The Cancel Culture thread! WOO!

[BryanM]

The first episode of the Space Balls animated series quickly turned me off for... various reasons. (Maybe nearly all the reasons...) I have no idea if the later episodes, where they spoofed other movies, had any merit to them.

Space Balls 2: What Could Have Been.

[vol.2]

Okay. So where do you think this one falls on the Cancel Culture pendulum?

https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/677 ... censorship

I have to admit I knew nothing of this until I saw the public apology on reddit today https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/ ... ounding_a/

I've never seen reddit do anything like that before, though maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention.


Wow, also U.K. Politics: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/com ... statement/

[BIL]

My opinion is that if you're a known predator, or enabler of, your admission to the chicken coop becomes a matter of public concern. At that point I'm happy to let nature take its course. ("course" qualified - in our time, this typically means unemployment and potential prosecution, not being dragged out of your home by a feral mob. that's not on!)

This guy is more than sufficiently adjacent to men who've raped children, and spoken in detail of their fantasies to, that I'm ok with him facing a lifetime of ostracisation, pending some Olympic-level redemption gymnastics. As Bryan might put it, this appears to be a Weinstein/Cosby scenario.

Or rather, the enablers of. Plenty of Jimmy Savile's circle from BITD can do a fucking flip right now too, imo.

[vol.2]

Yeah, it's some pretty sick shit. No doubt. I am a bit squeamish to dig too deep into the issue, so you'll forgive me for not knowing all of the details.

I can't say I'm sorry about the decision to fire. It's what I would want to do if I was in charge of the decision.

The response from reddit to UK Politics was also severely lacking. They banned a good mod for doxxing when no information was divulged outside of public record of a politician, who is immediately a public figure and all of that is instantly in the public eye. Not that I think we have the right to go interrupt a senator's family sitting down for dinner, but we are free to post and discuss their work and public activities. Being a mod for a major public social media outfit like Reddit also qualifies as a public position for a politician.

[rapoon]

even if an infinitesimal fraction of that gamerevolution article is true, I wouldn't tag the subsequent reaction as knee-jerk and call it cancel culture. Her professional association with her father and his 22 (seriously?) sexual
offenses is concerning, to say the least.

somewhat tangential, reddit has a befuddling definition of "doxxing". i have a vivid recollection of listening to npr and their story on Violentacrez, revealing
just about every facet of his life short of his SS#

[vol.2]

I wouldn't tag the subsequent reaction as knee-jerk and call it cancel culture.

That's only if you consider "cancel culture" always a negative thing. In this case, it's weeding out a sicko.

[rapoon]

I wouldn't tag the subsequent reaction as knee-jerk and call it cancel culture.

That's only if you consider "cancel culture" always a negative thing. In this case, it's weeding out a sicko.

i don't always consider it a negative thing.

but I also see two related but distinct issues here: the person in question and how reddit handles issues they feel compromise their members or employees rights or privacy;
my response is addressing the latter. reddit has repeatedly found itself on the wrong side of a broad, deep gulf, between itself and the rest of the planet. see the "Violentacrez" article
i previously linked. reddits initial response was little more than, "*shrug*, free speech!". it's this recurring pattern that lends credence to the claim it's a cesspool.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

Interesting in that Aimee herself was a Canceller, having worked with Reddit to delete a bunch of TERFy subreddits r/gendercritical, r/truelesbians and more. Her comeuppance though, seems more like a self-pwn. The anti-doxxing script that banned a moderator for sharing an article with her name in it turned all eyes on her via the Streisand Effect. Reddit says it 'didn't vet her properly', even though they put the anti-doxxing measures in place to hide their little secret.

What a horrible victory for TERFs. They're jumping for joy right now, even more so than when Sarah Everard was killed. Their bigotries have just been validated.

Reddit was really trying to be the last bastion of free speech back when Violentacrez was around. And while were talking about lying companies that employ pedophiles: it's interesting that Gawker Media was the one that exposed him. Nowadays there's no question as to whether it's okay to share creepshots of teenagers. People are more concerned about how to destroy those who refuse to put pronouns in their twitter bios, or those who push back against months of coordinated harassment with ill-judged holocaust comparisons. (poor Gina. Why didn't you just delete your account like Kellie Marie Tran? Oh, thats right - no bad tactics only bad targets.)

[Specineff]

Felt this was the more appropriate thread to post this on: (Apologies if I've missed the mark, everyone)

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/0 ... eding.html

Short version: White liberal mom writes to Slate to mention how her daughter was bullied out of a mostly-black high school. The writer (stating he/she is a black parent) responding to the letter starts well-intentioned, but (seemingly to me) the reply later devolves into "It's all you whiteys' fault! Because of your damn privilege, a ni**a can't have a ghetto no more!"

Makes me wonder if reverend King isn't rolling in his grave.

Edit: This made my blood boil:

Black folks, who once had “the hood” as a place to be surrounded by their own kind after long days of having to labor for White people, now have to watch Whites become the most affluent, and seemingly most content, residents of our ghettos. If that were not traumatic enough, there is also the matter of our interpersonal interactions with our new neighbors, many of whom have called the police on us, unilaterally organized to reshape our schools, or otherwise come into our sacred places and treated us as we are so often treated by White people: poorly.

I want an army of zombie MLK clones armed with baseball bats.

[BIL]

Here's an archived link for anyone else curious. As a rule of thumb, I find these pop-news sites good for biological weapons testing, at best. This proved no different.

RE author, what a lot of words for "It's okay when we do it."

I will not defend the actions of any child who went out of their way to mistreat a classmate without provocation.

How magnanimous. But?

I, like many other Black parents, take seriously the dual responsibility of teaching my child to both understand racism and resist the urge to take out the pain that racism causes her on people who benefit most from it.

Ah, the urge to attack people of certain races. I was about to say that targeting people for abuse - let alone children, let alone racially - is morally disgusting, but I hadn't factored in the urge.

As with Tony, the nice lad who unfortunately had to saw Mrs. Brown's head off with a boxcutter after she drew a Mohammed cartoon, this isn't a standard to hold human beings to. Whatever their station in life. It's a standard for dangerous animals. Assuming basic human decency has gone out the window, then at least in purely pragmatic terms, proponents may NB it usually results in being caged or shot.

Enjoy your bigotry, I guess, any Americunts and Eurocucks who espouse this cancer. I was too young to really appreciate the last round of Balkan wars. This time I'm gonna be front row taping the whole thing.



---

Holy fuck lmao

English teacher under police protection pending cancellation, PATY-STYLE

"Ee, m8, I'm really sorry liek, but ah have to saw yer 'ead off with this Stanleh knife, cor I feel bad about it"
"Oh right. Any chance you could just take an ear off?"
"Noo m8, you showed a cartoon of the prophet, liek - ah feel rly bad about it, ee"
"I see, fair enough."

^^^ THIS IS ENGLAND 2021

Yall bitchmade. Maybe we're a bunch of savages out in the colonies, God knows we offend your wokeness (we offend MY wokeness ), but HOLY FUCK AT LEAST WE DON'T SUCK DOWN IMPORTED THIRD-WORLD THEOFASCIST COCK

(we grow our own, tyvm!)

"Ee m8, is it alright if I behead this bloke for insulting the prophet, liek?" HAHA NO, NOT RLY FRIEND

I'm with the frogs. XYGA has the collector chops. BEN.SHINOBI has the skills. And JAPJAC has the indomitable fighting spirit of De Gaulle.

Goodbye my Cuck Island, I hope you survive. (;｀ω´;)

[Blinge]

Oh, well that's alright then.

fucking hell we've hit peak retard.

[vol.2]

Felt this was the more appropriate thread to post this on: (Apologies if I've missed the mark, everyone)

Well, I've definitely posted stuff here that might not be perfectly on-topic, so w/e.

So, as to your point:

The author states: "So again, bullying, regardless of the bully’s background, is not OK, but you asked about the larger context here, and so that’s what I’ll try to unpack."

How exactly are you taking that to mean that the author is "justifying" anything wrong that was done? You don't like the author's tone? I don't think you were meant to like it, it's not a pleasant fun topic.

You need to get that this isn't some isolated phenomenon. This is the continuation of a major societal issue that is going to take many generations yet to settle down in a more meaningful way. You can't just flip a switch and expect everything to be okay and for everybody to start getting along. There are still many continuing racial divides in the US, both local and national.

Most of us do not want to be on our respective sides of the equation, and none of us had any choice to be born into one, but we were dealt the hands that we were dealt, and we're all going to have to make the best of it. That includes accepting and working on all the inherited issues that the previous generations left us with.

[Mortificator]

Oh, well that's alright then.

fucking hell we've hit peak retard.

Considering the Qur'an does not, in fact, say to behead anyone, I 'm pretty doubtful that tweet was made sincerely.

[Blinge]

Ey you know what, you're right. It says kill the unbelievers wherever you find them, not specifically to behead. I suppose that one might be tucked away in a hadith somewhere and more up for debate.

I've actually read the Qur'an cover to cover. It was... simultaneously better and far worse than I thought.

[BryanM]

Christianity's canon has similar laws, but no one ever follows them. (Ah, except through political policy I guess.)

The entire point of religion is as an organizing structure of a gang. Designate who gets the loot and who gets to own which ladies, etc. It's pretty blatantly obvious (Cain and Abel being an example of a story used by upper management to complain about vegetables and demand their tribute in warm tasty flesh).

Capitalism is of course a religion as well. It's religions all the way down, just how it is.

[vol.2]

I'd prefer to think of it as social hierarchies all the way down. Ideally, we will eventually move past those that most closely resemble religion and evolve as a species.

But we'll probably all end up destroying the earth and ourselves along with it.

[Specineff]

How exactly are you taking that to mean that the author is "justifying" anything wrong that was done? You don't like the author's tone? I don't think you were meant to like it, it's not a pleasant fun topic.

I wonder if you read the whole thing. I did and it's full of the same venomous rhetoric that anyone opposing the civil rights movement in Alabama back then, would use to justify their position:

White folks, who once had “the community” as a place to be surrounded by their own kind after long days of having to put up with black people, now have to watch blacks become the most affluent, and seemingly most content, residents of our neighborhoods. If that were not traumatic enough, there is also the matter of our interpersonal interactions with our new neighbors, many of whom have attempted to break into our homes, unilaterally organized to reshape our schools, or otherwise come into our sacred places and treated us as we are so often treated by black people: with violence.

Does it sound hateful and wrong? All I did was reverse the races and change the stereotypes in the writer's response. We can't condemn anti-asian hate because of Corona on one hand, and justify anti-white hate on the other because of the actions of a bunch of Karens and Kevins. I'll concede it's a big bunch, however.

You need to get that this isn't some isolated phenomenon. This is the continuation of a major societal issue that is going to take many generations yet to settle down in a more meaningful way. You can't just flip a switch and expect everything to be okay and for everybody to start getting along. There are still many continuing racial divides in the US, both local and national.

Very true. But Black Entitlement is not the weapon Mega Man should be using against Societal Divide Man. The whole article feels like a big "I'm not racist, but if all those damn black thugs and gangstas were any different... " style of explanation, just in reverse.

Most of us do not want to be on our respective sides of the equation, and none of us had any choice to be born into one, but we were dealt the hands that we were dealt, and we're all going to have to make the best of it. That includes accepting and working on all the inherited issues that the previous generations left us with.

Bulllying and harassing someone for the color of the skin, just because other people of the same color mistreated me, is not the way we accept and work on all those issues. You won't see me crying about white supremacy because the USA forced Mexico to cede California, Arizona, Texas and New Mexico in 1848, nor using it to justify hatred of people who have done nothing to me, solely on the color of their skin. I wonder what reverend King would say if he read that article.

[BIL]

Christianity's canon has similar laws, but no one ever follows them. (Ah, except through political policy I guess.)

Of course. The problem here is not religion, but a top-down social indulgence of its worst vices.

See also Rotherham et al. The problem there was not British Pakistanis, but a top-down social indulgence of their society's child-raping dregs. White British society has child rapists, too - evil will follow humanity to its grave - but the state tends not to be terrified of naming them. EDIT: Unless they're high enough up the social ladder, ofc. Jimmy Savile, Cyril Smith, Woking Pizza Express Man, and God knows who else as I type this. That's another phenomenon entirely though.

This fact pattern repeats over and over in current year England. Karen White is another, re: transgender people.

Unfortunately, we cannot have blasphemy laws in a secular society. None of the Muslims I know, some all my life, disagree on that. The ones that do will have to get with the times.

Not unexpectedly - ignore history / doom repeat, etc - it's pure primal fetishisation behind this nonsense. Muslims calling for this teacher's head, metaphorically or otherwise, aren't sacred or special. They're just haplessly deluded religionists, the sort you'd tell to fuck off under normal circumstances.

I'm going to hell according to my childhood pastor, because I have gay friends and the most I've ever told them is to rubber up, because I don't want them catching the HIV coof. I didn't tell him to fuck off - he is a lovely man - but I'd really have to, if he tried to get me fired or beheaded for playing Screaming For Vengeance on the staff boombox.

The entire point of religion is as an organizing structure of a gang. Designate who gets the loot and who gets to own which ladies, etc. It's pretty blatantly obvious (Cain and Abel being an example of a story used by upper management to complain about vegetables and demand their tribute in warm tasty flesh).

Bryan you kuffar bastard, if you die 2night I won't go to ur funeral

Spoiler

BECAUSE ILL BE IN JAIL FOR KILLING THE MUHFUCKA THAT KILLED U

[vol.2]

I wonder if you read the whole thing.

I did, and I completely disagree with you. To me, the whole statement was made as an honest description of how a community of people feel in reaction to gentrification. There wasn't any attempt to justify the actions of the students that caused harm and trouble.

Bulllying and harassing someone for the color of the skin, just because other people of the same color mistreated me, is not the way we accept and work on all those issues.

Again. There was no attempt to justify the actions of the bullying students. The article was an attempt to start a dialog. I don't know exactly what is blinding you to that, but it seems that you refuse to see it and you are stuck.

[Specineff]

Again. There was no attempt to justify the actions of the bullying students. The article was an attempt to start a dialog. I don't know exactly what is blinding you to that, but it seems that you refuse to see it and you are stuck.

Then why is it necessary to bring all that up in order to start a dialog? I'm not refusing: It's just not there. Also from the mother of the harassed student:

and other non-Black students there were victimized because of their race.

Those goddamned asians/latinos/arabs/jews and their gentrification...

[BIL]

I did, and I completely disagree with you. To me, the whole statement was made as an honest description of how a community of people feel in reaction to gentrification. There wasn't any attempt to justify the actions of the students that caused harm and trouble.

I get where you're coming from re: gentrification, and I apologise for sounding absolutist, but I have to disagree here. Casting a desire to victimise, wherever it comes from, as an "urge" is a dangerous rationalisation as it is.

I've had the privilege of getting racist abuse for being too white and not white enough, depending on the room. World of cunts, what can you do. I've never kept company with anyone who harboured an "urge" to victimise me or my family, kept in check by some tenuous reserve of grudging mercy. That's a ludicrous scenario, and the author is a fool for endorsing it to her children.

Spoiler

I'm not American, and I don't have any solutions for your tragic rates of black poverty. I'd like to think there are some. This isn't going to help, beyond some short-term nihilistic release ending in arrest or death.

[Blinge]

The only thing to be gained from whattaboutery re: christianity's past is a reminder that the best thing about christianity today is just how neutered it is and a warning not to return to those days. That does not mean it can serve as a justification for Islam being in those days today (to whatever extent you may believe that it is).

God, it hurt to squeeze that one out of my retarded brain.

Re: bullied white girl. Well, sure you can bring up your minority kids with the most resentment possible so they bully a girl out of school. I'm sure that'll work well for race relations and you're not creating a new life-long racist with all the childhood trauma to fuel it she'll ever need..

I've had the privilege of getting racist abuse for being too white and not white enough, depending on the room. World of cunts, what can you do.

Urgh that sucks

[BIL]

On the plus side, you learn pretty quick that all colours and creeds harbour vicious racist assholes, and good people as well.

[vol.2]

Casting a desire to victimise, wherever it comes from, as an "urge" is a dangerous rationalisation as it is.

It wasn't given as one. OP trumped that up. It was presented as the feelings of a community, not a rationalization. In order to start fixing a problem, you have to understand how and why everything works first. You do that by listening to people and forming a better picture of the situation. That's the dialog part.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

^It seems to be an oddly circular counterpoint: "Consider that the racists were racist because they are racist."

SPEAKING of racists - "It's okay when Mel Brooks does it" bigoted hag Lindsay Ellis has disappeared from the internet after being called out for some extremely poor takes on the Raya The Last Dragon movie.

https://meaww.com/lindsay-ellis-anti-as ... -reactions

if you squint

Holy shit Lindsay, not even MovieBob will go near this one.

[BryanM]

I'm not American, and I don't have any solutions for your tragic rates of black poverty. I'd like to think there are some.

Hahaha hoooo.

I guess technically there are, but it would involve the people who own this place wanting things to be different. I guess if they implemented an actual UBI in response to the apocalypse (the real, slow grindy one we're going through not the exciting fantasy one with elves and orcs and star wraiths and video game stat sheets) that could do something. At least as long as we still have gasoline.

We're 1/12th of the way there already, a little more fear of everything falling apart and they might give us a bit moar.

The only thing to be gained from whattaboutery re: christianity's past is a reminder that the best thing about christianity today is just how neutered it is and a warning not to return to those days.

It's hard to call it neutered when it has control of the strongest empire in the history of the earth. Faux decency (manifested currently I suppose by the hollow moralizing trappings of liberal democracy) is a luxury of comfort, the moment shit gets uncomfortable the facade slips off instantly - people are animals.

Things like fundamentalists supporting the manifest destiny of Israel, for the sole purpose that they believe it to being the key to kicking off the rapture (where of course their good non-christian friends will be cast into hell or erased from existence) always made me ask "what the christ?" The type of people who sit on their yachts and commiserate what a pity it was that John McCain wouldn't vocalize support of torture because of all the... torture he experienced. While sipping vastly overpriced wine (aka, grape juice).

Everyone acts like QAnon is new or crazy. It's not new, and apparently they're not crazy. In the sense of being normal when it comes to being a human. Of course the computer simulation we live in is nutters if viewed through a distanced rationality.

Prester Jane's thoughts on his own experience with fundamentalism are a good place to start for those outside the cult. Considering the magnitude of influence they have, I'd consider it mandatory reading for anyone who cares about understanding political power. "Crazy ramblings of a crazy person from a crazy cult", important shit to know. You simply can't understand something like this from the outside:

Spoiler

It is hard to explain to the non-fundamentalist what exactly Gay Marriage means to a fundamentalist. Homosexuality represents an open, willful defiance to God's will that they find nearly incomprehensible (to a fundamentalist, the only pleasure one receives from "sodomy" is the thrill of defying your creator in the most perverse way imaginable), and the societal acceptance of such a horror is pure gibbering madness. The way you or I might perceive the scenes of hundreds of children speaking in tongues in Jesus Camp, they perceive the US accepting Gay Marriage. Except worse, because while you and I might feel a great selling of sadness in seeing children manipulated in such a way, fundamentalists feel EXTREME fear in seeing Gay people get married.

Let me compare Gay Marriage to abortion. This comparison is valid because fundies are going to be making this comparison a shitload in the days to come because both were brought about via the Supreme Court. While Fundies believe abortion is baby murder (which they detest) it is something they can at least understand. After all, in the Old Testament babies are murdered under God's orders numerous times. (When I was 8 the leader of my cult gave all us 2nd graders a vivid demonstration of how the Israelite s picked up the Canaanites children by their legs and dashed their heads against the rocks as God had commanded.) Baby murder is bad, but it isn't outside the natural order. Fundamentalists understand it. Homosexuality is against God's order, it is one of the vilest, cleverest lies Satan has ever concocted. In the Bible God punish's murders individually, but God flooded the entire planet once because of sodomy (Noah's Flood), and he flattened Sodom and Gomorrah for homosexuality. So as bad as abortion is, Gay Marriage is actually much worse.

To the fundamentalist mind legal Gay Marriage is society embracing the most vile, hated act in the entire Bible. Nowhere in the entire fundie worldview is there a sin anywhere near so dangerous as homosexuality. God has destroyed any nation in history that has ever embraced homosexuality, because it is that grievous an insult to His perfect will. By embracing sodomy in such a public way, America is turning its back on God in the most defiant way possible. To the average fundie, this is America signing its own death warrant. Revelations is at hand and the tribulation must begin soon. When I was little I heard over and over that "tolerance of sodomites" would be the very last thing that happened before God's wrath descended down upon the world. It is the final, ultimate, collective defiance of God. Satan's grandest plan to trick us all into forcing God to destroy us.

And of course they can blame everything bad that happens due to that (covid, drought, the sky of California being on fire all night, etc)

[BIL]

Casting a desire to victimise, wherever it comes from, as an "urge" is a dangerous rationalisation as it is.

It wasn't given as one. OP trumped that up. It was presented as the feelings of a community, not a rationalization. In order to start fixing a problem, you have to understand how and why everything works first. You do that by listening to people and forming a better picture of the situation. That's the dialog part.

The author herself poisons any notion of dialogue by casting non-blacks as racial antagonists. Some ideas are innately radioactive.

Your daughter might not have done anything deliberately to harm anyone or to invite mistreatment, but her presence disrupts something truly fragile: the feeling of safety Black kids get from being with other Black kids.

Oh no, not the disgusting presence of white people. Judging by the US's genocidal rates of black on black homicide, I suspect the author's "safety" may be a false refuge.

Those kids see their parents struggling to afford to live in an area that is changing to better reflect people like you. They think of how they and the adults they love have been treated by White folks in positions of authority their entire lives (perhaps including some of the teachers at this Black school). They know the world is kinder to your child than it is to them. The combination of that knowledge, that pain, and their youth can be very volatile.

They "know" this, huh. Just an inborn disgust response to white people. It's no wonder these kids are constantly fighting off the urge to attack, it must be maddening.

"But if you dismantled Whiteness, with your White People Powers, we wouldn't have to hate you!"

Oh I see. As Bryan says, the situation at hand is deeply entrenched and beyond the control of common individuals. What solutions are to be reached on the ground, once you've designated entire races and their children as parasites? Haiti is coming to mind, here. Whatever retribution was had at the time - and those slaves were victimised atrociously - the place is now a nightmare beyond the worst US ghetto. It's very racially pure, though.

School integration is complicated, and the U.S. has never worked to implement it in any meaningful way. The haphazard integration that has been born of gentrification has and will continue to hurt a lot of kids. I am sorry that your daughter was one of them, and I hope you are able to help her get through this difficult time with the right attitude.

Yeah, I do hope the kid and her family don't end up despising you and yours for tarring her as reaving ogre-spawn.

Imagine if your daughter had been very popular at this school, well-liked and embraced by her peers. What if her Whiteness had made her a celebrity of sorts, accepted and celebrated by students and teachers alike because of the ways that society typically privileges White girlhood? How might you have reacted to that? Would you have been concerned about how this could impact the Black girls in her class? What if she were the valedictorian in that all-Black school? Would that have been a problem to you?

Notice the total lack of disconnect between the preceding racially-charged scenario and the pupil's hypothetical success. Crab bucket writ in screaming neon signage.

Holy shit Lindsay, not even MovieBob will go near this one.

I told em, Hotdog-chan a crazy bitch (■｀ω´■)

It's hard to call it neutered when it has control of the strongest empire in the history of the earth.

It's neutered in the context of this discussion, IE, if a Christian fundamentalist intimates that a schoolteacher should be sacked or beheaded for showing a cartoon of Jesus, your response will (correctly) be "Fuck off you absolute muppet."

In this context, the complainants are treated gingerly, as if they have a leg to stand on.

Their religion is, in a sense, neutered - in a true theocracy, the teacher would be Paty'd in short order - but you can go a long, patently un-earned way, when the state is carrying you on its meekly supplicating shoulders.

[BryanM]

Haiti is coming to mind, here. Whatever retribution was had at the time - and those slaves were victimised atrociously - the place is now a nightmare beyond the worst US ghetto.

In a place where the bottom rung of society eats cookies made of dirt and oil, it always felt over the top cruel when the Clintons lobbied against their movement to have a minimum wage. So much of a war just to get the 43 cents an hour they have now. And a cartoon when their government got immediately coup'd because someone mumbled some thoughts that maybe they should get some of that ransom money back they had to pay in order to not be outright slaves.

Burkina Faso is probably one of the colonies that have it the worst. Their benevolent dictator had them up to the point of self-sufficiency when it came to food ("he who feeds you, controls you") before France put him in the ground and the status quo reinstated. Worst literacy rates in the world, female "circumcision" prevalence of around 72.5%... it reminds me of George Carlin's line about poor people needing to exist in order to scare the shit out of the working class and make them grateful for the scraps they have.

Controlling populations through their food is a time honored practice that shows up all the time. Seen while genociding the natives in uh, everywhere.

Bill Gates is looking into the viability of doing that thing to the sky they did in The Matrix movies, btw. Dead serious. No joking. Only hyperbole in the analogy is they don't want to block 100% of the sunlight.

[vol.2]

Some ideas are innately radioactive.

What, you mean like comparing a group of bullying teenagers to a self videotaped group rape?

Seriously BIL, you're about as radioactive as they come.

[BIL]

Well, you mentioned a few posts up being squeamish re: human horror. I made a career of it, or rather its pathology. I like people, and whatever causes most to recoil, I have a resigned tolerance for, so I thought I could be useful (also $$$). I have had to look at a lot of bad things, and I can tell you that the following sentiment, whether attached to a minor infraction or the atrocity in question, glows like Chernobyl:

Lewis is also said to have claimed that Lee offered to have sex with him consensually, in front of the other boys, Fox6 reported. He told investigators that he ‘didn’t really care about (Lee) because she’s not someone he knows personally’ after leaving her for dead.

And it's all over that article. It reeks of it. It's a nostalgic scent, reminds me of a man forced to bite another man's testicles off at gunpoint ca 1994. Bullying's just the start of dehumanisation and target designation, it's true, but the continuity is most definitely real. You can walk along it, jump up and down on it, it's solid stuff built from ancient DNA, and it'll always be lurking at the bottom of human society.

So the gang rape and murder of Ee Lee, and the 84 year-old murdered for his Asian Presence (bugger me if I can spell his name offhand), they're not brought up lightly - certainly not to throw the racial harassment of a child so extreme her parents are forced to withdraw her from school out of perspective. It's all bad stuff.