"We" being life on earth.

Nope. Making someone's dream come true has destroyed the planet. The question for me is, did you make things better, worse, or neither for the place everyone lives. If your desire is just to make thoughtless people temporarily happy, it's a certainty you've made things worse.

@JiggaJonson,

When you say:
...I'm against promoting the idea that torture works...

I can see where you are coming from on this. In the sense that it might then encourage people to accept using it, because it works.

My problem with that line of reasoning though is that torture actually is effective. The simplest proof being that we wouldn't have every single national intelligence agency using it(directly or indirectly by a less squeamish ally as we 'civilized' nations prefer to do it).

Your links to the ineffectiveness of torture only look at the narrowest possible goals from it. Somebody like Saddam Hussein usually didn't care about Jack Bauer style, minutes count specific intel. Getting the names of everyone you knew or 'conspired' with mattered, and torture IS effective at getting people to talk. The trouble your links note is that torture victims will say literally anything to get you to stop. When looking for information though, victims can't name real people unless they know them. Better still for guys like Saddam, if you get yourself 3 victims in the same movement, you can cross reference things and build a list of suspects. To more ethical nations like us that's unactionable intelligence, but if you don't care if you sweep up 5 innocents along with the 5 people that really were a threat to you, it still 'worked'.

Torture also is widely used simply as a tool to instill fear. When your citizens have seen the broken shells of people who's loyalty was deemed questionable, fear keeps them in step. It worked for Saddam until external forces stopped him, and it's helped keep 3 generations in power in North Korea.

Getting back closer to the video, things we don't like don't go away just because we refuse to talk about them. Rape, torture, and violence aren't like the boogeyman that will go away if we just stop talking and thinking about them so much. We need to accept that there are terrible things in our world that people do and benefit from doing them. These are things that people use to gain a feeling of power, or to truly gain real tangible power over other people.

Of course we have to discuss them responsibly, and the danger of shaming victims is an equally real thing to be aware of. At the same time though, humor is one of the ways of bridging the gap to people dealing with trauma, so jokes about things that cause trauma like rape, violence and torture have an honest place in making things better as well.

Standing by the Ocean makes everything better..., if you can get there..., i hear....

Sad that my first thought was that he'd make a better president than what we have now.

Things I think we agree on......

Trump is a disaster.
Bias in media, especially news media, detracts from facts being clear and is a bad thing. (We disagree strongly which outlets display what levels of bias....even on which outlets can be properly called news).


I would rather share a foxhole with someone who will disagree with me civilly than someone who either agrees with me constantly or can't be civil, it makes for better conversation, the main entertainment in foxholes, so yes.

Dude I cant tell your "race" even seeing you. I mean I see you are not scandinavian, but thats it.

People pretend all the time.

People pretend to be tall (or at least have long legs), be intelligent, have a pleasant symmetrical face, good eyesight, no speech impediments, facial and other hair under control, real teeth, clothes, watches, handbags, cars, its all a game. Why would race be the exception?

So you generally make a better impression over the phone if you talk white, does this mean that white people buy that much more stuff or is this particular form of racial favoritism prevalent among black people too?

We have an almost reverse form of this that is quite perverse. A lot of vietnamese small shop owners operate here and speak in peculiar mangled Czech - turns out some of them can speak well, but play along with the stereotype because it makes their racist customers happy.

@newtboy
"Discrimination by itself is not bad, it's discriminating against someone (especially based on racial assumptions) that's considered wrong."

And there we can agree. I would count assumptions of white privilege as racial assumptions that are wrong to be used as a basis for discriminating against people. I get that you disagree vehemently.

I also agree that equality and diversity and race aren't simplistic problems, and that on some level everybody has some manner of assumptions or prejudices that affect their decisions.

What I can't accept or agree with is the notion that coding into law that entities should use race to discriminate for/against people makes things better.

Again, even ceding all of your points to you(only for arguments sake) coding law to discriminate against people based upon race is still bad.

No matter how hard and long you try to explain the greater good it serves, and no matter how right you are, humans will not tolerate that discrimination. When their friends, family and especially kids are impacted or are simply potentially going to be impacted negatively by it, they will push back. When the group you are discriminating against is a majority, the push back will be all the more certain and vehement when it comes.

Mark my words, if the Democrats want to die on this hill and give not an inch on it, they will continue to lose election after election until they distance themselves from it.

Slavery has ZERO impact to today's society.


Everyone has the opportunity to become what ever one desires.
To hang on to the past is nothing more than a self inflicted wound.

My GGgrandfather was a laborer.
GFather was a plumber.
Dad was first to finish HS.
I was able to finish college.


Each generation trying to make the next a little better.

Also Cubans flooding Florida over last fifty years doing better than black counterparts

Illegals traveling thousand of miles for a chance of making a better life for themselves and family.

Yet you give blacks a pass to hang onto the crutch of the past.

Micro aggression! Really MICRO. If you are offended by micro anything then you are too thin skinned.

I can play that game too Bill.

Dr. Elsworth Wareham, alive and literally kicking at 103. https://www.facebook.com/garytvcom/videos/103-year-old-vegan-doctor/1453978771324033/
Just another vegan heart-surgeon.......

What you eat really does matter. You don't get to choose your genetics, but eating unhealthy won't make it better. Duh.

Agreed. That's why, in my estimation, a bucket of pebbles would make a better space weapon than the most powerful explosives.

Problem is most pets i know would make far better human beings than a lot of people i know.

Maangchi makes everything better

No need to politicise this with Obama/Trump or whatever.

Power corrupts, and political affiliations don't change that. I get the mindset that oversight might help, after all if the ones with power are corrupt, watching for it and removing the corrupt makes things better. The catch is that oversight in itself is also power. Meaning the people there also get corrupt. So then let's watch them.

We already have the legal system's power separated into 3 parts that are supposed to check/watch each other. Adding another layer onto legislative, judiciary, and police isn't transparently and obviously the correct answer.

Greater transparency on this crap helps, but the problem of people being terrible doesn't have some simple answer. Obama didn't solve it, Trump's not going to either, nor did either of them undo the perfect solution of their predecessors.

The only thing that could make this better is if she first said something like "Damn it, I don't have time for this, the president is in danger!". I mean, I really want to be on her sie.

Was gone for the weekend and it turned into word fights (almost)...

It is so hard to carry on a discussion... the heat too easily turned up. Sorry if I contributed in the heat.

Thing is, I don't think any of us need to argue for God's omnipotent or his non-existence. God can select to do or not do anything he wants. He can choose to reveal Himself to a believer or a non-believer, or NOT to. What's the point. It has been argued for millennia and I doubt we are "The Chosen One(s)" to end this. And I think, most of us in our Western society, whether you're Christian or not, we know quite a bit about the Bible CONTENT. But the 99.99% of us non-Bible-scholars probably don't know the exact CONTEXT of the tough stuff. The churches avoid them too for obvious reasons.

For me the important things is, there are really horrible things done in history (and present) in the name of religion. Allow me to be a bit self-serving and consider these terrible, inhumane events as evil beings hijacking their religions so they can get away Scot-free. We can't allow that in this day & age. Hold the evil doers & hypocrites accountable, not the religion.

When I read the Bible, I see all the crap that makes no sense too, but I see the discrepancy as humanity making progress. There are so many years between us & the Bible's original writings (or oral pass-me-downs), words & meaning invariably changed (and not always for the better). Could it be the clear-as-day word "gossip" (its Hebrew equivalent) was not part of its language yet? Therefore Paul said those sexist things (in our modern eye)? Or just people speak funny in those days? I can't be sure.

So, I *try* to figure out the meaning of those difficult Bible verses by keeping the context of Jesus' teachings in mind. I mean, come on, all he want is us all having compassion towards each other, be respectful of God and oh, there's the promise of heaven. Like, THAT'S IT, that's the gist of it. Anything else is pretty secondary & incidental to me. The part that concerns between human-human interact? Yes, it's hard to put in practice. But it's not hard to understand what's needed to be done. E.g. If someone offends my religion, should I go on the defensive and then all Super-Saiyan retaliation mode? Or should put my focus into finding out why he offended me and try to understand the reasoning behind it, and if possible, do something positive about it? I believe Jesus asks of us the latter.

Thing is, as a Christian (granted, some Christian might not consider me one that much, maybe?), I'm OK to leave a lot of things in the Bible in the "gray zone"... because it is *I* that haven't the smarts to comprehend what's written fully. But I do think I understand its purpose enough to know what I need to do to be better. The world is full of hurt, we can't just standby and focus on sometimes pointless fights (ironically I'm typing this post, lol, mea culpa, but hope it's worth it), better put more energy on making things better -- like Jesus, arguably the most progressive thinker/doer of its time, wanted to make the world a better place. Jesus didn't spend his time setting up a religion, he was there for a peace & compassion revolution.

Seriously sad that when the topic touches on religion, there're way too much stereotypes & presumptions on every sides. I see the reality as far more nuanced. I can understand, and in fact conditionally support, a lot of the abolition of "Religion" with its ritualistic practices in today's society. I really don't trust anyone loudly proclaiming themselves "devout" but support sexist/racist/unjust policies. The smell of hypocrisy, ulterior motives & power corruption are too great. Don't sheepishly give them the political & God forbid... military power to do great harm to humanity. History has proven that time & again.