House Republicans now allow smoking inside Capitol, causing quite a stink

Or the Duck Dynasty brothers. From silver-spoon preppies…


To Real American™ good ol’ boys…

16 Likes

Hard agreement here. People need to stop giving racists this out. It’s a lie. They’re not afraid because they are poor. They are not afraid of anything or else their dumb asses wouldn’t have taken selfies at a coup.

They are just angry racists whipped to stiff peaks by fascist talking points.

20 Likes

Investments? Stock Market? Pro-affluent GOP?

2 Likes

If I may “argue to agree with you” as it were, being pro-social is absolutely our default state. We’re literally evolved to play nice with each other because that’s how we’ve made it this far. In addition to the obvious edge of big brains, any anthropologist will tell you that the human superpower is social cooperation. We do that better than all other primates and it’s probably mostly why Homo Sapiens came out on top. Evidence is now strong that we didn’t “out compete” other human species like Neanderthal, we “out cooperated” them, effectively. We bred with them, probably integrated them into our groups, etc. We built better villages, hunted better in groups, and eventually cooperation and work specialization led to the technology curve we’re on now. It’s all about cooperation.

Humans form huge cities relatively easily. Hundreds of millions of individuals who don’t know each other, living meters apart and mostly getting along their entire lives. That’s incredible. There are virtually no other animals that can manage that apart from some colonial insects (who arguably aren’t really individuals).

People always talk about humanity being all about war. I hate that narrative because it’s clearly and obviously the exception. Yes we fight a lot of wars, but it’s the tiny majority of most human social groups throughout most of history. There’s always a bunch of wars happening somewhere, but for any given group, most spend most of their lives cooperating with everyone around them.

That’s a default state if I ever saw one.

Edit: I see that @chenille already said the same thing, but much more concisely. :smile:

16 Likes

Holy crap, really? I had no idea that’s where those guys came from.

7 Likes

They can sport whatever look they want, of course. However, when they pretend they always looked that way in order to signal their right-wing cred it’s just more working class cosplay.

See also Swanson’s rustic workshop set.

13 Likes

Has it really been almost two years?

ezgif-4-62103c8532

20 Likes
9 Likes

Also, literally forcing the other side to clean up a preventable mess is part of the GOP brand. :weary: I’m sure they’ll blame everyone else for their illnesses as well as the state of the fabrics, flooring, and walls.

I hope the cleaning staff protests and leaves those engaging in this to wallow in their own filfth. If I had to work in the same building my workplace attire would go from this :mask: to this:

jodie comer perfume GIF by BBC America

16 Likes

Tucker: “i should tweet at Greta Thunberg”
me: oh! please do! i would love to see the brutal blowback from that! she would shred his tiny, fake machismo so finely, you could make frozen fish sticks with him!

17 Likes

Marvel Studios Reaction GIF by Disney+

7 Likes

image
I thought it was ridiculous when it came out but here we are…

10 Likes

For the record I think they are more individuals than people often credit. It doesn’t seem that way when things are going well, but have a colony start falling apart and you can see they’re still separate insects managing as well as they can.

But they’re also not really strangers. They’re almost always families, and recognize one another as such by scent. They are exceptional at how, but that animals will spend their lives working to help family is of course not that unusual on its own. Humans are I think still our own special case.

12 Likes

vs

vs

vs

5 Likes
3 Likes

I felt this back then. If you didn’t grow up in the 70s and 80s it’s hard to really grok just how prevalent smoke was. The first time I saw a restaurant offer a non-smoking section I was mind blown.

The fact this was a product says a lot:

(My mom had one to deal with company… It didn’t work well)

5 Likes

Oh, I remember those commercials well. “Mr. Popeil” by Weird Al was 100% accurate!

I also have a way to deal with company that wishes to smoke. I point them to the door and explain that we have a driveway, if they must. If I find one cigarette butt, that’s the last time they’re allowed into my home, regardless of who they might be. Oddly enough, no one has had an issue with this.

6 Likes

SEVEN years later, and still

SMGDH

7 Likes

Thank you for disagreeing with statements I actually made. Apologies in advance for the length of this reply, I don’t have time to make it shorter :frowning:

The point I was trying to make is that extremist groups leverage rejection and other negative social interactions to promote group solidarity, drive recruiting, and further radicalize existing membership. Their leaders use their enemies and detractors to perform a task for them. It’s efficient.

You pointed out that most people are polite, and I’ll concede you’re right. It used to be necessary for the cults and hate groups to send their members out door to door for days at a time in order to experience the vilification that the leadership uses to condition soldiers. Nowadays, they just have their recruits do duty on imgur or some other ostensibly liberal site, which is a faster and easier way to get the desired juices flowing.

This dynamic is why SPLC and other highly effective organizations advise countering hate with love and unity rather than confrontation. But of course, they are talking about physical meatspace events - it was me and not SPLC making the claim that virtual spaces can be used the same way.

Political and social movements rely on community. Everything you said about human socialization is, in my opinion, entirely correct. I can bring people into my community, and they will come to share my goals and values if I play my cards right. Or I can revile people who don’t embody my ideals and properly pronounce my shibboleths, driving them out, and they will probably join some other community opposed to mine.

The modern GOP is trying to gather every disaffected group they can; they are desperate, they will pander to anyone (the Log Cabin Republicans are still a thing, right?). Trying to recruit people who are offended that they can’t blow smoke in your face is totally on brand for them. They are offering those people a community.

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.