The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Do you understand muon2's question?  If you do explain it to me. 

There's a total solar eclipse cutting across the country in August! I don't live quite at the spot where the sun will go entirely behind the moon but I'll be close - here is a map of travel times to the optimum viewing range!

Would you like me to help Grumps with a simple analogy?

By all means!

Partial eclipses are pretty cool and happen about twice a year somewhere on earth. But if you aren't watching for them (with special filters) you might not know they are there. Here's a picture I took in 2014 when there was about a 25% eclipse as seen from my house. Think of getting a base on balls to take first.


On Aug 21 the sun will be about 84% covered as seen in da Burgh, kind of like the picture below. People may notice the light dim just like if clouds came across the sun, but you still need a filter to stand the direct light in your eyes. This is still exciting but still relatively common, kind of like stealing second base.


In BK's area the sun will be reduced to a sliver and only put out about 100th of its normal light. It will feel eerie like when a tornadic storm is in the area. People will likely stop what they are doing to take a look, though even at 1% of the light staring will hurt your eyes. This is getting rare, like stealing third base.

But the total eclipse is some else entirely. The Sun is completely blocked and stars are visible in the dark sky. Civilizations though the end was near when they saw it. I was in Wrigley to see Javier Baez steal home in game 1 against the Dodgers in the NLCS. Stealing home to score - that's the total eclipse. And yes Grumps, if you were thinking of my analogy in terms of Paradise by the Dashboard Light, that was my intent.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

^odd definition of "high quality" there.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Generally I don't approve of doxxing and wouldn't want someone to do it to me. But if I got doxxed it wouldn't "ruin my life" because I'm not on the internet saying the Holocaust didn't happen and telling people to get back in the oven. Not to mention that the expectation of complete anonymity on the internet is just naive these days. So I don't really feel sorry for them. If you don't wan to get caught being a racist POS don't be a racist POS. I would and do stand by any of the opinions I post on this site in public.

The trouble with this is that the internet rumour mill will often misquote or outright fabricate transgressions if it helps "the cause". This isn't really confined to the left - it happens on the right, and to weirdly apolitical causes as well. I think the trend of doxxing as a "legitimate tactic" really is chilling, because mobs - from gamergate to those Tumblr pages that catalog people in culturally appropriative Halloween costumes - are by their very nature unforgiving and unreasonable.

I do feel sympathy for alt-righters who get doxxed, even the real dicks. I also feel the same for most anybody an internet hivemind feels pissed off enough at to target. As a tactic, it's harmful to society and - the key failing of any political tactic - doesn't really accomplish anything except allow people to reach catharsis.

The real problem is that nobody feels like they are part of an internet mob, and it's even easier to get caught up in it than an IRL mob (after all, you will never get punched in the face via screen).

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Right. Moore is a more evil person but they would have the exact same policy impact in the Senate, with Moore just worsening the GOP's brand overall.

That's not entirely true though. Politicians do more than just vote on stuff. They sponsor bills and amendments that may never even exist without them. They interact with other politicians and can influence them by making deals or even campaigning for them or fundraising for them. They make public speeches than can influence people in their state and people who look up to them. They have relationships with PACs, donors, and companies that can influence goodness knows what. They hire staff. That impacts those people for sure. They provide constituent services and can theoretically choose how that takes place and if they're discriminating against certain constituents... like that story of the rep who forced Muslims to answer degrading questionnaire when they came to the office for help. Even if they don't discriminate, some people may feel more comfortable going to one politician for help over another. For example, I've asked Gillibrand for help with a personal matter and written to her on a few political issues, but I've never interacted with Schumer or my House rep at all.

It's tempting to say that it doesn't matter who's elected because of the vote similarities, but it really misses a lot of nuance about what politicians actually do. It's why I was an enthusiastic Mark Begich supporter despite disagreeing with him on several issues and despite a lot of progressives crusading against him. His presence there was a massive boon to Alaska natives that most people will never know about because his tenure was partially about being their advocate in Washington. I mean, that's not to say that Luther Strange would be this amazing guy by comparison to Roy Moore. Each has their own unique shortcomings, but they aren't the same person.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Yeah, the history of the Black vote seems to be oversimplified a lot or just flat out mistold.  Most historical accounts show the relationship between the GOP and the Black community already becoming pretty shaky by the early 20th Century (despite historic revisionism, many 19th Century Democrats DID charge the GOP of the time as being corporatist and overly business-friendly, and this was eventually going to be something at odds with a recently freed Black population), and by the 1920s, it was ripe for the taking.  Many Democrats in the North actually made pretty strong appeals to the Black community in local elections or during campaign stops/speeches/events in the North (while, of course, playing to the desires of Southern Democrats elsewhere) throughout most of the early 1900s.  By 1932, Hoover was winning the Black vote the same way that Obama won Elliot County, KY, IMO ... by 1936, with the NAACP endorsement, FDR had it in the bag.  Blacks becoming a Democratic voting bloc wasn't as "sudden" of a switch as the actual numbers seem to dictate, in that there was a TON of tension between the Black community and the GOP well before the Great Depression.  By the time Eisenhower was running, most quotes and interviews of Black leaders of the time seem to give off the attitude of, "all you guys run on is being the 'Party of Lincoln' and warning that a vote for any Democrat is a vote for Southern segregationists getting more committe power, and frankly it's less compelling than the message we're getting from Northern Democrats."

I'd say by 1942/1944 at the absolute latest (you could argue that Black support for FDR in 1936 and 1940 might have just been because he was winning so handily), a majority of Black Americans no longer saw the Democrats as any more hostile to their interests than the GOP, even if they were hostile in totally different ways.  Blacks have always been said to be some of the most pragmatic voters in the US, and they made a pretty rational decision that a Northern Democrat who focused on economic initiatives that helped poorer Black communities but was all buddy-buddy with the Dixiecrats was actually a better deal than a pro-business Republican whose constituents were almost entirely White suburbanites and White Northern rural voters and talked about Reconstruction all the time.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I know that their are a few exceptions and that the GOP does even worse now in the city then it did back then but given that so many people think the parties completely switched. (A point I actually somewhat disagree on) why has NYC been Dem from Van Buren to Clinton?

NYC has constantly replaced its immigrant population. So as middle class English people embraced the party of the commercial interests, they were being out numbered by the Irish. When the Irish took over the city, they repulsed a lot of Jewish and Italian immigrants, who embraced the Republicans and American Labor Party.

Beginning with FDR, the Democrats became more associated with the Fio Coalition of Jews, Italians and minorities, Middle class Irish, Germans and some Italians, moved in opposition towards the Republicans. You see this dynamic forming when you compare the borough maps for Mayor and President in the 1940's. Fio would win MAnhattan, Bronx and Brooklyn, while Dems won Queens and Staten Island. For President, FDR won Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn, while Wilkie or Dewey would win Queens and Staten Island.

Finally, you had substantial degree of white flight and the changing composition of employment and diversity that composed what is term silk stocking areas (Upper East Side) as Yankee establishment types (think Bruce Bartlett or Frederick Coudert who were conservatives representing the UES in Congress) were replaced with what we would basically call latte liberals (and thus the district elected more liberal representation in the form John Lindsay in 1958). As these areas became less Republican, the middle class Irish and Italian precincts began to out perform for the Republicans, except when Kennedy was running on the ballot. Some of these even trended Republican in 1964 while everywhere else Goldwater was losing ground except the deep south).

But it boils down to being the vanguard party for immigrants and minorities.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If I were an Iowa State Legislator, I would have voted for the bill.

I would not have worked actively for the bill.  I would not have spent countless hours grandstanding in front of cameras if I didn't believe it would do any good.  But I would vote for the bill, because abortion is the taking of an unborn human child's life.

That we are not doctors does not mean that we cannot weigh in and make moral judgments as to when human life begins.  Indeed, we ought to.  And if we, indeed, can't know exactly when it begins, then we have a moral right to assume that it begins at the earliest possible point, and that point is conception.  At conception, a human being has everything it needs to develop into what you or I are today, without adding anything else other than normal care. 

I believe that there is a soul in that fetus from the first moment of it's existence.  Whether the reader does or doesn't is another question.  I believe it.  I note that most abortion advocates will never discuss the issue of where human life begins, and I find that to be telling.

I'm not one to wail about the "Holocaust" of unborn babies.  Hitler and Company knew they were killing human beings at Dachau and Auschwitz and such, and they did not care.  That's a Holocaust.  I recognize that the folks who perform abortions and the folks who get abortions are either sincerely deluded about the humanity of the unborn child, or honestly don't see that child as a human being.  But my understanding in that regard does not change the fact that you and I existed at every level of human development that aborted fetuses existed at, before their Earthly existence was terminated by someone's "choice".

I also understand that there are difficult circumstances surrounding the women who have abortions, and surrounding their families as well.  Some circumstances are heart-wrenchingly difficult, but you or I are not excused from doing the right thing because it's tough.  And the circumstances of the pregnancy, however difficult, do not change the humanity of the child one bit.  That last sentence isn't an opinion; it's a fact.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Well first off that's a stupid argument.

agreed

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agreed when it comes to harming others, it should always be against the law to harm people that don't want to be harmed* and it's a bad argument to say "well, a small fraction of men are going to rape, what's the point of making it illegal?"....but is it that bad when it's about self harm?  People are going to get high, sometimes in ways "normal society" doesn't approve of.  I think it's wrong to punish those people for choosing to alter their brain in ways your aunt Ruth doesn't approve of.  People were going to have gay sex 50 years ago, risking everything to do it.  People should be free to do whatever they want to do (as long as it't not harming anybody else).  That includes DMT, butt sex, bacon and suicide (now that's a fun, final weekend!  Better than rotting away in an old folks home surrounded by smelly old people, ignored by your children.).



*but then how far do we take that?  Parents of fat kids (with the obvious caveat that excludes the TINY percentage of fat people that are fat for medical reasons) are certainly harming them, do we punish them?  how?

Normally when arguing this with a social liberal, I'd just point out the obvious hypocrisy of opposing social conservatism on those grounds but then supporting seatbelt laws and a host of economic regulations. However you are a consistent libertarian so we can get to the meat of the issue:

There is a tendency in liberalism (both economic and social) to atmomize people in a way that doesn't really reflect how people  actually live. I dispute a lot of liberal claims of "they aren't hurting anyone but themselves". The distinction between harming only oneself and harming others is rather artificial when applied to real life situations.

Examples of this include divorce and drug abuse. Two parents can consent to a divorce but the act can still dramatically impact their children. Likewise I have yet to hear of a heroin user who didn't harm others in an attempt to feed their habit.

So if actions that only hurt oneself are a lot rarer than what libertarians make it out to be, should the state criminalize every vice? No. The state should weigh a variety of factors when considering banning or regulating vice including: how much it harms the user, how much it harms others, how endemic the vice is to a culture,  how much regulation would impose on citizens etc etc.

To use your example, making kids fat is bad, but the harm is relatively small, the infringement on parental rights is large and the potential for a government abusing their powers to take kids away is excessive, so I wouldn't favour regulating children's weight.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Can ppl not debate in this thread?  Just let people post insanely stupid posts calling them "good" and move on.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Great post on the meaning of "originalism":

Obviously the abuser-of-office and segregation revivalist Bork. For all his blather about supremacy of Congress in making laws, he was sure eager to (ab)use the Court to override those laws in the name of "states-rights."

I'd go even farther: Bork and Scalia introduced deep evil into our constitution with that thing they called originalism -- something that, incidentally, never previously existed in any interpretation of English common law.

Clarance Thomas was clearly to the right of Scalia and probably to Bork as well.

My objection to Bork and Scalia is that these two, Thomas being just a follower, concocted a judicial philosophy that is intrinsic nonsense.

From the historical standpoint, even when the original authors of the Constitution were still alive, during the 1820s and 30s, Supreme Court justice didn't see fit to consult any of them for their private opinions when deciding cases.

From the legalistic view, what individual -- not corporate -- civil right, long dormant within the Constitution but ignored by legislatures and previous court decisions, has ever been discovered by Thomas or Scalia? Originalists certainly weren't at the forefront of repealing obnoxious sodomy laws.

I have a third objection, that originalists review our laws in a way intrinsically foreign to the ways they were constructed. English common law is mutable, and was never meant to be interpreted as being "set-in-stone." For all the objections about jurists inventing the law through their judgments, originalists have created something far worse.

I think that Robert Bork was a much better choice than Antonin Scalia. I also think, Storebought, that you should get a better understanding of what originalism is before you set out to criticize it in the way that you do. "Deep evil" is silly hyperbole.

Bork is much better at explaining what originalism means and why it should be a guiding philosophy of judges than Scalia. The article by Posner that you link to never mentioned Bork at all, but you seem to imply that the philosophy of BOTH Bork and Scalia is “intrinsic nonsense,” when you provide the link. Posner described Scalia’s philosophy (and that of Scalia’s co-author, Bryan Garner) as “textual originalism,” based on judges looking “ ‘for meaning in the governing text, ascribe to that text the meaning it has borne from its inception, and reject  judicial speculation about both the drafters’ extra-textually derived purposes and the desirability of the fair readings’ anticipated consequences.’ This austere interpretive method leads to a heavy emphasis on dictionary meanings. … [N]ew dictionaires for new texts, old dictionaries for old ones.” That is not all consistent with Robert Bork’s philosophy of originalism. Some of it is, but not all of it.

One of the essays I’ve seen that discusses a judge’s duty when interpreting law is called “How Far Is a Judge Free In Rendering a Decision?” written by Judge Learned Hand. (There used to be a copy of that essay posted on the internet, but it seems to have been taken down.) That essay convinced me of the foolishness of interpreting law according to dictionary definitions of the words in the law, but instead judges should interpret the intent of the law-makers. There is a very good explanation and critique of Judge Hand’s philosophy of interpreting statutes, as compared to how Hand actually practiced it as a federal judge. Here.

You said that Bork and Scalia “concocted” and “created” the philosophy of originalism. No, they didn’t. The idea that judges should interpret law the way the law-makers intended has been around for a long time. Look at the career of Justice Hugo Black and seen how often he was concerned with “the original meaning” of the clauses of the Constitution that he was interpreting. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that the word “income,” as it appears in the Sixteenth Amendment, should be interpreted according to what the word “income” commonly meant to most people in the general public at the time the Sixteenth was adopted. Bork wrote, in “The Tempting of America,” that men such as James Madison and Joseph Story have endorsed the philosophy of originalism.

Which brings me to this: you say originalists advocate for the idea that today’s judges should “consult” “the original authors of the Constitution” “for their private opinions when deciding cases.” No, that’s not what Bork said. He clearly said that judges should look for the meaning according to how the general public had understood the clause being interpreted, never for the private opinions of any individuals. It’s just like what Justice Holmes had said about interpreting the Sixteenth Amendment. Bork wrote, “Though I have written of the understanding of the ratifiers of the Constitution, since they enacted it and made it law, that is actually a shorthand formulation, because what the ratifiers understood themselves to be enacting must be taken to be what the public of the time would have understood the words to mean. ... The search is not for a subjective intention. If someone found a letter from George Washington to Martha telling her that when he meant by the power to lay taxes was not what other people meant, that would not change our reading of the Constitution in the slightest. … [W]hat counts is what the public understood. Law is a public act. Secret reservations or intentions count for nothing. All that counts is how the words used in the Constitution would have been understood at the time.”

You say, “Originalists certainly weren’t at the forefront of repealing obnoxious sodomy laws.” But originalists were not supposed to be at such a forefront, because there is not and never has been any constitutional ban on obnoxious laws. Sodomy laws were held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2003, Lawrence v. Texas, as a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But the Court’s interpretation of the Due Process Clause is not at all what that Clause was intended to mean, as Bork said dozens of times throughout his book, “The Tempting of America.” The Court’s interpretation of the Due Process Clause is known as “substantive due process.” That means that instead of reading the Clause as if it says this: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” it is read as if it says this: “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due law.” Only by looking at the Clause in the latter way can you interpret it as if it prohibits obnoxious laws. As scholar John Hart Ely wrote in 1980, “[T]here is simply no avoiding the fact that the word that follows ‘due’ is ‘process.’ No evidence exists that ‘process’ meant something different a century ago from what it does now. … [W]e apparently need periodic reminding that ‘substantive due process’ is a contradiction in words, sort of like ‘green pastel redness.’ “ Supreme Court Justices who refused to read the Due Process Clause as if it has a “substantive” meaning have been Oliver Wendell Holmes and Hugo Black. Repeating myself: there is not and never has been any constitutional ban on obnoxious laws.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

this post was kinda off-topic in the thread it was in, but it's worth reading.

As an academic who holds an econ PhD, I'd like to chime in here on a few items:

1) First, regarding economics as a discipline, the field is indeed somewhat more conservative than most other social sciences (more than poli sci and sociology, for example), but not by that much, and this is rapidly changing. I've noticed a marked leftward shift in the types of journal articles which get published in economics just in the time since I started grad school.

This has come through a slightly complicated mechanism: the field of economics is extremely hierarchical by school, field, and journal to the point where only five journals really matter (AER, QJE, JPE, Econometrica, REStud) for tenure cases at noteworthy schools, and many tenure cases can be summed up by counting your publications in these journals. This movement has been caused by increasing ease of quantifying journal articles through Google Scholar and more robust impact factor measures. Your incentive as an econ professor is to pump out as many of these Top 5 articles as possible, and, as it turns out, the easiest route to doing so is publishing empirical papers over theoretical papers. Empirical papers follow where data, "relevance", and econometric "identification" are most available. This emphasis has meant that empirical econometric papers have become more and more trendy (e.g. income inequality, diversity, discrimination, etc.), latching on to flashy results with less and less anchoring in economic theory. As such, the type of professors who are being churned out by top PhD programs and hired by top schools tend to have good statistical skills, an eye for trendy topics, and diminishing skill in economic theory.

At the same time, econ has seen a number of #metoo scandals among the top schools (who have the worst gender norms) which has lurched sentiment toward increasing emphasis on diversity and representation (which ironically does not punish the top, but the lower schools who do not have as bad of gender norms). The end result is that the post-recession "baby Ph.D. boom" has seen a huge rise in the number of left-wing econ professors getting academic positions (especially women and minorities) while more traditionally conservative econ PhDs tend to get pushed into industry/consulting/think tanks. This has moved the point of emphasis in standard Econ 101 classes leftward as well: we're seeing textbooks with increased focus on trendy left-wing topics and emphasis on caveats to right-wing theories whereas caveats to left-wing theories are downplayed (all econ theory has a myriad of caveats, of course).

2) Regarding "liberal indoctrination" at colleges, I think it does exist to an extent, and professors do play a role, but it is an exaggerated one outside a couple fields. The primary cause of liberal lurches by college students are A) lack of rule enforcement away for parental supervision which allows for previously taboo behavior and B) a social environment where "involvement" and "difference-making" is incentivized-- campus activities tend to exhibit network externalities and increasing returns to scale as larger and louder groups see higher returns both during your time on campus and beyond through alumni networking. Thus, if you want to both belong and maximize your future gains, you are incentivized to join groups which reinforce the dominant campus mores and norms, including lax personal morality but a globalizing left-wing social morality through which your "impact on the world" can manifest. Because, after all, virtually all of the notable causes you'll encounter which are endorsed by the in-crowd are of a left-wing bent; while other worthy causes may occasionally find representation in on-campus groups, these groups often receive less funding, less administrative support, are less likely to find a faculty advisor (as most profs are left-leaning), and lower priority in event planning, etc.

And really, more so than faculty political views (which tend to manifest in subtle ways such as topic or example choice outside of the most politicized fields like sociology or gender studies), this feedback loop all goes back to administrator politics. Campus administration has ballooned since the recession, and its mainly ballooned thanks to Obama-era reforms such as expansive Title IX changes. This has meant a boatload of new left-wing administrators who literally have jobs to pander to every possible group except white men (who are ironically far more underrepresented in college student bodies than basically any other group) and Asians, plus loads of new financial resources for every "diverse" group under the sun. College presidents have heard this sea change and have caved to every demand of these new admins who now possess far more power than ever before in on-campus internal politics.

This massive influx of admins due to Obama-era governmental mandates and changing academic social norms has created a ton of new outlays for the college budget, necessitating large tuition hikes (which are inelastically absorbed thanks to student loans) and an ever-increasing focus on bringing in more and more international students who can be charged higher rates than domestic students. This has increased the on-campus advocacy of lax immigration and visa laws, both my administrative fiat and by a larger number of students to advocate for these causes. The timing of this with Trump's more strict immigration advocacy has sharpened the already anti-Republican attitudes nascent on college campuses across students, faculty, and admins.

At the end of the day, if you want to belong and succeed on campus, you follow the trends-- that rule applies to students, faculty, and administration alike-- which is ironic given that many idealize college as a time of free-thinking and self-discovery.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Not sure if this is serious, but I'll try to give an answer.

The basic story of Christianity is that humanity fell in original sin and continues to sin. Since the offense is beyond our ability to repair, God himself provides the payment in the form of himself: Christ being crucified for our sins. This is fundamentally the story of the Gospel: the good news of salvation.

At first pass, this doesn't have any obvious relationship to American politics and is entirely outside the context of the American political spectrum. Of course, however, Jesus does clearly provide for us an example of how we ought to live that has ramifications for all facets of our lives. Some aspects of his example are what we would consider "liberal" (e.g. helping the poor) and some "conservative" (e.g. divorce, lust). But these descriptors are mostly culturally dependent and would have made no sense to early Christianity.

Jesus was not a political revolutionary. Many of his contemporaries longed for a political messiah who would build his kingdom right there in ancient Israel as an earthly kingdom, but that is not the kind of messiah Jesus was. Jesus's command wasn't to be a "good person"; it was to give up everything and follow him. Of course he also had some messages about what a person ought to do along the way that are specific and generally applicable. Jesus (sounding perhaps like what you would call Bernie Sanders like) commanded us to help the poor. Notice the command is always a personal obligation rather than a command to support a political movement. He told us to give our money to the poor, not to campaign for increased taxes on landlords. His commands on sexuality were likewise our own condemnation for failing to comply, not political commands. The question of politics is of secondary, minimal importance. The primary importance is always repentance and conversion.

So how ought we to live in a political society like modern democracy? Well, first and foremost by following Jesus's commands. To ask of others what we refuse to do ourselves is to be like the Pharisees who are condemned most severely. Now, alongside of that is the role we play in our political decisions to vote for candidates who will work best for the good of society: for its conversion, for the poor, for moral social norms, etc. In this is often a fair criticism of many Republicans. Some of us may believe the government should do more to help the poor but that the Democrats are worse for a variety of reasons, some may earnestly believe the government was never desired to be the avenue for welfare spending to begin with, some may think the government does more harm than good, some may not give a crap and want to virtue signal. The world is full of complicated people with mixed motives. If you want a simple answer, you will never get one that is true for a question like this.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If their job requires them to operate autonomously from authority and engage in critical thinking, going to a "stop the steal" protest would seem to be strong indicators against those skills in both regards.

Also

If the employee's actions being there (regardless of "where exactly" the employee was) is causing a huge distraction (problems) to running of the business, then the employee should be let-go.

If you look at the percentages of people who believe in moronic conspiracy theories about the moon landing, the Holocaust and so on, you’ll find this principle unsustainable. There are a lot of people who are capable of doing decent jobs while failing to engage their brains in politics - in fact, the vast majority of people do this, albeit to a lesser extent than Qanoners in most cases.

Agreed.

I found your examples amusing as I once had a colleague who was convinced the moon landing was faked along with a host of other conspiracy theories, yet was also one of the more competent Chartered Accountants in the office. Turns out his ridiculous opinions didn't inhibit his critical thinking skills or ability to work autonomously in accountancy. Surprising I know. Similarly Ben Carson believed all sorts of weird stuff, but that didn't prevent him from doing all those brain surgeries successfully.

The notion that being laughably wrong in one area renders one unfit to work in a thinking profession is one of the more bizarre takes that crops up on Atlas from time to time. I think it betrays a certain lack of real world experience. People are weird and complicated, and often don't fit to our little psephological boxes.  I think we're all better off for it.