

Also, from my post: Everyone, to an extent, makes these calculations. Someone mentioned Biden. Most of the big names have things they fall on the wrong side of, and everyone has to make a decision what they're willing to accept in exchange for a perceived benefit.

Not a fan of democracy I see... No need to worry about my vote, I dont get people elected with it. I read your post, you acknowledge no candidate is perfect. Thats the point Cloud is missing, by urging us to vote for the Democrats we're being told to ignore their sins. Thats kinda hard to do when they're instigating wars to overthrow other governments by arming terrorists.

 

[Synobun]

Not a fan of democracy I see... No need to worry about my vote, I dont get people elected with it. I read your post, you acknowledge no candidate is perfect. Thats the point Cloud is missing, by urging us to vote for the Democrats we're being told to ignore their sins. Thats kinda hard to do when they're instigating wars to overthrow other governments by arming terrorists.

And as we all know, the Republicans are pacifists. Americans quake with fear in the face of the militarized Democrats.

 

[Patine]

And as we all know, the Republicans are pacifists. Americans quake with fear in the face of the militarized Democrats.

Maybe the real problem is the corrupt and rigged two party system. Maybe Americans should demand REAL electoral choice, and governments who can be held accountable for their actions, and held to standards to transparency, and even "gasp" face criminal and civil consequences when they commit crimes, and not benefit from practical immunity from practically EVERYTHING, including among the most heinous of crimes. If the two main parties were not smugly and arrogantly secure that every election would be won by one of them - and the other would be the only meaningful opposition - because American elections are as thoroughly rigged and stacked as those emerging democracies and post-Soviet States the U.S. Department of State likes to hypocritically scold - and it was actually possible for both the Democrats and Republicans to both lose the same election at once, become registered in certain states, as even die as parties - like political parties often do in politically healthy multi-party systems, they might actually feel the act like they were running to form functional governments for PEOPLE, and not to please statistics, radical, polarized pundits, and plutocratic donors and lobbyists.

 

[Berzerker]

And as we all know, the Republicans are pacifists. Americans quake with fear in the face of the militarized Democrats.

Tell that to the Libyans and Syrians who watched their countries get destroyed by the Democrats. Portraying a warmonger as the lesser evil takes chutzpah.

 

[Pwnzerfaust]

And as we all know, the Republicans are pacifists. Americans quake with fear in the face of the militarized Democrats.

Neither party is pacifist and it's absurd to pretend otherwise. The Democratic party was the one to get the US heavily involved in Korea and then Vietnam, for example, while the Republicans did so with Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

[Commodore]

And as we all know, the Republicans are pacifists. Americans quake with fear in the face of the militarized Democrats.

Truth. It's like my 32nd biggest fear.

 

[Estebonrober]

Tell that to the Libyans and Syrians who watched their countries get destroyed by the Democrats. Portraying a warmonger as the lesser evil takes chutzpah.

Neither party is pacifist and it's absurd to pretend otherwise. The Democratic party was the one to get the US heavily involved in Korea and then Vietnam, for example, while the Republicans did so with Iraq and Afghanistan.

All this impressive revisionist history!

None of that stuff was this simplistic. The US is definitely a highly militaristic nation. It’s whole history has been that way.

 

[Patine]

Tell that to the Libyans and Syrians who watched their countries get destroyed by the Democrats. Portraying a warmonger as the lesser evil takes chutzpah.

Neither party is pacifist and it's absurd to pretend otherwise. The Democratic party was the one to get the US heavily involved in Korea and then Vietnam, for example, while the Republicans did so with Iraq and Afghanistan.

All this impressive revisionist history!

None of that stuff was this simplistic. The US is definitely a highly militaristic nation. It’s whole history has been that way.

Well, in terms of Korea, it was the McCarthyist/HUAC/Red Scare faction, which had large numbers of members in BOTH main parties at that time, that demanded military action be taken to counter North Korea's invasion of South Korea. Neither Truman nor Eisenhower, as Presidents, were really personally that enthusiastic about it - the Witchhunters of the perceived (and blown way out of proportion) numbers of "Communists" in the U.S., Witchhunters in both Congress and the Military - who, as I just said, came from both main parties in large numbers - were frothing and chomping at the bit for the war.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Neither party is pacifist and it's absurd to pretend otherwise. The Democratic party was the one to get the US heavily involved in Korea and then Vietnam, for example, while the Republicans did so with Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Korean War was a whole different kettle of fish. In addition, the world context was entirely different from the later wars. Not only was the war clearly started by the North Koreans, it was a short and a very old school war. It was not like slowly heating the water housing the frog.

Vietnam was not the same. Eisenhower began our entanglement and laid the groundwork for LBJ's dramatic enhancement of the US commitment in 1964. The Dems turned against the war by 1968 and Nixon took 6 years to get us out.

The conflict emerged from the First Indochina War against the communist-led Viet Minh.[59][A 4] Most of the funding for the French war effort was provided by the U.S.[60] After the French quit Indochina in 1954, the US assumed financial and military support for the South Vietnamese state. The Việt Cộng, also known as Front national de libération du Sud-Viêt Nam or NLF (the National Liberation Front), a South Vietnamese common front under the direction of North Vietnam, initiated a guerrilla war in the south. North Vietnam had also invaded Laos in the mid-1950s in support of insurgents, establishing the Ho Chi Minh Trail to supply and reinforce the Việt Cộng.[61]:16 U.S. involvement escalated under President John F. Kennedy through the MAAG program from just under a thousand military advisors in 1959 to 16,000 in 1963.[62][32]:131 By 1963, the North Vietnamese had sent 40,000 soldiers to fight in South Vietnam.[61]:16 North Vietnam was heavily backed by the USSR and the People's Republic of China. China also sent hundreds of PLA servicemen to North Vietnam to serve in air-defense and support roles.[32]:371–4[63]

By 1964, there were 23,000 US advisors in South Vietnam. In August, the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred, in which a U.S. destroyer was alleged to have clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft. In response, the U.S Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Lyndon B. Johnson broad authorization to increase U.S. military presence. He ordered the deployment of combat units for the first time and increased troop levels to 184,000.[62] Past this point, the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) (also known as the North Vietnamese Army or NVA) engaged in more conventional warfare with U.S and South Vietnamese forces. Every year onward, there was significant build-up of U.S forces, despite little progress. U.S Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, one of the principal architects of the war, began expressing doubts of victory by the end of 1966.[32]:287 U.S. and South Vietnam forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. The U.S. also conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam and Laos.

 

[Patine]

The Korean War was a whole different kettle of fish. In addition, the world context was entirely different from the later wars. Not only was the war clearly started by the North Koreans, it was a short and a very old school war. It was not like slowly heating the water housing the frog.

Vietnam was not the same. Eisenhower began our entanglement and laid the groundwork for LBJ's dramatic enhancement of the US commitment in 1964. The Dems turned against the war by 1968 and Nixon took 6 years to get us out.

Actually, I disagree that North Korea was the ultimate aggressor. At the source of things, the secret bargain between the U.S. and USSR to have the latter break the non-aggression pact with Japan that literally lasted since the Soviet-Japanese Border Wars in 1937 for the last month of WW2, dividing up Korea between and recognizing Soviet control of Manchuria and Sakhalin (sounds kind of similar to clause of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreements where parts of Eastern Europe were secretly divided between Nazi Germany and the USSR, doesn't it?), led to the division of Korea in 1945 into Soviet and American occupation and administration zones. The Korean Independence Army, under Korean nationalist Kim Koo, who had fought a guerilla war against Japanese forces in occupied China in tandem and alliance with American and Chinese military authorities fully expected, and were led to believe, that a unified, independent, and self-determinating Korean nation would exist after WW2. The Soviet and American occupational forces not only could not reach an agreement on a unified, post-war state (as in Germany), they seemed to put no effort into such, or even seemed to desire such a thing. Many Koreans on both sides of the 38th felt betrayed. Kim Il-sing took action, trying to play on these sentiments, but they, and circumstances around them, were not his creation.

 

[Birdjaguar]

As I said the context for the Korean War was unlike those of later years. In any case, it was the North that did invade the South starting the hot war. All those who start wars feel justified in doing so. If you invade a neighbor with an army, you started the hot war.

 

[Patine]

As I said the context for the Korean War was unlike those of later years. In any case, it was the North that did invade the South starting the hot war. All those who start wars feel justified in doing so. If you invade a neighbor with an army, you started the hot war.

Historians often look at root causes of a war as JUST as relevant as the one who actually starts it. And, as an armchair historian myself, that's how I look at things. Virtually every war in history would seem inexplicable and arbitrary, otherwise.