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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • That’s a silly argument. Biden (aside from being an unrepentant segregationist!) acted as an active agent of white supremacy, and Kamala would have too, just like every President has.

    As an aside, it wasn’t the majority of the population. It wasn’t even the majority of the voting-eligible population. It was like a little over a quarter, I think.



  • Rights are not handed to us by God or by Nature, they are legal constructs, created by people. They are not immaculate or immune to criticism or alteration on the basis of what we think would be better for human society. White supremacy must be smashed to its very core, and part of accomplishing that task is making sure it’s as difficult for white supremacists to recruit and congregate as we can possibly make it.

    It’s bizarre idealism to think that opposition to white supremacy will be overcome with no loss of enthusiasm or membership, that any interference actually has zero effect and we’re just better off letting them do what they want.





  • That’s not at all what the quote is and neither is the top level commenter’s interpretation, and I think it not being these is pretty obvious if you read No Exit. The point that he was making (and this is putting it crassly because I know jack shit about his Heidegger-based phenomenology) is the presence of other people forces us to be self-conscious, to regard ourselves as the object of someone else’s perception and judgement. That’s why Sartre goes out of his way to say the room (their jail cell in Hell, effectively) had no reflective surfaces, so that the character’s perception of themselves could only come from the people they are stuck with (this doesn’t entirely make sense, but I am pretty sure it’s what he meant). You can read him talk about some of the premises informing this by checking out his writing on “The Look,” like is quoted below this comic.

    So it’s a slightly obtuse point about intersubjectivity that people have turned into a cutesy way of talking about their own misanthropy. It’s probably more emblematic of the meaning of the quote how people in this thread, original commenter especially, are talking about silently judging people for this and that action.





  • compromising on social policy (especially immigration . . . )

    That compromise has already happened. Harris is currently campaigning on a hardline border policy and touting that she tried to get essentially Trump’s 2020 border policy through the legislature.

    If the Dems lose, they will move right. If they win, they will move right. Without a strong leftist opposition (not just voice, but opposition), they will keep moving right term after term after term while touting superficial bullshit to try to please people who have a conscience but very little political education.

    There was a thread just yesterday about why the Democrats haven’t done anything progressive in so long, and people were seriously touting Harris being black like that at all matters in the face of her being a cop, or like it’s actual policy and not just the incidental identity of their prospective President. I wrote a whole thing on it before deleting it because I just can’t stand to talk to people like that anymore.




  • No, gay marriage is what the US culture war pivoted on for a long time because it doesn’t involve disruption to normal cishet social currents and doesn’t require anything of the state actually be provided to people, plus it represents a benefit to the gay members of the bourgeoisie just as much as to the common person.

    Furthermore, like in Taiwan, gay marriage in the US was not approved by referendum, it was basically a fluke from the Supreme court independent of other efforts. There are still nearly as many states as before where it is a large popular sentiment that if your kid is gay, they are sick, and state legislatures that are, as we speak, preparing to bring gay marriage back to the SC to get its protection removed.

    Edit: As an aside, despite your chauvinistic, idealist view of cultures being “there yet” or not, using China as the example, lateral cultural differences also exist, and ignorance of these makes it very difficult to actively evaluate what a cultural attitude is. In China’s case, there is in most places a passive homophobia (which is still homophobia), but they generally don’t have the same homophobic culture war front that we saw in America. They are more like a broad, cultural “don’t ask, don’t tell”, which is in keeping with even Imperial Chinese traditions. There is obviously resistance to the existing movements to do things like legalizing gay marriage, but it’s a losing battle for the conservatives, who are mostly passive on this issue, and several of the practical benefits of gay marriage have already been won by other concessions, allowing gay couples rights concerning medical and financial decisions and so on through their guardianship system.

    All this to say “Is gay marriage legal?” should not be treated as a binary for queer people having any recognition.

    P.P.S. China also has multiple dedicated clinics for transgender people in various cities like Beijing and Shanghai.




  • Contrary to certain self-victimizing sentiments, I think that the problem is that the platform is more and more overtaken by the topic of the election (and Israel in reference thereto) and it just results in interminable arguing in circles that accomplishes nothing but wasting time. Regardless of the outcome of the election, I think less-annoying activity will increase afterwards.



  • It’s silly to act like individual values are some sacred, unassailable thing gifted to everyone’s soul by the heavens, rather than something that came from a combination of inborn human traits and memories*, i.e. they are something that is contingent, changing, and in no way above being questioned.

    It’s also silly to act like it makes sense to just have a blanket acceptance of something if it’s an “individual value” even though, when we look at the world, individual values can sometimes be extremely fucked up and we shouldn’t allow people who would enact those values to abuse with impunity.

    *“memories” is simplistic, but I don’t think it is catastrophically so.