Hotter, Badder, and Unpopularer Takes

[TDAS04]

You're racist if you look down on Asian cultures for eating dog meat.

Because racism is worse than torturing an animal

It’s not even racist to to dislike aspects of a culture, especially if the aspects are cruel.  Animal torture is a tradition in some Asian cultures.  It’s not racist to scorn animal torture.  For one thing, not all Asians torture animals.

The attitude that the majority of Africans have towards gays and lesbians is disgusting, and they make it clear it’s “their culture.”  That doesn’t mean any decent person would condone anti-black racism, and some black people are great advocates for LGBT rights.

Culture is not an excuse for everything.

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

Santander is Jreg

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

THOUGHTS ABOUT KANSAS FETISH

In 2016 Trump won Kansas by 20.5 points roughly. He also won Nebraska's 1st congressional district by 20.5 points roughly. Clinton won the national PV by 2.1 points of course.
But Kansas swung a little to the left. Nebraska's 1st district swung quite a bit to the right.
Then in 2018 every political junkie of the world got amped up by Kansas's gubernatorial race, which had a weird dynamic and was competitive. Laura Kelly won and Democrats went crazy about the Sunflower State. No one cared about the boring race in Nebraska, where Republican Pete Ricketts was re-elected; but he won NE-01 by 11.6 points (and it swung left compared to 2014).
I don't mean to say that people believe that Laura Kelly's race is representative of the conditions which Trump and Biden will face in November, but now fast-forward to 2020.

I see a lot of posters thinking that a Biden landslide can open the floodgates of Kansas big time and make it just 12~15 points to the right of the national average. Meanwhile people seem to think it's completely impossible for NE-01 to flip. This strikes me as off. It seems something along the lines of "muh trends" or even "muh Kobach Brownback Kelly Bollier Johnson County" or probably these posters didn't even know Nebraska has a 1st district. I call this Kansas fetish.

[Badger]

I get annoyed by how little coverage I see in the United States media of the plights of Native Americans compared to other minority groups.

They are a smaller group numerically in the US than blacks or Hispanics.  And Blacks, Hispanics, Koreans, etc. have neighborhoods where they make up a majority of the population in the big cities where the large news media organizations are based, but American Indians don't, so perhaps they are more easily forgotten.


anyway, welcome to the forum.  always nice to have another contrarian here!

Native Americans do as well. They're called reservations.

Unfortunately for them, in addition to their relatively low numbers compared to other racial minorities, reservations where poverty and other hardship is the greatest are in rural areas far from Big City media coverage. I mean, a station will send a reporter out to the rez for a story, and news agencies will periodically do stories about the high rates of poverty and other want among Native American communities. However, those are the exception to the rule since it involves a large city TV station sending someone hours and hours, if not a plane ride, out to the hills or the desert.

[Badger]

THOUGHTS ABOUT KANSAS FETISH

In 2016 Trump won Kansas by 20.5 points roughly. He also won Nebraska's 1st congressional district by 20.5 points roughly. Clinton won the national PV by 2.1 points of course.
But Kansas swung a little to the left. Nebraska's 1st district swung quite a bit to the right.
Then in 2018 every political junkie of the world got amped up by Kansas's gubernatorial race, which had a weird dynamic and was competitive. Laura Kelly won and Democrats went crazy about the Sunflower State. No one cared about the boring race in Nebraska, where Republican Pete Ricketts was re-elected; but he won NE-01 by 11.6 points (and it swung left compared to 2014).
I don't mean to say that people believe that Laura Kelly's race is representative of the conditions which Trump and Biden will face in November, but now fast-forward to 2020.

I see a lot of posters thinking that a Biden landslide can open the floodgates of Kansas big time and make it just 12~15 points to the right of the national average. Meanwhile people seem to think it's completely impossible for NE-01 to flip. This strikes me as off. It seems something along the lines of "muh trends" or even "muh Kobach Brownback Kelly Bollier Johnson County" or probably these posters didn't even know Nebraska has a 1st district. I call this Kansas fetish.

It's very true. Neither will flip even in a landslide, fwiw. Although kobach does have a tangible chance of losing his race if he wins the nomination.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

THOUGHTS ABOUT KANSAS FETISH

In 2016 Trump won Kansas by 20.5 points roughly. He also won Nebraska's 1st congressional district by 20.5 points roughly. Clinton won the national PV by 2.1 points of course.
But Kansas swung a little to the left. Nebraska's 1st district swung quite a bit to the right.
Then in 2018 every political junkie of the world got amped up by Kansas's gubernatorial race, which had a weird dynamic and was competitive. Laura Kelly won and Democrats went crazy about the Sunflower State. No one cared about the boring race in Nebraska, where Republican Pete Ricketts was re-elected; but he won NE-01 by 11.6 points (and it swung left compared to 2014).
I don't mean to say that people believe that Laura Kelly's race is representative of the conditions which Trump and Biden will face in November, but now fast-forward to 2020.

I see a lot of posters thinking that a Biden landslide can open the floodgates of Kansas big time and make it just 12~15 points to the right of the national average. Meanwhile people seem to think it's completely impossible for NE-01 to flip. This strikes me as off. It seems something along the lines of "muh trends" or even "muh Kobach Brownback Kelly Bollier Johnson County" or probably these posters didn't even know Nebraska has a 1st district. I call this Kansas fetish.

It's very true. Neither will flip even in a landslide, fwiw. Although kobach does have a tangible chance of losing his race if he wins the nomination.

I agree about Kobach, but of course the Senate race and the presidential race are two separate things with different dynamics. I tend to think the range of scenarios in Senate races is larger than the range of scenarios in the presidential election.

[morgankingsley]

Perot was not a good candidate

Whoever said he was?

The 20 million people who cast a vote for him

[Damocles]

My Immortal is actually not the worst fanfiction ever written, unironically

Not the worst Evanescence song, either.

[Hindsight was 2020]

“I want it that way” by the Backstreet Boys is catchy. There I said it

[RINO Tom]

(This is to say nothing on my PERSONAL VIEWS on COVID, simply an observation that has really started to annoy me.)

Fierce opposition to regaining any sort of normal societal routine amid COVID has taken on an infuriatingly White-Collar-centric tone and has even become a social media hobby for several hypocrites who will go hang out with their friends and see their healthy parents but share some self-righteous bullshlt to "educate" everyone else.  Honestly, it's these hypocrites who are the biggest ringing endorsement for why it's just LITERALLY not feasible to keep living in a locked down or semi-locked down state until there is a vaccine (IF THERE IS A VACCINE...).

Simply pointing out the problems with staying closed down (or reclosing things) gets one branded as "anti-science" or "irresponsible."  It's ridiculous, lol.  People actually have the nerve to say things like, "You don't need a haircut" or "You don't need to go out to eat!" ... absolutely no thought about the single, middle-aged man who cuts my hair's livelihood.  Absolutely no thought about my future inlaws' good family friend who risked everything and practically leveraged his life away to achieve his dream of owning a restaurant in Wrigleyville being under 24-hour stress and constantly at the risk of losing what he's worked for his entire life.  Zero thought about the fact that one in three of Chicago's public school students don't even have access to online learning in their homes AT ALL, let alone including households that only have one computer for multiple children.

There is literally an ocean-sized canyon between opposing responsible reopening altogether and wanting to run back out there like it's 2019 ... well, I mean, there SHOULD be ... but that is NOT the discourse right now.

My dad helps run a hospital that lost more money in April than they made in 2019 and my girlfriend is a literal COVID nurse and a bunch of frickin' losers online and on social media are preaching 24/7 how those wanting to reopen "don't care" and "don't get it"?  Do people even realize how brainwashed and dumbed down they sound?  I should have known we were collectively losing it when I saw more and more people literally riding bikes with no one around while wearing their masks, haha.  My girlfriend is pretty "hawkish" on containing COVID, and she can barely contain her laughter.  Everyone is frickin' crazy.

[Mr. Smith]

I kinda think some (many?) Democrats have a fetish for William Jennings Bryan and Theodore Roosevelt where they think that Woodrow Wilson was a Racist^TM and instead WJB and TR were not, so that they both are Good while Wilson is Bad.
Which of course is a gross oversimplification.
Not to mention that Bryan was a Prohibitionist, that he went the full religious crusader / opponent of evolution theory in the 20's, or that Roosevelt was imperialist and nativist.


(this is not meant as an apologia of Wilson, who did obviously some pretty overtly racist things like segregating the federal government)

These are features to me, not bugs, especially considering what the theory of evolution was used for mainly att.

#NannyStaterToTheMax, #TriggerTheLib [ertarian]s

[Damocles]

(This is to say nothing on my PERSONAL VIEWS on COVID, simply an observation that has really started to annoy me.)

Fierce opposition to regaining any sort of normal societal routine amid COVID has taken on an infuriatingly White-Collar-centric tone and has even become a social media hobby for several hypocrites who will go hang out with their friends and see their healthy parents but share some self-righteous bullshlt to "educate" everyone else.  Honestly, it's these hypocrites who are the biggest ringing endorsement for why it's just LITERALLY not feasible to keep living in a locked down or semi-locked down state until there is a vaccine (IF THERE IS A VACCINE...).

Simply pointing out the problems with staying closed down (or reclosing things) gets one branded as "anti-science" or "irresponsible."  It's ridiculous, lol.  People actually have the nerve to say things like, "You don't need a haircut" or "You don't need to go out to eat!" ... absolutely no thought about the single, middle-aged man who cuts my hair's livelihood.  Absolutely no thought about my future inlaws' good family friend who risked everything and practically leveraged his life away to achieve his dream of owning a restaurant in Wrigleyville being under 24-hour stress and constantly at the risk of losing what he's worked for his entire life.  Zero thought about the fact that one in three of Chicago's public school students don't even have access to online learning in their homes AT ALL, let alone including households that only have one computer for multiple children.

There is literally an ocean-sized canyon between opposing responsible reopening altogether and wanting to run back out there like it's 2019 ... well, I mean, there SHOULD be ... but that is NOT the discourse right now.

My dad helps run a hospital that lost more money in April than they made in 2019 and my girlfriend is a literal COVID nurse and a bunch of frickin' losers online and on social media are preaching 24/7 how those wanting to reopen "don't care" and "don't get it"?  Do people even realize how brainwashed and dumbed down they sound?  I should have known we were collectively losing it when I saw more and more people literally riding bikes with no one around while wearing their masks, haha.  My girlfriend is pretty "hawkish" on containing COVID, and she can barely contain her laughter.  Everyone is frickin' crazy.

I don’t disagree with these observations. However, in my personal opinion, it’s more a symptom of a society whose internal rot has went unchecked for decades. Not only have the decision-making processes of our country been treated and degraded simply as a side interest that has at best a tenuous connection to one’s lived reality, but we have grown too fat and too comfortable with our present situation.

If nothing else, this crisis has revealed the abject lack of clear leadership and infantility of a large segment of the population. In what world is simply wearing a mask considered a massive infringement on one’s personal freedom? In what world is asking people to listen to sound science and medical advice now construed as collusion with a nebulous “elite” class which, conspicuously, evades any rational construction?

This crisis would have gone much differently if our national health systems and leadership were all in sync, and had a clear goal from the outset. We could have been done and over with this by now. But, instead, we ended up getting the worst of both worlds: an economy seemingly collapsing from the inside, AND the original public health crisis turning into an outright nightmare. And for what?

[RINO Tom]

(This is to say nothing on my PERSONAL VIEWS on COVID, simply an observation that has really started to annoy me.)

Fierce opposition to regaining any sort of normal societal routine amid COVID has taken on an infuriatingly White-Collar-centric tone and has even become a social media hobby for several hypocrites who will go hang out with their friends and see their healthy parents but share some self-righteous bullshlt to "educate" everyone else.  Honestly, it's these hypocrites who are the biggest ringing endorsement for why it's just LITERALLY not feasible to keep living in a locked down or semi-locked down state until there is a vaccine (IF THERE IS A VACCINE...).

Simply pointing out the problems with staying closed down (or reclosing things) gets one branded as "anti-science" or "irresponsible."  It's ridiculous, lol.  People actually have the nerve to say things like, "You don't need a haircut" or "You don't need to go out to eat!" ... absolutely no thought about the single, middle-aged man who cuts my hair's livelihood.  Absolutely no thought about my future inlaws' good family friend who risked everything and practically leveraged his life away to achieve his dream of owning a restaurant in Wrigleyville being under 24-hour stress and constantly at the risk of losing what he's worked for his entire life.  Zero thought about the fact that one in three of Chicago's public school students don't even have access to online learning in their homes AT ALL, let alone including households that only have one computer for multiple children.

There is literally an ocean-sized canyon between opposing responsible reopening altogether and wanting to run back out there like it's 2019 ... well, I mean, there SHOULD be ... but that is NOT the discourse right now.

My dad helps run a hospital that lost more money in April than they made in 2019 and my girlfriend is a literal COVID nurse and a bunch of frickin' losers online and on social media are preaching 24/7 how those wanting to reopen "don't care" and "don't get it"?  Do people even realize how brainwashed and dumbed down they sound?  I should have known we were collectively losing it when I saw more and more people literally riding bikes with no one around while wearing their masks, haha.  My girlfriend is pretty "hawkish" on containing COVID, and she can barely contain her laughter.  Everyone is frickin' crazy.

I don’t disagree with these observations. However, in my personal opinion, it’s more a symptom of a society whose internal rot has went unchecked for decades. Not only have the decision-making processes of our country been treated and degraded simply as a side interest that has at best a tenuous connection to one’s lived reality, but we have grown too fat and too comfortable with our present situation.

If nothing else, this crisis has revealed the abject lack of clear leadership and infantility of a large segment of the population. In what world is simply wearing a mask considered a massive infringement on one’s personal freedom? In what world is asking people to listen to sound science and medical advice now construed as collusion with a nebulous “elite” class which, conspicuously, evades any rational construction?

This crisis would have gone much differently if our national health systems and leadership were all in sync, and had a clear goal from the outset. We could have been done and over with this by now. But, instead, we ended up getting the worst of both worlds: an economy seemingly collapsing from the inside, AND the original public health crisis turning into an outright nightmare. And for what?

I also don't disagree with much of what you said; I just happened to be annoyed with that certain crowd at the moment.  Refusing to wear a mask is literally insane if you are in a cramped, indoor space, and I also think refusing to do so has become just as political (probably more so) as some of the stuff I mentioned in my post.

Not that my view is, like, some gold standard, but I do feel I am getting a lot of different perspectives between my girlfriend, my dad and others, and it's infuriating how *obvious* it seems that there is a sensible middle ground between these extremes ... and yet a precious few are daring to even SAY that.

[Hammy]

"Cancel culture" is nothing more than a term invented by the same people who tried to weaponize boycotts that are now finding themselves on the receiving end of them.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I get extremely annoyed whenever I hear people talking about immigrant assimilation.

[diptheriadan]

I get extremely annoyed whenever I hear people talking about immigrant assimilation.

Why?

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I get extremely annoyed whenever I hear people talking about immigrant assimilation.

Why?

Because people always get highly condescending and I hate that.

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

There is nothing wrong with talking about what happens to GA 5 instantly as soon as John Lewis died, just doing it disrespectfully like taking pot shots at abrams is not cool.

[Gracile]

I'm not sure how hot this take is, but Election Twitter is mostly terrible aside from the maps and I would say the median Atlas poster has a far better sense of contemporary electoral politics than the median ET user (with some major exceptions like J. Miles Coleman). I also think Twitter is a horrible place to have in-depth discussions about elections, though that's more to do with the limitations of Twitter as a medium than anything else.

[brucejoel99]

"The Washington Football Team" name change is a deliberate psychological operation meant to subconsciously influence the public into believing that the only way to avoid racist, problematic names is to have boring, nondescript, "no fun allowed" names.

[John Dule]

"The Washington Football Team" name change is a deliberate psychological operation meant to subconsciously influence the public into believing that the only way to avoid racist, problematic names is to have boring, nondescript, "no fun allowed" names.

... and that's a good thing.

[WD]

I think that mocking Trump as "orange man" or "tangerine" is pretty colorist.

Mocking someone’s spray tan isn’t “colorist”

[WD]

I think that mocking Trump as "orange man" or "tangerine" is pretty colorist.

Mocking someone’s spray tan isn’t “colorist”

Mocking someone's skin colour really rubs me off the wrong way no matter how that skin colour came to happen.

Anyhoo, I posted this on "Hotter Badder and Unpopularer Takes" for a reason.

Fair enough.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Susan Collins is heavily disfavored in Maine in 2020, and is not part of the path of least resistance for Republicans to hold the US Senate. In addition, its more likely for Trump to win re-election nationally than for Collins to win re-election in Maine.

[vitoNova]

Most people laugh at me when I tell them the simple fact that KFC is the best chicken on the planet.