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Last time I recall it was back on the 32nd of Whoavember.
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Moore is a living, breathing anti-American strawman argument.
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In the grand tradition of Father Coughlin and the Puritans.
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Luther Strange sounds like he walked out of a Johnny Cash song -
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I had to look that up because I didn’t understand how that could be possible.
I see that the US elects judges at that level so I guess I can see how someone who refuses to enforce a law which his electorate also rejects could get elected again if they stand - but how is it that someone removed from their position for refusing to follow the law can stand for election as a judge again?
I mean, you’d assume that would automatically disqualify you from standing again?
Don’t judges have to take some sort of oath to uphold the law in the US?
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I use the word “caucazoid” because I think it’s funny.
I am caucazoidal, so I feel that it is OK for me to use “whitey” if I think that it is more funny in context.
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Worst song ever.
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Red and yellow kills a fellow.
Let’s see how bad a snake bite this gaffe is.
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It doesn’t make any sense to me either.
It is less of a US thing as it is an Alabama thing. Several states have provisions in their laws or court decisions which bar a judge from running again after being thrown out of office for misconduct.
Don’t get me started on the number of elected people who completely disregard such duties!
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I don’t know, I think Alien vs. Terminator has some strong possibilities. Maybe that’s why humans were able to win the war against SkyNet. Little do they know there is a bigger war coming…
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Any word could be a racial slur if it is used as one. Pick literally any word, convince the people on 8chan to use it to refer to a group of people, and bang, new racial slur. If I thought I was likely to hurt offend people of African heritage by calling them “black” I would not do so. I think I am likely to offend people of hurt Asian heritage by calling them “yellow” so I do not do so. Aren’t real world feelings and reactions more important than a linguistic analysis of what kind of adjective a word is?
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Being reactionary is simply terrible strategy. I think it’s cynical and misanthropic to reduce people to reflexive emotional reactions as if they were automata. Pejoration makes real communication about important social issues only more difficult. It is precisely because people’s feelings are important that emotional contagion should generally be avoided.
The constantly shifting landscape of pejorative terms I think clearly demonstrates that the problem is not in the content of which words are in or out of favor at any given moment - the problem is the actual process of pejoration itself.
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If he only had a brain…
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I think the problem is people choosing to address high-minded philosophical models of their own construction instead of addressing other human beings who are hurt by their words. When a person is told a word they use is offensive, they have the power within them to say, “Oh, my apologies” and everyone will move on. Instead, many people decide, as you have, to concoct arguments about some broader implication that makes it important we consider something other than the immediate hurt feelings.
If someone drops a hammer on your foot by accident they and instead of saying “sorry” they start talking about how we make poor decisions if we let pain rule us, then they are a straight up asshole. The best way to avoid “emotional contagion” and people being “reactionary” is to just acknowledge when you make a mistake. When people don’t do that, it shows that it was not a mistake which is a whole different kind of problem.
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Well, but see, Mel, if those poors and people of color just accepted their position and didn’t fuss, the good lord would take care of them… /s
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I agree with everything you are saying here. But it doesn’t address why some word suddenly becomes hurtful. Instead of people readily apologizing, it seems a lot better to prevent people from being hurt in the first place. What we are seeing here is a dynamic that requires both people willing to push other people’s buttons in hurtful ways, and people who are willing to let their own buttons be pushed in hurtful ways. So if we accept that - of course some people will be hurt. In much of human affairs, preventing injury is understandably more of a priority than passively accepting it in preference of profuse apologies. Although I do agree that apology is better than no apology!
The whole theory of mind at work here gets recursive and unwieldy. If I don’t take offense at being called “red”, should I accept others taking offense at it on my behalf? It seems more realistic to simply not attribute to words such emotional weightings. Especially when you suspect that people are hoping to provoke you with it. Especially when groups give up their chosen/accepted label to the narrative of others, which is giving up ground to oppressors. On both an emotional and a strategic social justice level I think that it is a disadvantageous idea/practice to buy into. If most argument is about what to label to call a thing, or person, or group this month - then little progress will be made. Sometimes I suspect that that is indeed the strategy - always deferring addressing actual justice in favor of tribal shibboleths of using the right words to describe the problem.
Oh-my-fucking-god, the sea-lioning…
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Well, the word becomes hurtful when it is consistently used for that purpose by people who are trying to hurt others.
Ultimately, why it is considered hurtful is irrelevant.
If some person or group doesn’t like a term, it is simply polite not to use it. To continue to use it in the face of an expressed desire for the term not to be used is a deliberate flouting of the wishes of the other.
No. Neither should you tell people who are offended by it on their behalf not to be offended by it because you aren’t.
Well, that would be nice. But see above - we use language to communicate. The words we choose to use are part of that communication. If someone deliberately chooses to use language which is socially considered offensive, that is a statement on their part and part of their message.
In order to parse their message, that ‘emotional weighting’ needs to be taken into account.
In this case you can take the message that he’s a racist bigot or you can take the message that he doesn’t care about social convention to the extent that he’s prepared to risk offending other people in order to appeal to his target voters. Or both.
Agreed. That’s not relevant here though.
Or alternatively, the constant ‘fight against political correctness’ is a strategy to ensure that nothing fundamental is changed and that the line of scrimmage on racism and sexism, etc. doesn’t move upfield to any meaningful extent.
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This is what I’d say. By just buying into the idea that there is a constant war being fought over what to call whom we are ceding ground to the racists and misogynists. There are no committees of SJWs sitting around decided what codephrase will denote inclusion in the clan. This whole thing is like the war on Christmas, it’s a fever dream of powerful people who want to feel oppressed that has been brought to life by us all acting like it is real. The reality is that sometimes people say things that hurt other people and they should take ownership of that. And when you are speaking to a national audience you should do a minimum of thinking about what you are going to say.
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