dylancatlow

1. Biden's gains over Hillary were largest in red-leaning states like GA, AZ and TX where democrats weren't expecting to need a win , and which only became relevant because democrats did worse than expected in the Midwest. Given Trump's razor thin margins there in 2016 , it would've been pretty hard to hold on to them with even a slight shift toward democrats, which we see even in red states where election rigging would presumably be harder for democrats to pull off. If Democrats were going to engineer a win for Biden, you'd expect them to guarantee wins in the Midwest rather than barely push him over the edge and then "seal the deal" with narrow wins in GA and AZ. 

2.  Exit polling is consistent with the national vote count being 51 percent Biden, 48 percent Trump.

3. Republicans appear to have held on to the senate, which democrats were favored to take, and also came miraculously close to taking the House. Why not rig those too? 

It is a common trope that gay men are more prone than other demographics to engage in frequent casual sex, which accurately reflects my own experience. This, I think, can be explained simply by the fact that for a gay man, the only barrier to having sex is another man's willingness to have sex with him, and since males are by far the sluttier of the two genders, this amounts to a very low barrier indeed. Thus, it's not the case that straight men aren't slutty, but rather that in most cases they are kept from being as slutty as they want to be due to the shortage of loose women willing to have a one-night stand.

Notice that gay males are the only ones who are both attracted to men (the sluttier and therefore easier-to-sleep-with gender) and male themselves (and therefore slutty themselves). 

The intention of this post isn't to promote homophobia, but rather to offer an alternative explanation to the one typically used to explain gay promiscuity, namely one appealing to the "moral degeneracy" of gay culture and gays themselves. 

1. Many of those crossing the border do so in groups that include small children, babies, and other "dependents" who wouldn't be able to scale a wall themselves. Getting them over a 30 foot high-wall with barbed wire at the top would be risky and difficult, and it would make repeated crossings a nightmare. 

2. If the wall was installed with motion detectors every few hundred feet or so, the wall would have to be scaled very quickly in order to avoid capture by police. Depending on how high the wall was, this may be next to impossible. 

Of course, no wall we build will ever be 100 percent effective at preventing illegal immigration, but it doesn't have to be perfect to prevent or discourage large numbers of would-be immigrants from entering the country. These are not trained wall-climbers we're dealing with, but scared and impoverished peasants who in many cases aren't even sure they want to leave home. 

If we're justified in placing restrictions on "hate speech" because of its potential to harm others in society, then why stop there? There is plenty of speech with the potential to harm society. Presumably, advocating on behalf of any harmful policy idea is harmful to society, and shutting down such advocacy would help society reach better outcomes. 

I am here to answer your questions. 

In her latest display of stupidity, AOC has lashed out against senator Mitch McConnell for having the support of seven "very evil boys," whose sinister nature became apparent when they encountered a silly cardboard cutout of AOC and decided to express their negative opinion of her by pointing their thumbs in a downward direction. Two of them got a little "too creative" in how they expressed themselves, with one of them pretending to choke her and the other pretending to kiss her on the cheek in an ironic manner (some say he "groped" her as well, but if so, he missed her breast by at least a foot). 

For those who insist on describing their behavior as "disturbing," I'd like to know what you think is the proper etiquette concerning displays of hatred toward political figures one despises. Are we really limited to such boring, unimaginative actions as pointing our thumbs down or sticking our tongues out, or are there other more "extreme" actions which are acceptable as well? 

Despite still having failed to deliver on his promise to deport the millions of Mexican invaders and build a southern border wall to prevent their return, I find it very hard to believe that President Trump was insincere in stressing the dire need for such changes, and simply did it to get elected. So one has to ask: why is he not doing more? Is he scared to act, or constantly being sabotaged without his even knowing? Or, on the other hand, is he just not in this all the way, and lacks the will to fight as hard as he would need to? Either way, it’s not good, but that’s different from “hopeless.”

I say that his support for deportations and the wall is sincere not just for all the obvious reasons, like the fact that he’s still tweeting about these issues to this day, but also because of lesser-known facts, such as the fact that in 2017 he gave what amounted to a White Nationalist rally in Poland. Those who are able to read between the lines know the real meaning of sentences such as these, especially when spoken to an all-White crowd in the whitest country in Europe, the first European country he delivered a speech to:

“Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty. We must work together to confront forces [...] from the South or the East [...]

We write symphonies. We pursue innovation. We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs, and always seek to explore and discover brand-new frontiers.

Despite every effort to transform you [...] you endured and overcame.
[...] it is the people, not the powerful, who have always formed the foundation of freedom and the cornerstone of our defense. The people have been that foundation here in Poland.

Just as Poland could not be broken, I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken. Our values will prevail. Our people will thrive. And our civilization will triumph.”

One could easily imagine these words coming from Richard Spencer. The fact that Trump “disavows” him conveys virtually zero information, since, if Trump shares his ideas and wants to make them national policy, then he has no choice but to play along. Let’s hope for a day when charades like these will no longer be necessary. (I hope everyone here has figured out what the “Muslim terrorism problem” is really code for ;)).
It’s also known that his father instructed him very early on about the importance of genetics, and about the falseness of our national dialogue which rejects such facts in favor of absurdities like “everyone of every race is equal”:

“The Frontline documentary The Choice, which premiered this week on PBS, reveals that Trump agrees with the dangerous and abusive theory of eugenics.

‘The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development,’ D’Antonio says in the documentary. ‘They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.’”

Contrary to what he is allowed to claim, Trump *is* something very close to a White Nationalist and the Left is right to be terrified. He is far more radical than he can afford to present himself as to the public, and that’s a very good thing. It’s also good that he’s *not* being completely honest about his beliefs, because that just wouldn’t work, and this needs to work.

One fact that has always concerned me is that Trump was unwilling in the 2016 election to donate any significant portion of multi-billion dollar fortune toward his campaign, and apparently had to be coaxed into donating the small amount he did. Of course, it didn’t matter in the end, and perhaps the money wouldn’t have helped at all, and might have even turned voters off. But if this wasn’t a calculated move on Trump’s part, and he didn’t want to donate any of his riches because he’s just kind of a shitty person who would rather see the world burn than lose even a little of what constitutes his “identity”, I don’t know what to say. If he has even the faintest idea of what’s at stake, he’d know how silly that would be. So the question is: does he really get it?

I was recently asked to explain why I “pick on the Jews for being so left-wing” when the exit polling conducted after the 2016 election indicates that they supported Hillary over Trump by a ratio of 71-24, which is about the same level of democratic support shown by other minority groups. And it is the case: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/opinion/trump-rally-send-her-back.html
According to the demons who were assigned to write at the NYT editorial board, the “real meaning” of Trump’s presidency is captured in a quote they know he never made, reflecting his status as a “race warrior” who foments “racial hatred” for daring to send out tweets which PC doctrine demands that we all gasp at regardless of accuracy. You don’t need to read the article, because my summary of their summary should tell you about how many neurons were actually required to fire to get this piece written. One per letter, perhaps.


The truth, of course, is that Trump’s tweets didn’t go nearly far enough, but we can’t say that’s his fault. As president of Communist USA, there are many truths that even he can’t speak. Let’s just say that if by some tragic miracle *I* were elected president, I don’t think I could stop myself from sending out tweets like these:

They wouldn’t really be able to accuse me of anything of which they haven’t already accused Trump. They would just get louder, crazier and more sweaty because they’d know I was being serious.

Most people are uncomfortable with the idea of absolute certainty. No matter how firmly any fact can be established, at the back of their mind they will always think "There is nothing of which I am so certain that I am unwilling to consider the possibility of my being wrong. There have been times when I've been wrong when I felt certain that I was correct, and I'm not smart enough to think of all the possible counterarguments to any position, so how can I know for sure that none of them have validity? The very fact that I don't know whether I can know anything for sure is surely proof of this". 

In fact, there is something about which one can be certain, namely truth itself. One is never going to be put into a situation of being rationally forced to admit that truth is not true, for what would this even mean? In order for it to be untrue, there must be some "truth" to which it does not correspond. But truth is just defined as whatever that thing is. That is to say, the definition of truth is so general that its interpretation can always be changed to accommodate whatever "truth" it is claimed to lack. In fact, the very concept of "uncertainty" requires that we be certain of at least truth itself, because understanding truth and accepting it as absolute cannot be separated. Without the concept of truth, "uncertainty" cannot be meaningfully interpreted. 

Therefore, one can state without fear that there is a basis for absolute certainty, and that the basis is truth itself. A denial that there is such a concept as "truth" that makes no reference to the concept (which would be to admit its existence) has no relevance to truth, and even if true proves nothing about it. Therefore, the only way to deny that there is a concept of "truth" is to deny that there are any concepts at all. This runs into the same problem as denying that among the possible concepts is the concept of "truth", for now the concept of "concept" must be referred to in the course of declaring it meaningless, and the impossibility of doing so has the same implications for "concept" as for "truth". 

It should come as no surprise to anyone that at the end of the day, it is true to say that truth is true according to a true definition of truth. Anyone who denies it and expects to occupy the logical high-ground is a fool, and their denial can be explained only in terms of a flawed human psychology. Skepticism should be viewed as a psychological phenomenon driven by human emotions. 

It is frequently claimed that the United States spends an inordinate amount on its military, as reflected in the fact that its military budget exceeds the combined military budgets of the next 17 largest military spenders. Left-leaning politicians can't seem to enter into a discussion about military spending without framing the issue in such terms, presenting the above statistic as irrefutable proof that the US can and should cut back on its military become less of a global outlier. The statistic is, in fact, completely misleading, being mostly a reflection of the sheer size of the American economy as a whole. As a percentage of GDP, the United States spends slightly more on military than is typical for a Western country, but not that much more. The world average for military spending is 2.2 percent GDP, and the US spends a mere .9 percent GDP above that, at 3.1 percent GDP. For reference, France spends 2.3 percent, UK 1.8 percent, Australia 2.0 percent. So what these politicians are basically saying is: "Two percent may be reasonable, but three percent?! At three percent we're a global scandal." It's pretty laughable. 

Some countries spend significantly more on their militaries compared to the US, and one of them (Russia), has only recently warmed up to the US after more than half a century of extreme hostilities, at one point coming within inches (we are now learning) of launching a nuclear strike against the US that would have destroyed it and probably the entire world. It is not unreasonable to suppose that tensions could rise up again, especially if a democrat in the mold of Hillary Clinton were to occupy the White House. 

When combined, Chinese and Russian military spending amounts to approximately half the US military budget, even though China spends a mere 1.9 percent GDP on military, and between them have more than five times the population of the United States. China's real (price-adjusted) GDP has already surpassed that of the US, and is on course to surpass the US in actual GDP within a few decades. Therefore, what the US is looking at is a potential hostile military alliance that beats it in GDP and population. In such a world, American military dominance could only be maintained with the help of Western allies, who often have their own separate agendas.

It's hard to see why the US, as the one global superpower, should feel embarrassed that it spends slightly more on military than other Western countries, who in some ways can only get away with their smaller military budgets thanks to the protection offered by the United States. 

This is yet another instance of the democrats resorting to dishonest framing when facts do not support their preferred conclusion. 

How can Trump be expected to say that the press are anything more than a bunch of liars when they have spent the last two plus years relentlessly attacking his character, every one of his policy proposals, and essentially everything he has ever said or done? He's treated in the media like a circus freak whose "talent" is that he can't say anything true or do anything right. If he's not the completely dishonest buffoon he's presented as by the media, then they are the dishonest ones, given their hysterical degree of opposition. And since no person (let alone president) is going to admit to being a circus freak buffoon, what option is there really but to turn it back on the media? It would be downright illogical (and also out of character) for Trump to show or encourage respect for an extremely hostile media.

There is nothing "scary" about verbal attacks on the media by a president, unless one thinks it's "scary" that someone would be elected president who the press finds this awful. If the press are indeed failing at their jobs, then Trump is right to go after them, and in doing so is upholding the principle that a distinction exists between a genuine press, which is an asset to any democracy, and a dishonest press, which might as well not exist at all. For those who believe that citizens of a democracy would benefit from an honest press, a press which specializes in misleading the public while claiming to be tirelessly seeking the objective truth can fairly be described as "the enemy of the people".

The Paradox of Tolerance was an argument put forth by Karl Popper which describes the circumstances under which it would be justified for a society committed to the principle of tolerance to forcibly suppress the expression of certain ideas. Karl Popper believed that a tolerant society would be acting in the interest of tolerance by silencing those with "intolerant" views when the expression of those views would threaten the tolerance of the society. According to Popper, if one is in favor of tolerance, then one should seek the maximize it, and this sometimes requires fighting intolerance with intolerance. On the other hand, if one is not in favor of tolerance, then one has no reason to complain if the intolerant are suppressed. Either way, according to him, the principle of unlimited free speech is indefensible. 

The main flaw with the argument, or at least with its modern interpretation, is that "tolerance" is being used in two different senses. A society incorporating free speech as an absolute principle need not be a society committed to tolerance in any wider sense. That is to say, an ardent defender of free speech is only obliged, according to the argument, to suppress views that directly threaten free speech but not any other kind of "intolerance". They can want society to be tolerant of more than just people's speech, but they need only maximize free speech itself and not any other kind of tolerance in order to be considered a "true believer in free speech". Those who insist that society suppress intolerant views which don't call free speech into question cannot rely on the argument that "If free speech is good, then this person, whose views are at odds with free speech, must be silenced in the name of free speech". Instead, they have to rely on the a priori assumption that a view is bad if it is deemed by society as "intolerant". But this is no more justified than society trying to silence all views the majority considers "wrong", whether or not "intolerance" is the reason they are deemed wrong. 

At most, the Paradox of Tolerance requires that society prevent people from speaking out against free speech, and arguably, this would entail suppressing those who interpret the Paradox of Tolerance to mean that silencing all "intolerant" views is consistent with the principle of free speech. 

Consider two societies, society A and society B. Society A is 100 percent black and has a very high crime rate. People in the society are suspicious of strangers and generally keep to themselves. No one in the society is offended by this, because everyone understands that people's fear of others is justified, and no one expects to be treated better than they treat others. Now consider society B. Society B is 100 percent Asian, and unlike society A, has almost no crime. Trust among strangers is high, and people are generally willing to help each other out, knowing that others would do the same for them. 

I think most would agree that the level of trust in each of these societies is more or less appropriate to the circumstances. People in society A have a right to treat each other differently than the people in society B, because the level of trust one has in others isn't determined arbitrarily, as though there were a "baseline" level of trust appropriate to all situations, but, if one is rational, is based on statistical assumptions backed up by evidence. 

Now imagine that both of these societies combine into one society, so that blacks and Asians now live together side by side. The black crime rate remains high, or at least higher than the Asian crime rate, and for the first time Asians experience uneasiness around strangers - black strangers, that is. 

My question for liberals is: are the Asians wrong to treat the blacks differently than they treat each other? If so, was it also wrong for members of the all-black society to treat each other in the way they are treated by Asians (and themselves) in the racially mixed society? If not, why was it acceptable then but not acceptable once the races mixed? 

Today Juggle deleted over 2 million spam posts, which gives me hope that they are not quite ready to let DDO fall to the spammers. But if they do give up trying to halt the flow of incoming spam, it seems like debateart.com will have to serve as DDO's replacement. Let's all do our best to ensure that this website reaches the "critical mass" of members that it will need to be successful by advertising for this website in our forum signatures and on our profiles. That way, returning members will have a better chance of knowing that the DDO community has not dissolved but has migrated to another platform.