Hotter, Badder, and Unpopularer Takes

[MoreThanPolitics]

Undergraduate students should be banned from running for public office.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

PragerU was right to paint John Brown in a negative light. That man was an evil terrorist. They could have worded it better, though.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

PragerU was right to paint John Brown in a negative light. That man was an evil terrorist. They could have worded it better, though.

Wrong.

[MoreThanPolitics]

Cooperation between China and any other country in any aspect should be totally avoided.

In other words, the only good China policy is to delegitimize it.

[Hindsight was 2020]

The Sopranos finale is better than the Breaking Bad finale

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

S019 is a nice person

[DaleCooper]

Shatner should've directed more Star Trek films.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

PragerU was right to paint John Brown in a negative light. That man was an evil terrorist. They could have worded it better, though.

Wrong.

A terrorist is a terrorist regardless of what side they are on.

[Diabolical Materialism]

PragerU was right to paint John Brown in a negative light. That man was an evil terrorist. They could have worded it better, though.

Wrong.

A terrorist is a terrorist regardless of what side they are on.

"Freedom Fighter" is the preferred nomenclature.

[VAR]

Landslide Lyndon is a decent person who gets way too much hate, and I hope he returns.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

Richard Nixon was a good president.

[Donerail]

Landslide Lyndon is a decent person

Strike one.

who gets way too much hate

Strike two.

and I hope he returns

Strike three! Impressive work, lot of efficiency in just sixteen words.

[TheReckoning]

The word “troll” is used way too liberally on this forum. Pretty much everyone with a blue avatar is constantly called a troll. It’s like the way “socialist” and “fascist” are used in real life.

[ملكة كرينجيتوك]

The word “troll” is used way to liberally on this forum. Pretty much everyone with a blue avatar is constantly called a troll. It’s like the way “socialist” and “fascist” are used in real life.

I don't think anyone in their right mind would call RINO Tom, Dr. RI, Penn_Quaker_Girl, Joseph Cao, Old School Republican, muon2, NC Yankee, or PiT (The Physicist) a troll. (Granted at least two of the above are mods, but still...)

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

It's obvious that Stevie Nicks and Percy Sledge are the lest deserving members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But is it hot/bad/unpopular to say that some of the bands that BRTD likes might deserve it more?

Of course, I doubt Guy or Ian would show up to a hypothetical Hall of Fame induction. After all, it's not very anti-establishment. They'd probably send an angry boycott letter like Sex Pistols did.

[SevenEleven]

Landslide Lyndon is a decent person

Strike one.

who gets way too much hate

Strike two.

and I hope he returns

Strike three! Impressive work, lot of efficiency in just sixteen words.

Seventeen words.

[MoreThanPolitics]

Officials with no political background > second/third/whatever-generation politicians

[RINO Tom]

I think people on this site genuinely don't realize how little most people care about who else is in their coalition, how their home area votes or what type of candidate the parties nominate, and I think they (unintentionally or intentionally) surround themselves with friends with the same blind spots.  I was just in Scottsdale, AZ for vacation, and when I was texting my buddies that I definitely wanted to live there, my friend who lives in San Francisco said, "Hey, weather is great here, but I imagine the over-the-top liberal culture would probably wear on you, whereas Arizona and Scottsdale in particular is like super Republican, right?"  I don't know if he knew that AZ went to Biden, and he DEFINITELY didn't know that Scottsdale narrowly voted for Biden, but the point is that people don't change their opinions of places or certain demographics based on super granular political analysis.

My parents live in a nice neighborhood on the literal outskirts of Iowa City, pretty much a suburb in a cornfield, and their precinct voted more Democratic than my precinct in the Gold Coast in downtown Chicago, lol.  Yet, if I brought a random friend from Chicago to my parents' house, they would see it as this strange, spread out Republican-nuclear-family paradise.  Because there ARE a lot of families there that fit that stereotype.  The working class Democrats of Dubuque, IA didn't disappear when Trump barely won the county in 2016, and the wealthy Republicans of Scottsdale didn't disappear when Biden narrowly won the city in 2020.  It takes SUCH a small statistical change for an area to change, and even less so for a precinct to change, that it's just bad analysis to make leaping conclusions about it.  And Atlas, probably because many of us have nothing better to do, is super guilty of that.

[KaiserDave]

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Officials with no political background > second/third/whatever-generation politicians

So Donald Trump > George W. Bush?

[Alcibiades]

I think people on this site genuinely don't realize how little most people care about who else is in their coalition, how their home area votes or what type of candidate the parties nominate, and I think they (unintentionally or intentionally) surround themselves with friends with the same blind spots.  I was just in Scottsdale, AZ for vacation, and when I was texting my buddies that I definitely wanted to live there, my friend who lives in San Francisco said, "Hey, weather is great here, but I imagine the over-the-top liberal culture would probably wear on you, whereas Arizona and Scottsdale in particular is like super Republican, right?"  I don't know if he knew that AZ went to Biden, and he DEFINITELY didn't know that Scottsdale narrowly voted for Biden, but the point is that people don't change their opinions of places or certain demographics based on super granular political analysis.

My parents live in a nice neighborhood on the literal outskirts of Iowa City, pretty much a suburb in a cornfield, and their precinct voted more Democratic than my precinct in the Gold Coast in downtown Chicago, lol.  Yet, if I brought a random friend from Chicago to my parents' house, they would see it as this strange, spread out Republican-nuclear-family paradise.  Because there ARE a lot of families there that fit that stereotype.  The working class Democrats of Dubuque, IA didn't disappear when Trump barely won the county in 2016, and the wealthy Republicans of Scottsdale didn't disappear when Biden narrowly won the city in 2020.  It takes SUCH a small statistical change for an area to change, and even less so for a precinct to change, that it's just bad analysis to make leaping conclusions about it.  And Atlas, probably because many of us have nothing better to do, is super guilty of that.

Very interesting and perceptive post. I actually had a similar experience. A few years ago, when I was last in the US, I was making small talk with a woman who had recently moved to California from New Jersey. She was talking about the biggest differences she had noticed in her new state, and she remarked that basically everyone she knew was a Democrat, and that California was a very Democratic state (just making clear that even I, a Talk Atlas Elections blogger, do not bring up the topic of electoral geography with strangers!). I responded with, well, that’s true, but it’s not like there are no conservatives in California; there are quite a few in Orange County. She replied, no, that’s very Democratic as well, and there is basically nowhere notable in California with any Republicans!

[Xing]

Far too many opinions and ideas expressed these days are merely responses to what would be considered unhealthy extremes (and most often, said opinions/ideas involve going to an opposite and equally unhealthy extreme.) One example that comes to mind for me is discipline in education. Policies like zero tolerance are very clearly a "response" to perceived lax discipline, and take the idea of bringing discipline back to a ridiculous, harmful extreme. On the other side of the coin are schools which argue that there shouldn't be any discipline, and that we should merely ask how students "feel", and that no answers should ever be considered "incorrect" (obviously a response to the idea that some schools are too draconian and don't ever allow students to express an opinion.)

There are many more examples in education, and I think this occurs a lot in politics and other fields as well. And this isn't an argument for moderate heroism, since that's actually another form of doing exactly what I'm talking about.

[brucejoel99]

In hindsight, Washington should've accepted the offer for him to become the King of the United States. Had he done so, we likely would've just been a parliamentary democracy with a purely ceremonial constitutional monarch by now, thereby avoiding all of the dysfunction & gridlock which has stemmed (at least in part) from us being a presidential republic.

[T'Chenka]

The Toronto Maple Leafs are a good hockey team.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

I consider allowing Malapportionment in the US Senate to be a the biggest moral failure of the Founders of the US of all their failures, even moreso of a moral failure than allowing Slavery, because Malapportionment in the US Senate could survive intact with Slavery gone, but Slavery would have not survived intact for very long if not for Malapportionment in the US Senate.