/sigh

Yes, she is right.

Yes, anyone who tried to talk down to her because she is a woman is a dickhead.

But seriously?

The math problem that stumped thousands of mansplainers

/facepalm

Given the polls put support for gay marriage in Aus between 65 and 85%, the only way the no vote will win is through voter apathy.

Conservatives are motivated and will fill out their postal votes. Staunch equal rights activist will of course vote yes. The middle ground in Australia is mostly apathetic and that's where you might find this whole thing falls on it's tits unfortunately.

Annnnnd the plebiscite is not binding... So if the gov still doesn't want to go ahead with it, they don't actually need to (although I suspect they will cop a short term shellacking in the polls because of it).

Sad thing is, the current PM is on record repeatedly as being in favour of same sex marriage, but he is only in power because of right wing power brokers in his party and if he came out openly in support (ironic, I know...) he would likely be spilled out of office.

Fuck politics.

I once heard one of the reasons the US likes Fahrenheit is because it has a larger scale and ergo allows them to be more precise about exactly what temp it is...

Like people really care whether it's 25 degrees celcius or 25.63724 deg cel...

/shrug The only thing I'm trying to convince you of is to give the marketplace of ideas a fair hearing, even if some of the things said aren't to your liking.

I've spent time listening to both the far left and far right (despite being Australian and pretty disconnected from the current state of affairs in the US) and both sides have some pretty fucking stupid things to say. One constant remains. If you're white, your opinion is intrinsically bad because of all the apparent privelege. Much like being male instantly puts you behind the 8 ball in any conversation about gender etc. We shouldn't be afraid of facts and we should be able to hear things from people we ostensibly do not agree with without it being an assault on our sensibilities.

Without this delve in to the worst parts of the conversation, I would never have found out about Daryl Davis and his campaign of friendship with the kkk... Ironic right?

Do you disagree with the quote from Sargon?

"The alt right and social justice warriors are racial collectivists who are opposed to the basic values of the Enlightenment."

Well you missed out the following highlights:

Awful optics of white guys standing around with tiki torches.
Proper breakdown of attendee groups
Short bit on the tiny ideological difference between antifa (communists) and white nationalists (nazis).
Commentary on Trump
More discussion on the rise of white hate which is creating new racists.
Left grading people by their skin colour (including lighter skinned people of colour)
etc

The entire point of the Daryl Davis sift was to show the importance of listening and hearing, to get to know the opinions of others. If you can't even spend 30 minutes listening to alternate opinions (and Sargon isn't even right wing/a supporter of the alt right...) that don't explicitly conform to everything you expect to hear, how do you ever learn?

It's the same confirmation bias that keeps the kkk on life support long after it should have died out.

Two points followed by some general discussion but w/e...

I didn't try to justify his actions in the slightest, he was wrong to draw the gun and to discharge it. I understand why someone might do something if he sees an idiot with the worlds worst flamethrower trying to set people on fire, but I do not condone it.

I also said that he was drawing the gun to defend others, didn't try to make out that he was being attacked personally. Defense of others is a legitimate reason to step in to a situation (even if, again, I think the amount of force he decided to deploy was way over the top and illegal...).

No, neither side should show up armed, that is how far this whole shit show has barreled down the hill. And yes, I would be fairly certain that a bunch of white supremacists would be armed, so if I did show up to protest against them, I sure as fuck wouldn't be attacking them first and giving them reasons to lose their head and draw down on me... They certainly are the types that gravitate to gun ownership, rebellion against the government etc, I don't think that's a huge surprise to anyone right?

One of the first rules about fighting I learned way back in the day when I worked security is that it's fucking stupid to launch violence against anyone that you do not explicitly need to because you have no idea what they can do, what they have access to etc. If you can resolve a situation with words rather than fists (or more), do so at every opportunity. The idiots showing up to 'punch nazis' really have no concept of this. They show up to 'take nazi scalps' and expect no repercussions?

And yeah, you clearly put this up as a 'left did something bad, OMG THE RIGHT DID SOMETHING WORSE', the entire screed describing the vid only mentions the pyro once as a minor note in a story about the evil armed racist. You're about as fair and balanced as Faux and it's bitchy little stunts like this shit which will always put you exactly where BK33 says you are.

Fucking amazing, you're moronic enough to make Bob right. Kudos...

But I still believe that it's more important for people to see what happened than to suppress it, so the vote stands (petty would be taking it away now you've insulted me ; ).

As an adjunct to this video, there is this interview with 2 BLM activists that is part of the documentary.

The awful irony is that in the documentary, Daryl has far more reasoned and polite conversations with dyed in the wool white supremacists than he does with fellow members of his race.

After the two interviewees walk out, a 3rd BLM member steps in and launches an escalating tirade, but storms out without even bothering to listen to a different viewpoint.

This is what I think is the issue. When people who proclaim that black lives matter can't even sit there and listen to the opinion of a black man, what's the fucking point?

Perhaps the most poignant part of this video is the last minute (from 10:00 onwards).

(speaking about one of the BLM members)

"He was very definite that white people could not change. How is he going to advance any agenda in this country, as diverse as it is?"

Two points.

Completely unreasonable to discharge a firearm in to a crowd like that, although I'm fairly sure that guy is drilled enough that he could accurately shoot someone at that range if he really wanted to. The guy has been charged, correct? Entirely appropriate.

Second, you notice the missiles incoming, the dickhead trying to turn a spray can in to a flamethrower? Do you honestly think these were isolated events? Do you not think that people prepared for this? Or does every person carry aerosols and lighters just for shits and giggles?

The pretext of antifa is that assaulting people is fine because it's proactive self defense, right? If it's okay to physically attack people for thinking and saying offensive things, then why the fuck is anyone complaining about someone drawing a weapon to defend others against an actual attack??? /grin

That's the problem when you justify unreasonable actions on one side, whether you like it or not you justify unreasonable actions for everyone.

And just to ice the cake, if you're dumb enough to show up with sticks/stones/cans of spray against the the white right who are well known to be armed to the motherfucking teeth, you might want to avoid poking the bear.

ps. Upvoted your vid because it should be seen (the more documentation about the whole shebang the better) and because I'm not a petty cunt... X D

Yay, at least you bothered to watch the video.

And yes, No Bullshit's channel is loaded with a lot of biased opinions as he leans significantly to the right. But you'd be hard pressed to argue that, despite this particular video not making the mainstream air, that the coverage has shown the depths both sides have plunged to. Australian coverage has been downright blinkered at this point, there is no violence on the left at all and it's all nazi's killing folks... /eyeroll

So instead, you could look at channels like Sargon's, who, despite being constantly labelled as an alt right dickhead, is generally slightly left of center but who calls out violence where/when ever it happens.

I've seen a lot of shit in burrowing in to this, from a lot of sources on both sides (and people who try to be objective). Objectively, if you show up in black masks with pre-bagged shit, urine, fireworks and glass bottles, weighted sap gloves, bike locks and pepper spray combined with a clear message that it's okay to attack "nazi's" who's crime is expressing their admittedly vile ideology, you're not a good person.

Red shirts vs brown shirts, Wiemar Germany pre-WWII anyone?

You can try to make this about me ('ermagerd, you caused me to downvotes the video'), but you've admitted you didn't even watch the vid. At least I gave it a fair hearing, and while I do certainly admit the videos maker has an agenda, it is still documenting what is going on out there. Turn off the fucking voice track if you're too much of a snowflake to hear commentary you don't agree with, but the footage is damning...

As for Bob, I've been fairly unequivocal in the past about his line of deeply partisan BS and the veiled racism he espouses. As per the Ruins Everything sift up (https://videosift.com/video/Why-Proving-Someone-Wrong-Often-Backfires) atm about arguing and how it generally reinforces opinions, do you think that you two haranguing each other constantly (or even you and I) is going to accomplish anything other than entrenching the other side? \= |

Bob, the people you're trying to either defend or deflect attention from are fucking cunts, end of story. I understand that people are being driven to the far right (leftist violence and impingement on free speech predated Trump and the rise of the alt right, and has a lot to do as a causal factor for both), and that certainly not everyone heading to that end of spectrum are awful, but anyone preaching racial purity, resisting the white genocide etc have lost the fucking plot. There is no right side apart from condemning all illegal violence and upholding free speech.

Newt, you pontificate about how even handed you've been, but where are the hosts of videos showing antifa violence? Where are the upvotes for this video? I've been considering putting some of them up not as a mitigation for the actions of the right, but to show that polarisation and extremism is no good for anyone, but I was almost entirely sure they wouldn't sift in the slightest. Given this vid has been up for 9 hours and has 1 vote (mine), the theory seems to hold water...

Meanwhile, Arnold's tirade against nazi's is top sift of the week. Not that he was wrong of course, but anyone with five minutes and a willingness to be open minded can find endless unbiased documentation of leftist violence, something he completely omits to mention. He talks about the nazi's rotting in hell, how about Stalin's communists (which antifa models itself off...)?

Sift is leftward leaning and that's cool, I generally agree with a lot of sensible ideas that people around here are for. But it has it's own bigotry against people expressing views that aren't in lockstep with the majority view, and members certainly aren't afraid to punish people for not toeing the line.

And one of my favourite quotes as an advocate for free speech no matter how awful or confronting it might be...

"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

H. L. Mencken

People don't say no to talons that big... 8 \

Alrighty, who still thinks it's a good idea to change the alt-right's mind by punching nazis? \= )

And blacks in the west start miles ahead of blacks in Africa. So where do we draw the line? Equal opportunity and equal treatment are the very best we should be able to expect in this world because as soon as you put your thumb on the scales, one way or another, someone is going to feel cheated. That will, in turn, become resentment, fair or not, and the cycle will continue.

You trace back every persons family tree and you'll end up with both ancestors that had the boot on their neck, and ancestors who wore the boot. If we carry the sum of the sins of our forebears, then there is not a single person alive today that isn't guilty of some horrid event. A million monkeys with a million typewriters will eventually write Mein Kampf...

I agree with most of what the Governator said, and noted the things he didn't say eg. he didn't say it's okay to physically attack someone expressing a hateful idea.

More importantly, I think Daryl Davis has the solution:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kkk-klu-klux-klan-members-leave-black-man-racism-friends-convince-persuade-chicago-daryl-davis-a74895
96.html

Or Martin Luther King: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Which is why you don't destroy history, you don't shout down people expressing hateful ideas, you do not dehumanise them and in not doing that, you do not become the monster you are trying to fight.

So basically you support violence in response to words?

Is there really anything else to say at this point? I'm not putting words in to your mouth, right??

You obviously haven't been watching too much of the footage then, and you've bought the narrative hook, line and sinker.

The "anti protestors" showed up with bottles of quick dry cement, balloons filled with urine and feces, fireworks, glass bottles, mace, hairspray cans used as impromptu flamethrowers etc. Plenty of signs advocating the scalping/punching of nazi's of course. But yeah, totally impromptu and they were totally peaceful... 8 |

After the ACLU stepped in to get the permit reinstated for the right wing rally, the police the next day were ordered to stand down, leaving the rally attendees with zero protection and access to the event required passing through the anti-protester crows, which precipitated rapidly in to violence. Funny that, right? Almost like the powers that be set the whole thing up to guarantee it turned in to a riot... And then there's the grandstanding afterwards by the (D) mayor about those horrible racists... /grin

This has been documented by many left, right and center sources for anyone who bothers to look for it. It's less to do with Trump and more to do with the constant narrative that white = shit and how people are getting pissed off about it.

Far, far too easy just to label them all Trump loving nazi's than invest even the slightest bit of effort in to trying to work out what's truly going on, eh? \= |