Either you're a complete moron or a troll. If you honestly believe what you wrote then you live in one weird bubble and are honestly racist. You're definition of racism is so far removed from the actual definition it is straight up racist itself.

I'm gonna go ahead and guess you are a American or Canadian who lives in that typical America bubble where the world is just your immediate doorstep and things like ethnic cleansing and racial prejudice between Africans, Chinese, etc simply dont exist to you.

I would invite you to sincerely re-examine your beliefs and world-view my brother because you're views are frightening.

PS: I love how it took you only two posts to devolve straight into Godwin's law. That must be a record.

She exemplifies the problem we have with identity politics: it's important to her that she is black and queer (since she repeatedly references that). How does that qualify her, above and beyond any other (non-black/queer/ trans/ Am. Indian/Hispanic) candidate to keep the buses running, the property taxes collected, the garbage service operational, the homeless shelters staffed, etc.? I don't care about her ethnicity or gender preference when I am deciding on who to vote for - and how she can apparently believe that I should, is a complete mystery to me.

I don't think any prosecutor wants to be the first one to put a person of non-Caucasian ethnicity on the stand for a hate crime, even when it clearly should have been counted as one.

That said, Turner was most likely under-sentenced. Not 'just' because he was white, but because he was from a rich family. In addition, he was lucky because, at the time, California law did not consider digital penetration rape. If you did not penetrate the woman's body with your penis, the most they could charge you with was assault with the intent. They also managed to tack on sexual penetration by a 'foreign' object.

On the other hand, you have a gang rape that there was photo and video evidence of. Evidence that showed that the defendant mentioned in the video not only participated in the rape, but urinated on the victim and told her "That was for 400 years of slavery, you bitch."

Finally, this is a hot issue. There will always be disagreements. @C-note linked a high rated video featuring someone we would 'expect' to be racist, due to stereotyping, confirming that racism still does exist and that racial privilege does as well. I agree that there are still racist issues in our society, although I personally feel we are moving more towards privilege based on monetary worth than racial worth. However, the simple fact of the matter is, this video is playing hard AND loose with the facts to skew the opinion of the viewer. A lot of videos do that. One of the good things about the sift is they WILL call people out on it, usually gently at first but with more force if it is repeated.

"saying humans are born with either a penis or vagina isn't a hateful statement against people."
It absolutely is hateful to hermaphrodites, clearly saying they aren't human. Use the qualifier "usually" or "almost always".

"As for gender being something different than sex, if you define it that way"
No, you said that. I'm saying all the physical attributes of gender are changeable besides the brain, and many humans with male gonads have female brains, and vice versa. Today, gonads can be surgically changed, so where is gender? I argue it's in the brain, which today can't be changed.
Gender is different from sexuality, clearly, no?
Edit: I guess I do think gender is different from "sex", if sex is determined solely by your gonads.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction
....as to who cares about gender....the bigoted bakers do. ;-)

We're talking perceived race, gender, sexuality, ethnic group, as identified by the discriminating individuals. They don't DNA scan or brain scan customers before serving (or denying) them, they react based on perception.

Skin color, that's totally changeable. Never heard of spray tans or bleach? Try watching Eddie Murphy's 'White like me'.

Odd you might argue against perception being the measure, since you seemed to argue that gays could be perceived as acceptably heterosexual by not acting on their uncontrollable urges and desires, bypassing the bigoted discrimination, essentially by lying.

Again it's about perceived ethnicity, not actual genetic heritage. Like you say, your actual heritage is unidentifiable by strangers, so less important to this discussion of public business discrimination.
If I want my wedding cake for me and Chris, and I wear my pink paisley silk shirt, leather chaps, choker, and heavy makeup to buy it that doesn't make me gay but the bigot baker would still deny me because he would assume I was.

@newtboy:
Gender, nope, you can totally choose that now.

If we must play semantics, sex then. Human beings are born with either a penis or vagina. Same as humans are born with 5 fingers and toes. In extremely rare circumstances humans sometimes have more or less fingers and toes than that, but we aren't being hateful towards those individuals by generally observing that humans have five fingers and toes. Similarly, hermaphroditus happens too, but saying humans are born with either a penis or vagina isn't a hateful statement against people.

As for gender being something different than sex, if you define it that way, than gender is nothing but a set of social expectations. Who cares what social norms and expectations people are or aren't drawn to and abide by?

Race, many people change their racial identity. My DNA and my skin colour don't change no matter how loudly I protest and how many like minded people I get to affirm me.

Ethnicity, people pass as ethnic groups they weren't born into Not looking like your ancestors enough to pass as someone else still doesn't change your parentage. Nobody passing me on the street is liable to be able to identify my Mennonite heritage, but neither can I cease having been born into that cultural heritage.

Legal, yes. Culturally accepted, not so much, slavery always had cultural opposition by the non ruling class. Natural, WTF?! Show me an example of pure non human slavery (not harems, not parasites) and I'll discuss it.

Granted, I don't know exactly how they measured, but his gene expression is what they measured, not his pure DNA. This goes to my point, that environment determines how your DNA is expressed, so twin studies are flawed from the onset by thinking they begin identical, they don't. They don't even start with identical DNA, just close.

"Genes and the environment", but not pure gene study....at least not like people think. People think twins are carbon copies, so one can be a control to study effects of what they're studying. That's not quite right. Certainly they are useful in genetic studies, but not that way. From before birth, they diverge in how nearly identical DNA is expressed. They might be good for finding what genes/traits need closer scrutiny, but only with large samples.

Grounds for individuals to (privately) discriminate, perhaps, but not (public) businesses....at least not in America. Our national identity is a melting pot of cultures, intolerance for the different is antithetical to that idea.


Gender, nope, you can totally choose that now.
Race, many people change their racial identity...Rachael Dolizal comes to mind....as does the term "passing".
Ethnicity, people pass as ethnic groups they weren't born into, sometimes unknowingly, daily.....again, Dolizal springs to mind.

So, I'll argue that all you mentioned for all intents and purposes are today often the result of free will and not beyond the control of every individual, but a full grasp of brain chemistry and design and well understood methods to change them are well beyond our current knowledge, so their behaviors and actions are, in part, out of their control and not the result of free will but of brain construction.....now what?

@newtboy

"Discriminating against people for their legal, culturally accepted, natural behavior makes the person doing the discriminating an asshole. "

Slavery also exists in nature, so it's natural, and once upon a time it was legal and culturally accepted. Discriminating against slave owners though, even back than, is contrary to your claim, quite noble.

"The space study with twins showed that in under a year their genes permanently diverged a full 7%"

You gotta be careful there exactly what is being measured, they did not find that fully 7% of his DNA changed and now was that different. Depending what you measure people also claim that human and chimp DNA only differs by less than 2%...


"Twins aren't genetically identical, even at birth. ...That makes twin studies a piss poor method of gene study."

If you read your own linked article it states:
Twins share the same genes but their environments become more different as they age. This unique aspect of twins makes them an excellent model for understanding how genes and the environment contribute to certain traits, especially complex behaviors and diseases.

If you bother to read the list of peer reviewed articles I linked, they are comparing mono-zygotic twins to di-zygotic twins. The very basic and largely accepted theory being that if a trait has a genetic component, 1000 twins split from the same zygote should share the trait more often than di-zygotic twins.

My argument though really doesn't care much though. I simply argue that beliefs, choices and behaviours are the result of free will and grounds to judge(discriminate) for and against those you deem good or bad, hurtful or harmful. Similarly, gender, race and ethnicity being things that are in zero way the result of free will and beyond the control of an individual and NOT grounds to judge(discriminate) for or against.

"A twin study of self-reported psychopathic personality traits"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886902001848

Perhaps the above is more to the point. Similar twin study showing identical twins having similarly significant genetic component to psychopathy as the prior studies show for sexual orientation.

Should we be similarly upset at people assigning morality to psychopathic behaviours?

"Genetic and Environmental Influences on Religious Interests, Attitudes, and Values: A Study of Twins Reared Apart and Together"
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40062599?seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents

Religiosity shows the same thing, strong correlations for identical twins, raised apart from one another, and much weaker correlations for non-identical twins also raised apart.

If Tom Cruise claims his belief in Scientology is a birth right and how dare we judge him, is he really backed by the science?

Where I am coming from, is insisting that for all the factors involved in human decision and behaviours, I still want to conduct ourselves as though free will exists.

More importantly, the freedom to discriminate against people based upon their behaviours must be defended as strongly as the right to discriminate based upon purely in born, unchangeable attributes like race, gender and ethnicity must be opposed.

Glad to hear you stating things as you did, I largely agree with you.

The trick playing out in Canada now is that because we've expanded the definition of protected classes more quickly than the US, the protected classes rights are interfering more and more.

I do not believe that religion should be a protected class in the same way as race, gender or ethnicity. Similarly sexual orientation and gender identity shouldn't be either. Race, Gender and ethnicity are all assigned at birth and can largely be determined by blood test and demonstrated to be something entirely outside an individuals control, choice and behaviour.

Religion is the most easily demonstrated as deserving a different status of protection than the others in that most religions ALL hold the others as heretical. Declaring other faiths immoral is necessary to religious freedom and I take as the very positive basis of America's freedom of religion notion being a wonderful agreement between Catholics and Protestants to agree to disagree over war.

More controversially, I would also class your sexual preferences and identity in with religion as a different degree of protected class. There is an element of behaviour and choice here that can not be determined at birth with any manner of blood test or parental bloodline.

More simply, the right to discriminate should not exist for immutable things people are born to and remain beyond their choice or control, while the right to discriminate based upon behaviours is entirely necessary and important. If you want to believe Scientology can help you heal broken limbs and transcend the world your free to it, but I'm gonna treat you differently than a sane person. To similarly treat someone different based upon race or gender though is unacceptable.

Honestly, I really don't care what the beliefs of any church are.

If a church wants to take the stance that gays are evil and people with green eyes are demons... well, they're idiots, but as long as they don't do anything illegal, they're entitled to their stupid beliefs.

But religious beliefs shouldn't grant you any special privileges under the law. Basically, I believe you should be free to have whatever religion you want, as long as it's within the confines of the law that applies to everyone. No special exemptions.

So, no, a baker doesn't get to decide whether they can refuse service to a gay couple because of their religious beliefs. They can potentially refuse service if the LAW says they can refuse service to anyone for any reason, but religion shouldn't enter into it.

Why should a religious bigot get some special treatment that a regular bigot doesn't?

Now, after all that, the question of forcing businesses to provide service under the law is a tricky one as you and @newtboy have discussed. But generally, there are specific "protected classes" (not sure about the exact term), that you are not allowed discriminate on (i.e. gender, ethnicity, disability, religion, etc). I would be in favour of adding sexual orientation to that list.

So yes, you can refuse a nazi or a cop or a pedophile, but you can't refuse a native american lesbian in a wheelchair.

My biggest issue with these settlements is that, instead of finding the person (or people) that discriminated against him and punishing them, they simply award a massive monetary amount to the victim.

Now unless the city has a special insurance to cover situations like this (most don't), that money isn't coming out of the pockets of the guilty only. It is coming out of the pockets of all of the taxpayers, of ALL ethnic groups. So not only are you punishing the 'evil' 40ish percent of white taxpayers, you are actually punishing more non-white ones.

You might say, "Well, it is only some additional property taxes." Typically, though, even small increases in property tax hit the poorest people first and can lead to gentrification as property values increase as well.

Ironically if he doesn't end up moving, he'll actually be paying for a proportionally small part of his own settlement.

The USSR is gone. No one is trying to guard western industry against communist overthrow anymore. That time is long gone.




Imagine person A pushing person B, and person B pushes back, and the news runs around screaming that B pushed A. That's basically our simplistic news coverage about Ukraine.

Feel free to read about the 2014 coup : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution
I take no issue with Ukrainians giving their old government a swift kick out the door (and for understandable reason - such as corruption). However, with that comes the usual scapegoating of the undesirables. Would it have been better that Russia let groups like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Sector ravage ethnic Russians just across their border?

Crimea has been Russia from 1779 till ~1990, when it happened to end up under Ukrainian control after the USSR broke up. People living there are also Russian citizens, born either while it was still Russia, or to Russian parents.
Take a look:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea
Then ask yourself, considering the right wing neo nazi anti-ethnic-Russian shitstorm in Ukraine, where would the Crimeans rather be?

Russia isn't a saint. It's acting in self interest. It's also not a villain. Things happen for reasons.

The treaty you refer to is : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
The link explains how it can be read to fault either the U.S. (for coup involvement) or Russia (for subsequent conflict involvement).

Just to put things in perspective :
Imagine Russia getting involved in a coup in Mexico or Canada. Or imagine Russia placing missile launchers in Cuba. Do you think that we would be as cordial to Russia as Russia has been to us?
So Russia tries to help a candidate who prefers friendly relations, that's hardly the sign of a committed adversary.

I mean, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I shouldn't think and analyze the situation from multiple perspectives with consideration for circumstance and motivation, and instead I should just accept what the news has on 24/7 repeat. /s





Collusion is not a crime because /literally/ it is not a crime. You will not find the word "collusion" mentioned as an offense in any criminal code. It's only on TV because people started using that phrase to assert that the campaign and Russia were acting independently (which is irrelevant, they don't need to coordinate to break the law).


-scheherazde

There are 100 million people with day to day access to arms in the U.S. (granted, of all ages, not all of fighting age).

There are 1.4 million military members.

Bombs destroy the very assets you wish to control. Nukes would be useless.

Tanks run out of fuel, as do jets, without a civil population to resupply them.





I already mentioned the Arab Spring. Governments with tanks and Jets fell to people with rifles.

Soldiers have families. When their families participate in revolt (and become targets of the government), soldiers change sides. Good example would be the Russian revolution against the Tsar, where the army stood down and abandoned the monarchy.

But yes, the military can do its own thing.
Afghan military in the 70's siding with Russia against its government.
Turkey's military ejecting their government whenever it goes bad (*minus this last attempt)

Or even the people can coup vs the people.
The 2014 Ukrainian coup, ethnic Ukrainians ejecting their government to make a new one that deprives ethnic Russians of representation.

-scheherazade

"I referred to the modern nazi who supports them"

Fair enough.

"It's not just a belief, it's a desire to exterminate, alienate and persecute an ethnic group. "
Agreed. That desire should not be considered an acceptable point of view. But there's a big gap between saying expressing a desire and carrying out an action.

"This implies that you think being 'nicer to Hitler' (i.e. not solved it with violence) would have gotten rid of them yet you contradict this later on."
No, I don't believe that. Hitler was in power, he had an army and he was already committing genocide. At that point, violence is your only recourse to stop the atrocities.

But yes, ultimately, if someone had been able to take Hitler aside BEFORE all the horrors of WW2 and been able to convince him to lay off the genocide, wouldn't that have been a better solution?

There are absolutely times when violence is the best course of action, but it ALWAYS represents a failure to resolve differences.

"I'm just saying if a nazi happens to get punched, on balance, it's probably ok."

I'm certainly not going to shed any tears over it and being completely honest, part of me relishes it. But intellectually, I know it's a) not a sustainable solution and b) it's a juvenile response.

"It's a bit like trying to 'defeat' religion. If you stamped out any sign of all religions in the world, all the imagery and documents and let's say memories too. Before long, religions would form because the human brain is drawn to those ideologies"

Completely agree. Put enough humans together and they form tribes and ascribe bad things to "the others". What saves us is the ability to learn from past mistakes as a civilisation, and even then we're REALLY slow learners.

But we have made progress.
Going from right to left, I would bet that even most Nazis think women should be able to vote; the vast majority of conservatives view racism as abhorrent (at least, consciously) and "Middle America" has mostly come around to gay rights.

"Defeated" might be the wrong word here. I want Nazism to become as laughable a philosophy as flat earthers. Espousing it should be met with the same response as someone who claims thunder is the gods playing football.

" TL;DR sorry for the wall of text, ignore me"

Don't apologise... it's an interesting discussion.

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick at some points, so let me just clear that up first:

"Woah, woah, woah! There's a pretty big difference between saying it's not ok to assault someone and expressing support for them."
-- I referred to the modern nazi who supports them, not you for thinking it is wrong to punch. You are not a nazi supporter because of your stance. A nazi of course supports hitler, etc.

So hopefully this clears up:
"The law has nothing to do with it. It is unethical to assault someone simply for stating their beliefs."
-- My point was that they are stating their support for genocide and harming other people. It's not just a belief, it's a desire to exterminate, alienate and persecute an ethnic group. They aren't shy about their template for society, they fly the swastika flag clearly and sieg heil and whatnot.

"Here we are, 70 years after the biggest armed conflict the world has ever seen.... and yet we still have Nazis."
-- This implies that you think being 'nicer to Hitler' (i.e. not solved it with violence) would have gotten rid of them yet you contradict this later on. Otherwise you must accept that violence was the most successful solution, and you are equivocating over semantics with this point. In as far as any ideology (which only really latches itself on generic human mindsets like xenophobia, and is therefore inalienable, a form of nazism will occur by some other name in any social group*) may be "defeated", it was defeated.

I accept that you think it is unethical to punch them. I'm not saying i want chaos in the streets where mobs go around tearing suspected nazis to bits; that's why i'm not asking for a law change and why i won't be opening with violence towards nazis. I'm just saying if a nazi happens to get punched, on balance, it's probably ok.

* - just expanding on this. It's a bit like trying to 'defeat' religion. If you stamped out any sign of all religions in the world, all the imagery and documents and let's say memories too. Before long, religions would form because the human brain is drawn to those ideologies; that's why so many diverse ones formed and still do. And as you originally said defeatable, if it isn't defeatable (because it's inalienable) then you're saying your own point is wrong.

TL;DR sorry for the wall of text, ignore me