I love you John Candy.
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Also, my Dad used to drive a car a lot like that one.
“Here it is! C’mon over! Wanna show it to you!”
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Correction: all Nazi punches are free.
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At these prices?
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If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn’t have joined. 
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I’m not sure how you read that out of what I said. I didn’t mean to imply that. Let’s try again:
Sure, it’s possible to be smart and a horrible human being. But someone who is both smart and horrible is smart enough to cover up how horrible they are. For example, Lindbergh, or Nazi McPunchface whose name I refuse to mention. You know, the type of racist horrible piece of shit who goes on TV and talks about how they can’t possibly be racist, because the “real racists” hate them and everything they stand for, and try to put a well-mannered, well-educated, glib, genteel face on how horrible they are. That is a smart racist. These kids were dumb. Just, dumb.
I see it as the other way around. I am not in academia, because colleges are full of these spoiled cul-de-sac kids who feel entitled to good grades so they can get the good jobs they feel entitled to, without wanting to do any of the hard work to get ahead. I was in the first generation of my family to go to college, and I wanted to get into academia partly to do research, partly to help out other kids who were in the same situation I was. However, I found that there was maybe one kid like me in each class, and the rest were these suburbanite wastes of sperm and egg who got pissy at me for making them work.
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Confirmation bias?
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Maybe, maybe not. But you can’t expect me to argue that distributing edgelordy Hitler Valentine whatevers and attaching your student organization’s name to them is something a worldly wise person would do.
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Me, to a small degree. And you’re not. So sayeth I.
[johnsnowsipshisicedcoffeeandlooksforwardtotheinterestingdevelopmentswithinhissphereofinfluence.gif]
I’m almost willing to argue that they should be there if only to function as a warning to everyone else: See? There really can be a malicious side to people, even ones supposedly attuned to introspection. And that’s exactly the point they should be called out on their bullshit, clearly and without hyperbole.
Which makes me think of the ‘GOP’ types I knew in college, and that makes me sad because they were pathetic in intellectual form and function. Arguing against Nazis is easy because they Godwin themselves out of rational thought from the get-go. And those GOP types I knew made similarly weak and irrational arguments–essentially shouting at the void, telling it not to be so dark and empty.
I also recall Melissa Harris Perry’s first MSNBC show where she had, as a first guest too, IIRC, a big ole white dude Republican who was there to argue that America needed a “strong, rational” right wing, otherwise the left would atrophy just as the right had done (he was kind of a bust, though, b/c he parroted the same stupid RW talking points that MHP was pointing out as being irrational and silly).
Further, how can I not think about Obama’s own attempts at putting together a cabinet of people who didn’t necessarily see eye-to-eye so that he could have the benefit of a wider intellectual view with which to enact better policy. But no, instead of saying “You can’t have ALL of that social welfare program b/c it’s too expense–how about this one that’s 1/3rd of the size”, we get, “HURR DURR OBAMA IS THE REAL RACIST” and that sort of ignorance / lunacy.
I had a point, and it might be gone now. Hmm. Well then. Did anyone suggest we punch Nazis? No? Well, I’m all for it.
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But spencer has NEVER hidden his views, even though he certainly soft-pedals them. His entire think-tank is committed to the disemnation of white supremacist ideas. Everyone knows he’s a racist and thinks whites are superior. I have no doubt he values the rougher edges of racism, because he knows he can count on them to do shit like this, and he can stay clean. So yeah, he’s smart. But he only lightly sugarcoats his views. I don’t think that Lindbergh really did either, even if he put a “respectable” face on it.
Maybe it’s where you went to school? I’ve known kids like that. But I’ve also seen plenty of kids in my classes who do work hard and are interested in learning, precisely because they are the first in their families to go to college. I’m not sure why your experience matriculating with assholes means that all of us are entitled assholes. My parents didn’t go to college either. My sister and I did. Atlhough I have aunts and uncles who went to college, we didn’t have that background to draw on to get through college. I was lucky to have a husband who was patient enough to let me stumble through this process to it’s completion.
As long as we let entitled kids be the only ones who go to college and get advanced degree, that sort of entitled culture will continue. And they will continue to do the research that shapes the way we think about the world.
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Himmler represented himself to the representatives of foreign powers as a reasonable bureaucrat who was actuated solely by the desire to keep Bolshevism out of Europe. Private army? What private army? This is just a security force. Nice uniforms, yes?
For some reason people weren’t convinced and he didn’t long survive Hitler. But he pretty well wrote the book on how to do it.
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@anon61221983 - You just put it brilliantly again.
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Honestly, I sort of feel like academics get it from the left and the right (and just how much we value the academy is reflected by how much we as a society treat it as something other than a trade school or a luxury - meaning the US, as I think other countries actually value the production of knowledge). We’re not living in the “real” world by going to grad school instead of doing real work that benefits society. But we’re also indoctrinating young people into liberalism and communism. Either way, people think what I do isn’t worth while or useful to society. At best I’m a parasite, at worst I’m a garbage human.
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They don’t understand that anti-Semitism is like the smell they put into town gas; if you start to notice it, it’s time to take action. Waiting till the house blows up is not a sensible option.
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Jason, apparently you are useless, with a diverse array of talents. Elegant Trumponian logic.
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To reverse quote (I think) Firbank, you are the civilisation we are fighting to preserve.
The corporatisation of the world seems to have reached a point at which the losses outweigh the benefits. The truth is that the developed societies could afford a decent standard of living and education for everybody, but corporatism means they won’t. Yet we have a society that is so interwoven that an attempt to undo corporatism seems impossibly difficult. Except to neo-Nazis and people like Bannon who fantasise that there is a simple violent solution to every problem.
Now when we need academia more than ever, it seems more than ever under threat.
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Absolutely! Punching Nazis causes unnecessary wear and tear on your knuckles and wrists, reducing your ability to continue punching Nazis! When faced with the prospect of dealing with Nazis in either large numbers or for long periods of time, Winston Churchill recommends using a broom!
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https://twitter.com/prttybadtweeter/status/822620848897069056
https://twitter.com/MatthewACherry/status/822913009177636864
obligs
im stopping with this one because JFC lets face it Zach de la R could wind me up into punching or getting punched anytime he wanted
BOOM that percussion/base line is just oh my god let’s invade the Nazis rfn
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