By David Futrelle
Sorry I’ve been AWOL for a couple of days; I’ve been taking care of some personal stuff (nothing dramatic, just very time-consuming). But there’s so much going on in the world I thought I’d put up an open thread.
Talk about Trump’s shittiness, the shutdown, the dueling Fyre Festival documentaries, the blizzard here in the US, or maybe those snot-nosed racist high school students harassing Native American elder Nathan Phillips, a veteran conducting a ceremony to honor the war dead in DC
On that last point, here are some videos; watch only if you are ready to be enraged. The students, from a Catholic high school, were in DC for the “March for Life,” evidently ran into Phillips by chance, and decided to harass him for being Native American, I guess.
On a somewhat lighter note, there was the whole Ben Shapiro/Baby Hitler thing. Here are several , er, enhanced versions of his remarks at the March for Life on the classic time-travel quandary — “would you kill Hitler when he was a baby?”
Despite Ben’s qualms about killing baby Hitler, he doesn’t actually give a shit about babies and other civilians from enemy countries killed in wars.
In other news:
Speaking of crappy food:
Kupo, I believe that what people here objected to was my questioning whether things happened the way they appeared to in the initial media posts- I could be wrong, but I don’t think anyone but Cyborette and you felt that I was dismissing white antisemitism and homophobia.
Yes, I poorly communicated some idea, and I only half thought out some things regarding this incident but nothing about white antisemitism and homophobia
@Hexum7
Come on. Scild gave you a wise bit of advice – to read over carefully before you hit post.
It’s kupo, not kilo. For the second time. An autocorrect fuck-up is a valid excuse ONCE.
Hexum7, are we supposed to feel sorry for you now?
hippodameia- no, I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me, and, I’m not playing victim. I just was explaining why I reacted in such a prickly, defensive way, but that’s my problem, no one else’s.
Maybe I put in TMI, though
shadow play- not a good excuse, but my finger slipped that time. I’m trying
If you keep posting this frequently, you’re not really trying to understand, Hexum7.
Regarding Native American themed baseball teams when the Cleveland Indians came to Toronto to play the Blue Jays in September last year they didn’t wear stuff featuring their Chief Wahoo mascot. He’s going to be retired this season, fortunately. Interestingly before he retired Blue Jays radio voice Jerry Howarth stopped calling the team the Indians, after a First Nations fan sent him a letter asking him not to, arguing the name was insulting.
I suspect that by the middle of the next decade the Indians and Braves will have changed their names. The Indians will probably become the Cleveland Tribe, since they’re often referred to as such. I suspect the Atlanta Braves will drop the s and become the Atlanta Brave, and drop their tomahawk logo.
For what its worth, I do believe you. However … (and you knew there’d be a however 😛 ) we’re text talking. Not a huge rush to reply, so relax some. Take your time. It is something worth thinking hard and careful on, not a lightning round of jokes.
I also believe you are thinking about this hard – you’ve bumped against something you’ve not really thought about before (as it applies to you) and processing a concept that goes against your self image takes both time and effort.
Tis a rather familiar (and uncomfortable) feeling. 😛
I thought open threads were supposed to be a no-troll zone.
Hexum? They’re no troll (or if they are they’ve gone undetected by some of the most reliable troll detectors in the business for over 2 years). Wouldn’t have bothered with them, else. Troll slaying isn’t my scene.
Happen to know it’s over two years because I’ve been on an archive crawl looking for something* and noticed their posts. Got to wondering – what’s the difference between a poly relationship and an open one? Is there a hard cut off between the two? Are they synonyms?
*I’ve googled. There’s a quarter billion results. I’m not THAT curious. 😛 Figured someone here would know and has talked about it.
In case there’s still any lingering doubt that the Covington kids were in DC to bring peace, love, and harmony:
https://mobile.twitter.com/roflinds/status/1087486166939680768
Shadowplay,
I think it is a grey area. But my open relationship was that I was allowed to “hook up” with others and that sometimes we did things together with other people, but if either of us developed strong romantic feelings we should stop with that person we have feelings for and then tell eachother. In poly you are in long term relationships with others and you can have feelings for others.
Thank you Valentine. Sort of the sense I got from things – sliding scale based on how serious you can be with others – but it’s easy to read wrong at times (and some of the links I’ve been looking at really haven’t helped!) 🙂
You home now or still at sea?
I’m at sea
Whoops I didn’t expect this would explode.
@Hexum7
So like I want to soften things a bit here by saying that, what you were doing? I’ve been there. It’s easy to do, and that’s part of the problem. White people are conditioned from early on to give other white people the benefit of the doubt, even where it’s totally unwarranted.
Queer people are definitely oppressed, white or not. (I’m a bi trans woman and grew up in a very Christian suburb, hoo boy do I know this from experience.) But white people are a privileged group, and it’s easy to ignore the latter in favor of the former (because we all, as humans, like enhancing our social standing, whether we’re aware of it or not).
That time in college when I thought a Black guy was strung out and following me? He was neither, and actually called me out on it – which in retrospect was fucking brave of him. That was me letting my preconceived notions bias me against him; at the time I’d have given a white guy the benefit of the doubt, but not him. And what I did there was wrong, hurtful, and obtuse, but it took me a long time to learn and recognize that.
Same happens a lot in situations where a white person doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. This is one of those. Take a step back and examine your thinking: you were holding the Black Israelite guys accountable for their bigotry (okay), but trying to make excuses for a guy literally wearing a MAGA hat, and his pals who were okay with that.
The Trump administration is incredibly homophobic. Furthermore, Trumpists have a habit of playing social justice motives against each other, using (often legitimate) callouts of bigoted behavior to make themselves look good to fence-sitters while supporting exactly the same kind of bigotry.
And if you’re following along, you’ll recognize that that sort of token civic-mindedness banks on exactly what you were doing, letting someone off the hook for hypocrisy or bad behavior because they’re in a privileged demographic. They know how this stuff works. They’re very effective manipulators and propagandists, or they wouldn’t have won the 2016 election.
TL;DR your brain is running unpatched software. Install those updates – there’s no shame in it, literally every single one of us has been there too in one way or another.
@wwth @timguegen
I actually adopted that myself and try to avoid using Cleveland’s team name. It’s tough when we’re all fans of Donaldson and Encarnacion and want to say where they are now.
One thing I find odd is that in many cases these teams keep names that were established in other cities. The Braves came from Boston originally, then went to Milwaukee and eventually settled in Atlanta. There was really no reason to keep the name.
This was especially baffling in the case of the Flames in hockey. They were originally the Atlanta Flames (referring to Sherman’s infamous burning of the city), but when they moved to Calgary, they kept it even though it made no sense.
*shrug*
Those of us he likes to kick around when we disagree with him tend to disagree. Whether his intention is to be a troll, his actions are what really matters, and he has a tendency to act trollish towards anyone who points out when his privilege is showing.
From what I see in this tread, Hexum does some thinks that most trolls don’t, but I don’t know his history
And Hexum had a number of spectacular fails icluding that protesting the deadtrads here is pointless. But he comes of as comunication failure and not motivated to hurt the posters here like most trolls.
But Tovius is definitly right that the tread was definitly not trollfree.
Some points that I wanted to make: A school that basicly uses its students to demonstrate for their goals is doing completly wrong. (I could never imagine this happening at my homecountry not even for a non-controversal isue)
Yes that is a parent controll isue: complete failure
@Hexum
For what it’s worth, I did read your first post as a poorly stated “these boys were being riled up by black supremacists, so maybe they deserve criticism, but not condemnation (including death threats!)”. Which is, in parts, reasonable. But then again, you also seemed to brown-nose these (white) bigots to the point of seeming to want to sheild them from legitimate criticism as well. (But not the black bigots, which is, uh, “strange”. ??) So, maybe something to think about, or at least make clearer, next time.
IMO, most people, in every group, are taught to have a desire for, and admirarion of, social power and dominance by our rotten society. Which is why if you look through history, you’ll find numerous oppressed groups that will gladly team up with their oppressors, just for a chance to shit on a third oppressed group and get a hit of that sweet sweet social dominance.
So more and more I think it’s important for anyone concerned with social justice to work on any admiration of social dominance in themselves FIRST before they even look at the rest of the world. Otherwise they’re just going to perpetuate the same sick patterns whenever they happen to be in a position of any social power. (Which everyone will be at some point). IMO.
(And yes, my high horse has no legs to stand upon).
Addendum: I don’t think the vast majority of people are aware of this admiration and will always vehemently deny it until they choose to face it. But it’s still there, internalized and buried deep in their psyche.
@ Hexum7
Being part of the LGBT community does not erase any privileges you may have. Which I am assuming is white and Male. You still have Male privilege even though you are gay. You still have cis privilege over transgender people. You also still have white privilege over POC. You need to accept that and be aware of it. Its okay to make mistakes but when someone points out those mistakes, the important thing to do it apologize and learn from them.
Shadowplay: thank you. I’m not a regular “regular”, so I get why someone might perceive me as an outsider here. I appreciate your support
Lainy- I am aware that I have privilege being white and cis that others do not- I’ve observed it.
Even my having been born, ( though I’m not that young) at a time when gay rights organizations were already formed affords me certain advantages that elder gay white men didn’t experience. And I sure as hell know that being transgender is a much harder path to travel than mine
I may still be blind in regards to certain areas. I get that . I try to open to correction and constructive criticism in such regards. When people say, just listen to voices of others.
@Bakunin
The Malifaux 3E Open Beta seems to be going pretty well. I was an active part of the closed beta, and it went through a LOT of changes there – some crews went through several complete re-writes.
The biggest difference between 2E and 3E comes in crew building. 3E is much more focused on keeping in-theme based around your leader, which has its advantages and disadvantages.
The big advantage is that crews with different leaders have very distinct compositions, rather than the “a Master plus the Faction All-Stars” builds that 2E ran into.
The disadvantages include that individual leaders have less hiring flexibility, so while a Lady Justice crew will no longer resemble a Perdita Ortega crew, it will be pretty much identical to every other Lady Justice crew.
One bad result of this is a greater tendency towards rock-paper-scissors games, where your choice of theme locks you into suboptimal choices against your opponent’s chosen theme. It’s nowhere near as bad as in Warmachine/Hordes, but it’s there.
In addition, it’s a lot harder to expand from one Master to another due to the very small number of “crossover” models. It remains to be seen how this will affect new players.
Is Malifaux any good? I have seen its stuff but haven’t ever seen it played.