Hot, Bad & Unpopular Takes

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Authoritarian shouldn't be considered insulting inherently.

Aww, thank you!

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

The forum minimum posting age should be 22 or so

Strange that you say that.

I would agree with him and I started at 14. This is as much a benefit for the posters as the forum.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Warren Harding was the best Republican President of the 20th century.

Better than Eisenhower and TR even (neither of whom were saints)?  Why?

His foreign policy was way better. In fact he was probably the last President to make any meaningful effort toward demilitarization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Conference

He also wanted to end US interference in Latin America, something that both Eisenhower and Roosevelt were frankly atrocious on.

Sounds like a spineless president.

You sound like the guy that gets into fights at parties because you don’t realize that such is a show of weakness.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Warren Harding was the best Republican President of the 20th century.

Better than Eisenhower and TR even (neither of whom were saints)?  Why?

His foreign policy was way better. In fact he was probably the last President to make any meaningful effort toward demilitarization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Conference

He also wanted to end US interference in Latin America, something that both Eisenhower and Roosevelt were frankly atrocious on.

Sounds like a spineless president.

You sound like the guy that gets into fights at parties because you don’t realize that such is a show of weakness.

I've been in 7 fights in my life and all 7 were in self-defense. Good try, though. Responding to my criticism of a bad/non-interventionist foreign policy with a flawed personal attack is a classy move  

(Also, trying to start beef with me yet again is a show of weakness)

Eh. I’m not trying to start beef. I just dislike belligerence from personal experience. Calling something spineless out of context because of some weird gym bro ideology sounded like an FDB move.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

The death penalty should apply to rape, but only for repeat/serial offenders.

I Totally agree with this as anyone committing any form of rape should be anally destroyed with a 5 foot spiked spear.

Anal blood will be on the State's hands, then.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

It should be mandatory for girls under 20 to have an abortion if they get pregnant.

Jesus. You need Jesus.

Watching those teen mom type shows have convinced me that teenage girls are incapable of taking care of babies.

Hate to break this to you, but TV shows aren't real life. Yes, teenage parenthood is not ideal by any means, but the solution isn't a mandatory abortion.

Additionally, you don’t magically gain greater wisdom and ability when you go from being a teen mom to just an unwed mother. But, to be safe, we should probably ban sex. Luckily, smart phones are doing that for us.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

It should be mandatory for girls under 20 to have an abortion if they get pregnant.

Jesus. You need Jesus.

Watching those teen mom type shows have convinced me that teenage girls are incapable of taking care of babies.

Hate to break this to you, but TV shows aren't real life. Yes, teenage parenthood is not ideal by any means, but the solution isn't a mandatory abortion.

Additionally, you don’t magically gain greater wisdom and ability when you go from being a teen mom to just an unwed mother. But, to be safe, we should probably ban sex. Luckily, smart phones are doing that for us.

Not if you're gay. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The Chosen People need not worry re reproductive consequences of their actions, so irrelevant.

The school day should be longer and academic standards in K-12 education should be much more intense to bring the USA up to par with competition in East Asia. 

IB program says hi.

I appreciate that a conservative finally wants to Make America Great (Again), but won’t this cut into time the kids have for jobs, sports, and tomfoolery?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I was really hoping that we would get a big stock market crash a month before the midterms this year.

Same, Not a stock market crash but a bad recession, i’m Still hoping one happens right before 2020.

I too hope the turn-of-the-century babies become a completely lost generation much like those hopeless souls born in '84 to '88 that give millennials such a bad name.

Same to you. Of course judging by you’re posts you lost your soul a lot time ago.

*your

And smilo is a forum treasure. It’s not his fault you are trapped by paradigm.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Being overly loud or obnoxious in a public place (i.e., a lobby of a bank, doctor's office, the DMV, etc.) - even if you are laughing with a friend or being "friendly" with the receptionist or something - is not a sign of your overwhelmingly positive nature or good spirit ... it's a character flaw that demonstrates a ridiculously oblivious nature and self-centered attitude.  The types of jolly old idiots who sit through a short green light because they were laughing with the person in the front seat, and then they speed through the intersection as it turns yellow, if you will.

You would hate Cajun country.

WASPs are well-trained to despise personal expression, something I admire of them.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Being overly loud or obnoxious in a public place (i.e., a lobby of a bank, doctor's office, the DMV, etc.) - even if you are laughing with a friend or being "friendly" with the receptionist or something - is not a sign of your overwhelmingly positive nature or good spirit ... it's a character flaw that demonstrates a ridiculously oblivious nature and self-centered attitude.  The types of jolly old idiots who sit through a short green light because they were laughing with the person in the front seat, and then they speed through the intersection as it turns yellow, if you will.

You would hate Cajun country.

WASPs are well-trained to despise personal expression, something I admire of them.

Have we officially done away with the English ancestry requirement in being a WASP?  It would make sense in today's society if the term is still meant to symbolize privilege - being of German and Swedish descent is hardly the "notable" factor to one's identity that it was back in the day - but I'd argue at that point, White Catholics should be included, rendering the term even more useless than it already is.

I mean, I've been called an aspiring WASP (by a guy that dresses sharper than I usually do), and I don't even dress that WASPy (though that's part of the implication), so I suppose it would have to have something to do with personal conduct and/or aspirations at this point.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

The hot takes on Jesus and the border wall on Christmas are cheap, if not idiotic. They were in Bethlehem to be taxed, not as refugees.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

The hot takes on Jesus and the border wall on Christmas are cheap, if not idiotic. They were in Bethlehem to be taxed, not as refugees.

I understand your point, but that’s due to poor framing by ill-informed tweeters looking to make a quick point.
Mary and Joseph’s time as refugees was their stay in Egypt, after fleeing Herod’s slaughter of the Bethlehem infants (Matthew 2:13-23)
Their flight and exile to a foreign, suspicious land fits them into that category. Compared to that, their time in Bethlehem was a tax-induced road trip with poor accommodation.

Thank you. I guess it’s on me that such an event had slipped my mind. Nevertheless, it’s not as though their flight to Egypt is part of the popularly-known version of the tale (and yes, it may be in movies, but seriously, who talks about it?), so the analogy is of reduced utility.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Most people kicked off of social media probably acted in such a way that made it appropriate for them to be banned (albeit, this may have not been the reason for the ban).

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

The libertarian party is severely underrated.

I agreed until 2016, when they nominated the sad Johnson/Weld ticket over the even douchier "truh libertarian" candidate Austin Peterson. The 2016 Libertarian field was just plain sad, and 2020 looks no better.

They would have won with Weld at the top of the ticket.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

The libertarian party is severely underrated.

I agreed until 2016, when they nominated the sad Johnson/Weld ticket over the even douchier "truh libertarian" candidate Austin Peterson. The 2016 Libertarian field was just plain sad, and 2020 looks no better.

They would have won with Weld at the top of the ticket.

The problem with Weld is that he seem to me, at least on the surface, more like a Progressive Conservative from Canada than anything rather close to American libertarianism.

I’ve got no idea what Progressive Conservatism actually means in practice, though sounds interesting. I was being hyperbolic about Weld’s chances; or perhaps lying through omission—he would have won my vote. I didn’t hear Weld speak, but I liked how he dressed and he seemed like substantially less of a national security risk than many of the candidates topping the tickets (including Johnson). 

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

The "generation war" between millennials and boomers is stupid as hell and based on entirely incorrect assumptions.

I thrive on it.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

George Wallace would get my vote before Nixon.

No.... just no.


Nixon wasn't bad at all in terms of policy, at least for a Republican. He was to the left of some modern Democrats - of course he was also a crook, but still.

Wrong.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

This was my answer to the Nixon question four years ago, and, barring some of the run-on sentences and poor grammar, I by-and-large stand by it.

His "conservatism" was more in the interest of taking liberal elites and social workers, while his "liberalism" was largely in the interest of getting ahead of and/or coercing liberal ideas so they couldn't campaign on them. His presidency, in retrospect, has few things policy-related that should appeal to either a liberal or a conservative, this in the political success, he contributed greatly to the rightward bent of the nation, though he can hardly be attributed with having triggered such a thing. Even discussing his personal views is a difficult task, as different aides and recordings will tell you different things. His racial policy is itself a strange phenomenon. He advanced agencies like the Office of Minority Business Enterprise, somehow became the "greatest school desegregator in history", and according to Buchanan and others had genuine concern for African-Americans, while at the same time scuttling busing, advancing various "tough on crime" tactics that would affect blacks, and is on record saying that he preferred abortion in the case of a mixed-race child. He as well signed legislation in 1974 that would be viewed favorably by proponents of "community-oriented policing". It's ironic, of course, that conservatives rebelled against Ford and not him, since Ford, while likely personally more liberal, presided over a more conservative economic approach and started rolling back detente under the guidance of Rumsfeld and Cheney, though one could reason that, regardless of who held office by 1976, conservatives would have attempted to oust him. It's as well ironic that a man who had been able to churn such vitriol and hatred from the left nevertheless almost won the presidency in 1960 and won a landslide in 1972. This irony is as well at the crux of Nixonism, pitting all sides against each other to win vast swaths of the middle and the right. Hell, in 1960, you could've stated, with history on your side, that Nixon was the candidate more favorable to civil rights. His presidency is a good example of the triumphs and failues of both ideologies on the American political scene. He was able to placate New Deal liberalism enough to not offend a good deal of its benficiaries, while also doing so in the name of a middle class conservatism. Someone to his right would have threatened the New Deal benefits that many Americans were attached to, someone to his left would have threatened the cultural sensibilities of middle America. He adopted several personas, and pursued policies to the detriment of each of them. The man who was endorsed by unions in his re-election nevertheless pursued free trade; the man who had friends in the business world and was backed by them signed into law the EPA and other environmental protections; the anti-communist who would protect you from the Soviets sought detente; the centrist who didn't threaten the status quo made himself the bedfellow of Dixiecrats and spoke to anti-war protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. My "conclusion" would be that he simply was a conservative interested in co-opting the liberal policies that were in vogue, while also taking up the mantle of the conservative rhetoric that was becoming popular. However, he goes well beyond a simple one-word or even one-sentence explanation. If you examined the presidencies of any other president after him, you might run into a similar debate, but the causes for question about their ideologies were exceptions. For Nixon, the contradictions were the rule.