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

[Torrain]

There’s a lot in the previous post. But this is most important -

no one knows how the World began except Dinosaurs

Pure. Poetry.

[Kamala's side hoe]

One thing to consider is that this is a far less polarizing presidency. Ie. what precisely is there to approve of? With Trump there is a direct correlation between approval and partisanship, and as a result being a Republican or disliking Democrats almost required you to approve. This was obvious when you compared the Favorable numbers to the Approval ones which tended to be(slightly) less polarized.

With the exception of a few folks here who seem to be taking criticism of Afghanistan personally, there is no particular reason why large segments of Biden's electorate in 2020 would particularly approve of him. Has he handled it well? Ie. separate from any decision to withdraw? Maybe you don't think its entirely or even mostly his fault but in the spectrum of what he had agency over did he use it well?

Covid? You can blame anti-vaxxers, and blame Republican leaning voters for that, and even Republican pols for grandstanding but again within the scope of agency what did he do?

1. JJ pause which in hindsight was almost certainly a serious mistake
2. A weird, drawn-out approach to vaccine mandates which ended up allowing masking to become a live issue again. Whereas on a tradeoff, even if masking+shots was better, aggressively risking the (marginal given non compliance) risks of no masks to get as many shots
3. No approval for under 12 vaccines which contributes to why we are fighting over schools

On Covid Biden has either done nothing, little, been too slow, or acted in ways which haven't worked out. No real reason to approve.

Maybe spending money? But even then infrastructure stories are all about weird procedural stuff.

Like frankly why would you expect approval ratings to be high?

I am just unsure they matter that much. I mean they matter insofar as Democrats probably needed them to be historically high to not have a bad 2022, but I suspect that just as in 2018 the bottom for the GOP held up a lot better than in 2006 or 2008, the bottom for the Democrats will be a lot higher in 2022 than in 2014 because their voters will turn out due to "fear". So what you will get is going to be a 50-48 GOP popular vote margin and a mild wave as opposed to a 53-45 wipeout. But I am unsure that Biden at 50-46 and Biden at 47-46 changes that much. Biden at 55-39 might. Biden at 42-53 might. But 47-46 won't really change much from 50-45.

[MATTROSE94]

They beat COVID while only losing 4,636 people, per the New York Times tracker. They've got much better infrastructure than the United States, and they've been vaccinating their own people at a breakneck pace while also helping poorer countries get their people vaccinated. The allegations of human rights abuses in China are simply the right wing trying to manufacture consent for war.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Yes, obviously.  An even more common condition will be the thorough demoralization of law enforcement to the point that departments are constantly understaffed because they cannot find qualified candidates willing to accept open positions.

"Blue flu" will remain endemic, in part a cynical power play but also as a manifestation of a rational strategy for self-preservation: Do as little as possible. Never go out of your way to protect someone. It can only come back to haunt you. The result for many American neighborhoods will be, as it has been, like staring into the chaos of Gomorrah.

[certified hummus supporter 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

So, many users think that Trump is the second coming of Ronald Reagan, well he is the second coming of Ronald Reagan he let Big oil pollute our land after Nixon established the EPA, he isn't Reagan in a sense of Electoral strategy, he has been impeached twice and failed to win the popular vote and is the worst Prez ever

Conservatives need to get over Trump like Christie and Hogan said just like Ehlrich said hey over Bush W

He is just that will be the 45th Prez not 47th Prez Harris will be

[certified hummus supporter 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

Tar Heel, he thinks Ron DeSantis or Rubio can't lose, anyone can lose

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

AOC says she (and other NYC elected officials) were invited.

Anyway, obviously the post was deleted in this thread but it's pretty obvious what she was doing. The irony is the point, and clearly lost on the pearl-clutchers in this thread.

I find it annoying because she wants to have it both ways. She wants to rub elbows with the rich and famous (she is one of them now, after all) but also judge them as though she's still a struggling bartender. Socialists in this country are extremely, extremely judgmental of everyone that offends their sensibilities of what is and isn't fair in this economy, but they seem to universally have no problem living it up to the fullest themselves. I don't care if rich people enjoy an expensive night out to the gala, but I'd rather they not pretend to be men and women of the people while they do it.

And please, no one give me that god-awful "you participate in society" comic thing. It's so out of touch. Anyone who thinks that going to a $30,000 night of entertainment is merely "participating in society" is about as deluded about what the average American experience is like as Donald Trump is.

[MATTROSE94]

Massachusetts has an old-school Republican tradition which dates back to The Whigs. Massachusetts never left the Republicans, the Republicans left the state and when a moderate enough candidate comes along, it generally supports them over a generic Dem. While the state is very Democratic, it is only liberal on social issues and free trade. There's a lot of economic moderates and even some conservatives who vote Democrat because of these issues, which has increased under Trump who was a uniquely bad fit for this state, but easily return to their party when a soc. lib/eco con is nominated. As other posters have posted, the state party largely divorced itself from the national party, although some people are trying to make it Trumpier. Historically, Trump could've done well in Bristol/Worcester counties as well as near the largely working-class areas of Lowell, Haverhill, and Peabody, but the area is also home to a lot of academic/science types who largely switched to the Dem. party during the later half of the 20th century and even more so now. While Governor Baker's Covid lockdown was unpopular in certain quarters, I think it was enough for him to win over some of this normally-Dem voters in 2022.

[Christian Man]

Massachusetts has an old-school Republican tradition which dates back to The Whigs. Massachusetts never left the Republicans, the Republicans left the state and when a moderate enough candidate comes along, it generally supports them over a generic Dem. While the state is very Democratic, it is only liberal on social issues and free trade. There's a lot of economic moderates and even some conservatives who vote Democrat because of these issues, which has increased under Trump who was a uniquely bad fit for this state, but easily return to their party when a soc. lib/eco con is nominated. As other posters have posted, the state party largely divorced itself from the national party, although some people are trying to make it Trumpier. Historically, Trump could've done well in Bristol/Worcester counties as well as near the largely working-class areas of Lowell, Haverhill, and Peabody, but the area is also home to a lot of academic/science types who largely switched to the Dem. party during the later half of the 20th century and even more so now. While Governor Baker's Covid lockdown was unpopular in certain quarters, I think it was enough for him to win over some of this normally-Dem voters in 2022.

Honored to see one of my posts on the list, thank you.

[Non Swing Voter]

WARNING: HOT THG TAKES AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

• Nuisance survives by roughly 5-10 points or so as of now. I don’t see him being recalled as much as I’d yearn to see it occur.
• He collapses in SoCal, the more Central part of the state, the Sac Area, and literally everywhere that isn’t the Bay Area massively- but crucially, remains strong enough in the Bay Area to basically not lose. And remember- the Bay Area has unfortunately spiritually controlled California’s politics for the last 30 years, which it probably will continue to do, although that will eventually slowly but surely change.
• Nuisance does utterly horrendously with non college/working class voters of all races (including minorities such as Asians and Hispanics, based on polls) and also does very poorly among independents, but again, the types of liberals in the Bay (and other parts of the state, but mostly the Bay) who are partisan Democrats probably save him. Again, California is politically spiritually controlled by ultra ideologically liberal white Bay Area types, even if the raw demographics of the state on paper may tell you a somewhat different story.
• The recall map probably looks somewhat similar to the 2004 Presidential Election results in California.
• The fact that this recall is even remotely competitive in California is still rather pitiful news for Democrats in 2022.

[Arson Plus]

WARNING: HOT THG TAKES AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

• Nuisance survives by roughly 5-10 points or so as of now. I don’t see him being recalled as much as I’d yearn to see it occur.
• He collapses in SoCal, the more Central part of the state, the Sac Area, and literally everywhere that isn’t the Bay Area massively- but crucially, remains strong enough in the Bay Area to basically not lose. And remember- the Bay Area has unfortunately spiritually controlled California’s politics for the last 30 years, which it probably will continue to do, although that will eventually slowly but surely change.
• Nuisance does utterly horrendously with non college/working class voters of all races (including minorities such as Asians and Hispanics, based on polls) and also does very poorly among independents, but again, the types of liberals in the Bay (and other parts of the state, but mostly the Bay) who are partisan Democrats probably save him. Again, California is politically spiritually controlled by ultra ideologically liberal white Bay Area types, even if the raw demographics of the state on paper may tell you a somewhat different story.
• The recall map probably looks somewhat similar to the 2004 Presidential Election results in California.
• The fact that this recall is even remotely competitive in California is still rather pitiful news for Democrats in 2022.

This is the wrong place for this to be in.

[Ancestral Republican]

AOC says she (and other NYC elected officials) were invited.

Anyway, obviously the post was deleted in this thread but it's pretty obvious what she was doing. The irony is the point, and clearly lost on the pearl-clutchers in this thread.

I find it annoying because she wants to have it both ways. She wants to rub elbows with the rich and famous (she is one of them now, after all) but also judge them as though she's still a struggling bartender. Socialists in this country are extremely, extremely judgmental of everyone that offends their sensibilities of what is and isn't fair in this economy, but they seem to universally have no problem living it up to the fullest themselves. I don't care if rich people enjoy an expensive night out to the gala, but I'd rather they not pretend to be men and women of the people while they do it.

And please, no one give me that god-awful "you participate in society" comic thing. It's so out of touch. Anyone who thinks that going to a $30,000 night of entertainment is merely "participating in society" is about as deluded about what the average American experience is like as Donald Trump is.

How is this high quality?

[Non Swing Voter]

WARNING: HOT THG TAKES AHEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

• Nuisance survives by roughly 5-10 points or so as of now. I don’t see him being recalled as much as I’d yearn to see it occur.
• He collapses in SoCal, the more Central part of the state, the Sac Area, and literally everywhere that isn’t the Bay Area massively- but crucially, remains strong enough in the Bay Area to basically not lose. And remember- the Bay Area has unfortunately spiritually controlled California’s politics for the last 30 years, which it probably will continue to do, although that will eventually slowly but surely change.
• Nuisance does utterly horrendously with non college/working class voters of all races (including minorities such as Asians and Hispanics, based on polls) and also does very poorly among independents, but again, the types of liberals in the Bay (and other parts of the state, but mostly the Bay) who are partisan Democrats probably save him. Again, California is politically spiritually controlled by ultra ideologically liberal white Bay Area types, even if the raw demographics of the state on paper may tell you a somewhat different story.
• The recall map probably looks somewhat similar to the 2004 Presidential Election results in California.
• The fact that this recall is even remotely competitive in California is still rather pitiful news for Democrats in 2022.

This is the wrong place for this to be in.

Where else can this be permanently preserved so he doesn't delete/have deleted?

[Kamala's side hoe]

Rather than making a sweeping generalization, it might help to look at the various communities that comprise Latino voters overall. For CA (and for a lot of other places, too), I'd say break it down into three broader categories:

• distinctly urban clusters where the majority of Latinos reside
• relatively less urbanized areas with relatively large Latino populations
• rural or otherwise isolated places where Latinos are the overwhelming majority

It's fairly clear that Democrats aren't having long-term issues with the first group, and because of that, any major "realignment" or shift is impossible on some grand scale.

The second group in CA would more or less focus on the Central Valley, where huge fluctuations in Latino turnout between presidential and off-year elections occur. It's very likely any statistically large movements here compared to recent elections is merely turnout-based discrepancies. Remember that these CDs have some of the lowest turnout in the country in any midterm elections.

That leaves the third group (places such as Imperial Valley, and the RGV for that matter). I do think it can be argued that this group is trending toward the GOP, but it's a relatively tiny segment of the overall population. A good thread on AAD can be found around this discussion, but one quote in particular that applies to the RGV I think may broadly apply to a place like the Imperial Valley:

A few points:

1. When the national Democratic Party is talking about "racial justice" they are basically talking about racial justice specifically for black people. The 1619 Project, confederate monuments, police profiling - by and large those are questions of reckoning with the historical black-white dynamic in America.

Hispanic people do not feel like they have any role in that. Either they didn't come here until after slavery and Jim Crow ended or they were living in places that by and large weren't impacted by any of that.

A lot of these people are proud of their own heritage - many have roots in Texas much longer than the typical white person here. Others came here and struggled and were able to make lives for themselves and their descendants. They are proud to be tejanos or to be Mexican-American, but they are also proud to be American and when you have black activists and liberal whites ranting about how America is an irredeemably racist country that has to be broken down and rebuilt from scratch, that's kind of offensive to them. They think, "What does that make me? I'm not racist. I've never done anything to any black person."

In the 1960s, a generation of white ethnics were driven into the arms of the GOP for precisely this reason - they were sick of what they saw as white liberals taking away their jobs and their neighborhoods for the benefit of blacks, while those white liberals were living in favored quarters and sending their kids to private schools. They were tired of being asked to give up something for the sake of blacks when they and their ancestors had no complicity in slavery or Jim Crow.

2. You have to understand that everybody in the RGV is Hispanic. I mean, everybody. We're talking >90% Hispanic. If you live there, the gas station clerk and the janitor are Hispanic, but so is the doctor at the clinic, so is the police officer who pulled you over for speeding, so are your teachers at school, so are the lawyers and bankers who make up the local elite.

There is no dynamic down there of white people as an oppressive minority akin to South Africa. Hispanic people aren't getting beaten by white cops. Hispanic kids aren't getting bullied at school for being Hispanic. There are no angry white Boomers yelling "Go back to your own country!" at the supermercado.

Most of those people don't get around a lot. If they travel, it's to visit family in Mexico or Houston or San Antonio. They don't have any conception of "racism" because they live in a racially homogenous society.

The linked thread is emblematic of why I have an AAD account.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/everybody-hates-the-jews

In this ideology, science is at the mercy of politics, identity trumps ideas, and obvious truths are dangerous to say out loud. Silence is violence, they say, but violence, when directed at the right people, is justified. Racism is the gravest of sins, but racism, when directed at the right targets, is the price of justice. Bullying in theory is wrong, the bullying of the right people is not just okay, it is a virtue. In the name of anti-racism it imposes racist policies. In the name of culture, it erases art. In the name of progress, it rewrites — even deletes — our history.

Perhaps most significantly, in the name of equality and justice this ideology insists that it is better to have everyone worse off than to be unequal in any way. If some people lose the race, the race must be dismantled.

There is endless whining about the various grievances of "indigenous peoples" of all sorts, which is ironic because the Jews have the most valid claim to be the true "indigenous" people of not just the 1948 boundaries of Israel, but the whole of Judea and Samaria as well.  The Jews are a people that have not only been dispersed around the World, they have been subjected to systematic and planned genocide in countries they were relocated to.  In the last 200 years, Russia and Germany are examples.

What the Jews wanted was a piece of the World's Turf.  The 1948 boundaries were boundaries that the Jewish people had a real claim to.  The Arab nations waged war against the Jews on day one.  The Palestinians, who had collaborated with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler during WWII (yes, THAT Grand Mufti) blocked European Jews from escaping to safety in Israel.  They tried again in 1967.  This time, the Jewish People decided to maintain enough land in order to defend themselves,  A number of Arab nations have made peace with Israel today, but the Palestinians have never, ever, acknowledged Israel's right to exist, not even within its present borders.

There are legitimate issues here.  In 1977 a professor of mine (an observant Jew teaching Israeli Politics) pointed out to us that Israel, within its 1977 borders, would have an Arab majority someday, based on birthrates, and this would be true even if every Jew from America and the USSR emigrated to Israel and Israel could absorb such immigration.  This begged the question of what becomes of a Jewish State with an Arab Majority.  

Second class citizenship for Arabs is not something that neither the world  nor I would find acceptable (even while some of it overlooked other sins of this sort in other places).  But what, then, would be a safe place for World Jewry?  Hitler happened; the Holocaust was a mere 32 years in the past at that time, and it happened in a first world Western Civilized nation (Germany) that, up until Hitler, was one of the more liberal and tolerant places for Jews in Europe.  The Jews have a unique case to claim a piece of the World's Turf, and they have an indigenous people's type of claim to the one they have now.  Should there be no lasting consequences for the folks that collaborated with Hitler and the Grand Mufti?  Should there be lasting consequences for firing rockets down on civilians (as the Palestinians have repeatedly done?  Should there be lasting consequences for initiating wars of aggression against Israel and then losing them?  And can we count the number of Arab states that could easily provide sanctuary for "Palestinian Refugees"?

You'll forgive me, but the Palestinians don't have the moral high ground here.  They never have, and they don't as of now.  That does not justify their mistreatment, but much mistreatment has come at their hands.  To consider the Palestinians blameless in all of this is nothing short of delusional.  I would ask, however, what is needed for Jews to actually BE safe in the World, absent a land that they can consider to be their piece of the World's Turf?  There are any number of folks here that I would like to hear from on THAT specific issue.  

[Left Wing]

I completely concur with the notion that Jews deserve a state, self-determination, and the right as a state to defend themselves from threats external and internal with robust military force when necessary. But to hold the crimes of certain Palestinian nationalists over the heads of the entire population? Or to deny Palestinians those same rights and their basic human rights because of those crimes? To blame them solely for the totality of their suffering? That concept disturbs me and concerns me greatly. I cannot agree. Palestinians deserve self-determination, security, and safety just as much as Israelis. Just as I would never hold the entire Israeli nation accountable for Sabra and Shatila, or for price tag attacks, or Kahanist hate crimes, I do not hold the whole Palestinian people to account for Hamas's rocket attacks, or suicide bombings. Both peoples have rights.

[Christian Man]

Workers should be the only people represented on corporate boards

[MATTROSE94]

The only way Trump gains is if Kana Harris is the nominee, he gonna do worse if Biden is the nominee, Trump only saving grave is Harris, but we don't know what type of Veep she would pick

Gore and Kerry made mistakes in picking Veeps it should of been Graham and Wes Clark, Clark would have closed the gap with Bush W and Cheney on 911/ after Bin Laden tape, Edwards had no Vet experience

Kamala have to make a mistake in picking a running mate, but as long as Biden is Nominated, he will beat Trump

[Christian Man]

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson disagree with you

[Christian Man]

I included both posts but OSR's is the one that deserves recognition.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I would tentatively suggest that you consider calming down, perhaps a little. It really cannot be healthy to get so angry about literary criticism.

WHO made a "conscious effort to avoid racist tropes?" Tolkien? PROVE it! Put up or shut up! Hell, the "Orcs" of the "East" could easily be perceived as (and have extensively been argued to be) racist stereotypes of Asians and "Orientals" far more offensive than anything Rowling has ever written.

As the tropes of fairy tale and fantasy are very old, the most frequent (by far) form of racism found within them is antisemitism. Tolkien viewed antisemitism as a particularly despicable prejudice and so, yes, took pains to make sure that there was no trace of it in his literary projects which is why you won't find any despite a lot of his source material. When he was asked by a German publishing house interested in The Hobbit whether he was Jewish (this was, of course, several years after the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws) he drafted a famously abusive response, though whether it was actually sent is not clear. Given that all of this is well known, I must admit that I am somewhat perplexed at your aggressively bemused tone.

On the general issue of Tolkien and 'race', I wrote a long post on the subject a few years ago at Nathan's request and it can be read here. It does not cover everything (at some point I should get round to writing an expanded version that does), but should function as a solid introduction to Tolkien's attitude towards 'race' as a concept and towards racial prejudice in general. On the specific issue of supposed hostility towards East Asians, it may be worth noting that Tolkien was genuinely outraged at the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, believing it to be a wicked and Unchristian act, and was known to be fiercely critical of pre-war British and American imperialism in East Asia. One of his most thoroughly Edwardian features was a certain degree of Japanophilia in cultural matters: he owned a collection of ukiyo-e prints and his own art was heavily influenced by Japanese illustration.

And WHERE is Rowling's apparent unconscious invoking of racist tropes? The Goblins are bankers, therefore they must be Jews??? If that's it, it says FAR more about YOU than HER!!!

This is circular logic. You are not (presumably) ten years old and should therefore be capable of better. But fine: Rowling's Goblins are strange, hook-nosed creatures who control all the money in the (Wizarding) world, speak a strange unintelligible language, hold grudges, keep themselves to themselves, delight in obtuse legalism and are merciless in pursuit of debtors.

I wasn't the one who brought him up as an absurd whataboutism but OK. Really nothing strange about it either, considering the clear implication of your claim (and the only way it even is relevant at all) was that Tolkien was and/or would be somehow more "woke" than Rowling, which is blatantly nonsense. If he wasn't or wouldn't be, there is ZERO reason to even bring him up! But if you're gonna point to him as an example of a righteous fantasy writer in contrast to the evil bigoted Rowling, you have a STEEP hill to climb to PROVE your claims! The fact that he died when she was eight years old shouldn't be relevant if you are going to compare them on the same level. You can't have it both ways by giving Tolkien the benefit of the doubt because he was from a different era or something (as if Catholics with his exact same views aren't widespread today, or there is any reason at all to think he would think any differently today) but roasting Rowling for not conforming to all your woke orthodoxy today. Her views are in any case FAR less removed from that orthodoxy now than Tolkien's were from the liberal/progressive orthodoxy even of his own day!

My woke orthodoxy? I'm not sure if it's possible to respond to that with anything short of laughter. Leaving that aside, you have missed the point again. J.R.R. Tolkien has been dead for almost fifty years and was an old man when Rowling - who is not a young woman - was a child. It is frankly quite bizarre to ascribe to him views on hot-button issues that would have been as alien to him as anyone else born in the 19th century and to make suggestions as to how he would have behaved online. You have also failed to understand why I referenced him (and another notable writer of fantasy: Alan Garner, who I can only presume that you have never actually heard of) in my short post about Rowling's tendency to use tropes and stock characters without much in the way of critical thinking or even basic curiosity. My point is other writers have been aware of the issue in question and have found ways of dealing with it and that therefore ignorance will not do as an excuse, especially as one of those authors was a moderately conservative Roman Catholic writing in 1937.

And also, I'm not doing anything to justify her behavior. I don't think she did anything that NEEDS to be justified. She did nothing wrong at all.

Jolly good.

The most charitable interpretation I can think of for the above drivel is that you must struggle greatly with basic reading comprehension, AND you really love to jerk yourself off over using a lot of big words that amount to nothing of substance! Therefore, I will be extremely clear so that there is no possibility of misinterpretation: You have FAILED to even PROVE your basic assumption that there even IS an inherent "conflation of the fairytale Goblin with the Jewish people," let ALONE one that was adopted by Rowling, consciously or unconsciously. You have also FAILED to PROVE your assertion that Tolkien was so great at "disentangling" this; do you REALLY want to stand by the claim that his portrayal of "goblins" as bloodthirsty, mindless, greedy Orcs was so much more enlightened than Rowling's portrayal of them as much more intelligent and nuanced beings?

The only way this conversation even makes sense in the first place is if we assume that any time a fantasy writer references "goblins," a Jewish association is unavoidable. In that case, the evidence shows that if anything, Tolkien's portrayal of them was far worse. If the idea is supposed to be that ackshually, no he wasn't trying to reference Jews at all with his goblins BUT somehow Rowling was with hers, that's a massive reach that you have utterly FAILED to PROVE in the slightest.

That the fairytale Goblin has often been conflated with the Jewish people in an inherently antisemitic manner - that the fairytale Goblin has often been used as an allusion or, even worse, an allegory for Jews - is such a universally accepted point that I need to provide evidence for the claim no more than I would that the Sun appears in the sky during hours of daylight. It is also so obvious that a failure to spot it raises a few questions.

As for Tolkiens Goblins and Tolkiens Orcs, yes, they are horrible creatures. As are Garner's Svart alfar. They are also monsters. And in fact that is all they are, which is, in fact, the whole issue here. There is no problem in a fantasy monster being written as such. Where we run into difficulty is when the fantasy monster is not wholly a fantasy monster, but is a monstrous caricature of real people.

It's obvious that you are just taking the opportunity to smugly wax poetic about how this old far right son of British imperialism was OBVIOUSLY far SMARTER than and SUPERIOR to this self-made liberal billionaire woman. Because that's not classist or sexist at all!

That is a very strange and not at all accurate description of Tolkien. I presume that you are aware that he was born in South Africa and that he was a conservative Roman Catholic and have allowed your imagination to run riot? He was born in the Orange Free State (an independent country at the time: this was before the British conquered it during the Second Boer War) because his father had a post at a bank there. His mother took him back to England when he was a toddler because she worried that the climate was dangerous for the health of her children and because she found the entrenched and pervasive racism of the place distressing. He grew up in Birmingham and felt deeply rooted there and in the wider West Midlands and nowhere else. His sense of morality was founded largely on memories of his mother and, consequentially, he was a life-long opponent of Empire and Imperialism, a trait that was easily his most radical political view and which was to form an important element in both his fiction and his academic work. His politics were idiosyncratic, and cannot be described as 'far right' without absurdity: although a conservative man in many respects, he was a lot closer to anarchism than fascism.

I think that accusations of 'classism' against me are almost as amusing as the earlier nonsense about me adhering to some sort of 'woke orthodoxy'. Hilarious stuff. Incidentally (and to the extent that we can compare the social structures of the Late Victoria and Postwar eras), Tolkien social background had more in common with Rowling's than you seem to assume. Theoretically a little higher up the tree, but a member of a still unpopular minority group and poorer for a time, in that special way brought about by the sort of downwards social mobility that did not exist when Rowling was growing up.

I think I shall largely ignore the rest of your post, though I will note again that I am not actually accusing Rowling of personal antisemitism, merely of unthinkingly incorporating old antisemitic tropes into her work. I'm quite sure that if she realised she would not have done so. The point is that she did not, and that this is characteristic of her approach to writing in a broader sense. She uses, in a very postmodern manner, elements from all over the place because they fit particular niches in her stories without giving serious consideration to where those elements might have been before and what they might mean.

[President Johnson]

It's a sad but excellent take.

Still predicting a narrow McAuliffe win, but Democrats are showing their incompetence at messaging again. If McAuliffe really does lose, this will just be another entry in a list of dozens of races that Democrats had no business losing but lost anyway. The Republican strategy of not offering any good faith solutions to key issues and instead basically just arguing that Democrats are crazy should not work as well as it does, but Democrats have somehow never figured out how to run against this, except in very rare cases.

[Del Tachi]

I'll give it a shot:

CRT posits that racism is not primarily a property of individual prejudices, but is an emergent property of social and legal systems (defined as broadly as possible) which leads to disparate outcomes elevating white people above others. This redefinition of racism is really the key to the entire theory.

CRT redefines the experience of racism from one of hate or intolerance to one which is a "normal" and "every day" occurrence which is often not noticeable at first glance but is borne out in statistics. Institutions which are race-blind or which promote equality of opportunity are nevertheless considered racist if they produce unequal outcomes (although equality of outcome is rarely defined with any rigor). Anyone who benefits from these systems, white or otherwise, is considered complicit in the system's racism, and the only way to not be complicit with racism is to actively fight against these systems. Therefore, anyone who is not explicitly anti-racist is, functionally, racist.

This necessitates the elevation of "race consciousness" to the forefront of civic and personal life; that is, race must be front and center in the mind of all citizens (starting from a young age) or else we all fall into complicity with racism. Hence the necessity of universal race and diversity trainings in academic, corporate, and government settings (my work, for example, requires them yearly) and the instantiation of central CRT tenants in school praxis-- to always memento album, the privilege therein, and the responsibility for never-ending racial atonement.

CRT fundamentally regards rationalism and evidence-based analysis as systems which are racist against non-whites, instead preferring to emphasize anecdotal "lived experiences" and metanarrative. As such, it is a non-falsifiable claim to the ordering of the world and one of several reasons it is sometimes compared to a religion.

An unspoken assumption with CRT is that, despite the redefinition of racism, CRT's version of "racism" bares the same negative moral value as the traditional definition of racism when this really isn't clear at all. Further, CRT assumes that all differences in outcome must be attributable to bias within the system and can not be natural byproducts of differing attributes; they further assume without evidence that any extant differences in preferences are themselves byproducts of the racist system itself.

Essentially, CRT assumes a radical egalitarianism naturally exists in the absence of systems wherein everyone not only has identical preferences, skills, potential, initiative, motivations, abilities, histories, etc. (or at least that these characteristics are perfectly randomly distributed across not only race, but also in its intersectionalist forms sex, orientation, etc.) and that all deviations have a socially-generated origin. CRT ignores every society in which racial disparities do not favor white people, any system within American society which actively acts against white people in aggregate, intra-group disparities of outcome, and how groups such as Asians or many African immigrants to the US see disparities in their favor, attributing these to participation in white privilege. CRT further ignores ample evidence that between-group disparities tend to be larger in more egalitarian societies.

CRT in and of itself is not necessarily seen in classrooms, but tenets such as the CRT definition of racism meaning unequal outcomes, the need to be race conscious, and the need to actively stand against systems defined by CRT as racist or else be complicit are taught in K-12 education with increasing regularity. And honestly, I'm not even sure the majority of teachers doing this are aware that this is what they're doing; it's simply assumed as the state of the world.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

This is an unpopular opinion but:

Politics doesn't actually matter all that much.

Elections, parties, candidates none of it.  It's quite rare that politics actually have a real effect on people's lives.  Individual parties and politicians and laws and such have far less power than we think.

So whilst politics are important and it is important to be in the know it isn't worth letting elections and results actually affect your life.  I learnt this in 2017 when I was gutted at the UK election result and felt awful for a week.  And sure, that election result mattered, but it didn't need to actually affect my life or my mental health because generally the actual real effects are felt over a much longer time period than one election cycle.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Some are celebrating the Rittenhouse verdict, if this killer was Blk no question he would have been found guilty just like Trump and his staffers were not charged by FBI for inviting a Riot he got impeachment on and many protesters including BLM have a criminal record irregardless of a Conviction or not, charges Employers shouldn't discrimate on but it's all looked into in your credit history with Apartments and jobs and you can't prove it if you get denied, At will Employment

It happened to me once when I kept losing my wallet an I'd theft, Temp I was held up from getting an Apartment or a Job but I had backup my mom was alive, now she isn't, I am on my own

It's very different to celebrate offline but when you come and make threads celebrating that's embarrassing

5th Amendment off line not online when you influenced other people

Then the solution is to make it so that Black people are not unfairly prosecuted and sent to jail. The solution is NOT to have innocent white people be prosecuted and sent to jail.