deskthority

Actually we should be more like China, as in that China doesn't try to convert the whole world to China. One can be a superpower pining for more oil, and not try to run the MO.

webwit wrote: Actually we should be more like China, as in that China doesn't try to convert the whole world to China. One can be a superpower pining for more oil, and not try to run the MO.

Mao is so cool, he paints his own portrait of himself painting himself.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: China is fucking amazing. When Mao died in 1976, they were just like North Korea. But the whole world is soaking in their industrial power today. Deng Xiao Ping was one of he greatest leaders of the last century. Sure, Tiananmen fucking Square and continued bullshit in Tibet and elsewhere. But think about it. How did China get from starving, violent squalor to the dominance and global reach they have today? Breathtaking progress. All without wars!

Meanwhile we westerners bitch and whine impotently about it on our Chinese hardware, while our countries Stoke terrorism by lobbing bombs at nutters in the desert. We are so smart! Listen to us China!

Muirium wrote: How did China get from starving, violent squalor to the dominance and global reach they have today? Breathtaking progress. All without wars!

and a shit ton of pollution and human rights violations

Of course. And we can bitch and whine about it all we want. That's what real power looks like. Not desperate media stunts by suicidal lunatics.

Talk to Chinese expats sometime about their desire to move back to China, and get back to me on how amazing it is.

Of course expats always have a reason for being an expat, so they may not be the best source of information on this subject.

It will be the pollution, trust me its terrible.

It sounds like an exaggeration but walking alongside a major road for a 2 hours ( not a place where a tourist would normally walk it was a road not a city street), and my lips where drying out and cracking and starting to bleed.

sth wrote: religion isn't violent OR peaceful. religion is religion. people do with it what they will. people do what they will, and they use religion as a defense. this occurs for every religiously-'motivated' act or action, even when you compare two that are diametrically opposed. this is neither fallacious nor unclear.

what are you saying? i know it's too early to be hitting the jenever or i'd be right there with you.

No, religion isn't violent. It can, however, be used as a tool for violence. Islam and Christianity have both been pretty terrible for this throughout history, but in recent (past few hundred) years Christianity has to a large degree stopped being used a tool for violence while Islam has not.

Also, I'm of the opinion that Islam, unlike Christianity, is specifically a religion of conquest. Look at its founder. Look at what he used it for. Look at the huge, rapid, aggressive expansion of the religion in its early days. That's why The Crusades happened.

photekq wrote:

sth wrote: religion isn't violent OR peaceful. religion is religion. people do with it what they will. people do what they will, and they use religion as a defense. this occurs for every religiously-'motivated' act or action, even when you compare two that are diametrically opposed. this is neither fallacious nor unclear.

what are you saying? i know it's too early to be hitting the jenever or i'd be right there with you.

No, religion isn't violent. It can, however, be used as a tool for violence. Islam and Christianity have both been pretty terrible for this throughout history, but in recent (past few hundred) years Christianity has to a large degree stopped being used a tool for violence while Islam has not.

Also, unlike Christianity, I'm of the opinion that Islam is specifically a religion of conquest. Look at its founder. Look at what he used it for. Look at the huge, rapid, aggressive expansion of the religion in its early days. That's why The Crusades happened.

sth wrote:

Why even bother replying at all?

It's also worth noting that the stance that Sanders holds on guns is due to the rural/urban divide, and his experience being in a rural state.

Basically, in rural areas, guns are tools that are perfectly normal to use for various tasks outside of shooting people - defense against wildlife, hunting, humanely killing livestock for slaughter (it's a faster, more humane death than a lot of other ways to go), that sort of thing. There's a lot of uses for firearms that are legitimate.

In urban areas, you have none of that, so guns are for killing people.

Typically, in the US, the left/right divide is along urban/rural lines as well. Rural dwellers tend to see the government as taking value from them, and live in a rural area because they're opposed to the concept of participating in a society, because of the myth of rugged individualism. Urban dwellers tend to see the government as providing value, because it's needed to make a city actually work.

Upshot is, you have a left wing that typically supports banning guns altogether if they could get away with it (because it's from urban areas where they're completely unnecessary and really only have bad uses in private hands), and a right wing that reacts to that by trying to fight any barrier to ownership of any gun possible (also, the whole "not wanting to participate in a society" thing, combined with distrust of the government, causes right wingers to want to be armed to defend against a government). So, the right wingers now want guns specifically to kill people.

Vermont is an exception to that, because it's a left-wing rural state - they live in a rural area, but they want a society. Therefore, weapons are useful tools, but there's no need to use them to kill people. So, attempts by typical Democrats to fight gun ownership altogether don't work well in that state, but regulation is something that's seen as acceptable.

And, Bernie Sanders has tried to get regulation of firearms in place, including making it harder to get them, and restricting certain classes of firearms. (I actually think he should be focusing on handguns, not semi-automatic rifles, though, because most gun violence is committed with handguns. But, that would probably be a political non-starter, because the shrillest voices advocating gun ownership expansion want to be able to carry their handguns everywhere to kill imaginary threats.)

One thing about gun owners in America is that the ones with the most guns often are full of fear and paranoia and aggression, which are exactly the type of people I don't want to be owning lots of guns.

vivalarevolución wrote: One thing about gun owners in America is that the ones with the most guns often are full of fear and paranoia and aggression, which are exactly the type of people I don't want to be owning lots of guns.

ITT: implying implications and sweeping generalizations

ITT?



We're so offtopic that Offtopicthority has brought us full circle! Sterling job, gentlemen.

SL89 wrote:

vivalarevolución wrote: One thing about gun owners in America is that the ones with the most guns often are full of fear and paranoia and aggression, which are exactly the type of people I don't want to be owning lots of guns.

ITT: implying implications and sweeping generalizations

Yes, I know, but every person I personally know that has lots of guns fits the profile I have described.

I completely understand there are other reasons for owning guns, like collecting, usefulness in rural activities, appreciation of fine craftsmanship, and just plain having fun at the shooting range. Christ, I enjoy letting off a few clips every now and then. However, those other reasons for owning lots of guns seem like the exception rather than the norm of defending against some unknown threat.

Obviously, I'm no scientist on the issue, but polling consistently shows the number one reason for gun ownership in America is personal safety/protection.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/165605/perso ... today.aspx

I basically equate that reasoning with an irrational fear and paranoia of danger, because the actual opportunities to defend yourself with a gun are very uncommon and you realistically will never encounter that scenario in your life.

Then you have more research thst shows the most likely person to own a gun is an older white male, despite the fact they are not the most likely group to be threatened by gun violence:http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/201 ... hite-males

I'm probably twisting the facts to prove my argument, but I find the mindset of the fear based, paranoid white male unavoidable in my everyday life and I get tired of having to listen to the rhetoric. I think that mind-set is strongly related to gun ownership in the United States.

The kind of nutters who crave guns over here have to join the army. I knew two of them at high school. Both served in Afghanistan and Iraq. I haven't seen them in years, but I suspect they quite enjoyed it. Poor civilians over there having to trust those guys behind an SA-80…

So yeah: gun control, good for keeping those guys in other people's hair! I'm all for it. Especially if we never deployed them anywhere at all.

vivalarevolución wrote:

SL89 wrote:

vivalarevolución wrote: One thing about gun owners in America is that the ones with the most guns often are full of fear and paranoia and aggression, which are exactly the type of people I don't want to be owning lots of guns.

ITT: implying implications and sweeping generalizations

Yes, I know, but every person I personally know that has lots of guns fits the profile I have described.

Nice anecdote. This thread is becoming an avalanche of logical fallacies and statistics with no context.

SL89 wrote: Nice anecdote. This thread is becoming an avalanche of logical fallacies and statistics with no context.

32% of DT members agree with you.

Needs more decimal places to be science.

Page 1 was one thing, but we are 8 pages into bad stats, people parroting propaganda and getting their own headcanon version of history out there.

Do we ever lock topics for devolving past the point of offtopicthority?

No. But I think we can all agree that our side won. And that's what really matters. Go Team!

Viva is right about the shift in gun ownership in the US.

The raw number of gun owners has remained relatively steady for decades, and the percentage of households where guns are owned has actually been declining for quite some time.

But, whereas in previous generations a typical gun owner probably had a shotgun for bird hunting and a rifle for animal hunting, the average gun owner in the US today owns more than 8 guns and the majority are pistols.

We aren't in Paris anymore are we guys?

Paris. Brussels. London. Beirut. Manhattan. Doesn't matter. Could be anywhere. That's terrorism. It's not about the people it kills. It's about scaring all the rest of us.

So don't let it. Pay our respects and move on.

From the responsible journalism department: Britain's beloved Sun.



"Cor. If the headline doesn't make the Mullahs madder, the tits will!"

But guess what happens when you ask non-Muslims in Britain that same question:


http://www.ncpolitics.uk/2015/11/on-bri ... yria.html/

Better expel the whites too.

British tabloids have always been utter champs at pushing crap with a twist. "Paris Blitz"?!? Jeeez. Nothing is off limits.

And don't forget about that typography! Underlined headlines? Jesus H. Christ…

Sure they got it down, always have. How about dropping 100k Sun copies over IS territory from an airplane? Can we madden them any more? But they might not "get it".