Oprah for President

Oprah would make an effective president, and unlike Donald Trump who was born with a silver spoon up his ass,
Oprah rose from poverty in Mississippi to build a multi-billion-dollar empire, now worth an estimated 2.9 billion

 

I have a problem with a value system that views other people primarily as objects, that judges them according to cultural standards focused on surface physical appearance, that insists on conformity to a single image of acceptability, that rejects whole categories of human beings because they fail to meet such criteria, and that cruelly coveys to people they are defective or second class because they fail or choose not to conform to these shallow standards. I have a problem with this because it inflicts needless pain, can even increase the risk of suicide, and is paternalistic and disingenuous in claiming to do this for the victim's own good. The ugly deformity manifested by people who do this far exceeds the alleged ugliness they perceive in others. It's not the scantily cladness of Ms Kang I'd object to, or images of "healthy beautiful people." It's your juxtaposing these with the pictures you post of other women who may be perfectly fine, spiritually beautiful people but you hold up to ridicule, because they don't conform to your superficial standards. We have to choose between a value system that views all humans as inherently worthy and deserving of our respect, though all are flawed, and the perverse judgmental system you put forward to reject some of these on the basis of outward appearance. You need to realize that people don't need an excuse not to conform to your shallow values. Libertarianism incorporates the right to make our own lifestyle choices and to tell people who don't approve, like you and Ms. Kang, to fuck off. Death threats are always out of line. Thanks for giving us another reason to reject your messed up set of values.

 

6

Which makes it clear once again that your viewpoint isn’t motivated by a concern for women’s health but your views on women’s appearance (with emphasis it seems on how they look when scantily dressed).

LOL –I think you seem to have a rather unhealthy obsession with scantily dressed women, as long as they conform to your view of what a woman should look like, and if they don’t you think it alright to abuse them.

And bingo - this is your problem you make an opinion on ‘image’ I mean how do you know someone is healthy just from appearance? Have you got access to their medical records?

And the lesson you got from that was to post a photo of a women and say she was a beast?

I mean quite a few women receive online/tweeter death threats all the time - it’s a fucked up world on the internet (and the reason this place is moderated) the thing is to try and not contribute to it by let say - posting a photo of a women with the tag “‘I'd never fuck a feminist. Bestiality is illegal where I'm from’

 

6

LOL - Oh so you think I’m dense – dictionary definition – a stupid person – having or showing a great lack of intelligence.

You think I’m unintelligent?

Why, can you explain your reasoning?

 

6

Well that ‘not every’ undermines the accession at the end of the statement.

Also I really have to ask what are you basing this view on – you have already admitted you don’t have that much knowledge of history or economics (basically a the bad sci-fi novel Atlas Shrugged and some stuff you did at school that you can’t really remember details of).

Politics is downstream from culture – this is another line that come straight out of Breitbart (showing your alt-right credentials again).

“The quote, by Lawrence Meyers, appeared in a 2011 article headlined “Politics is Really Downstream from Culture.” It was an elaboration of Andrew Breitbart’s mantra, “politics is downstream from culture.”

The ideas as far as I can tell is that the prevalent culture can and should control the politics of a society (and so if you teach people to be culturally right wing then the right wing will dominate the political system).

The problem is that basically they are not separate they are part of a whole a reflection of a society, and so sometimes politics and politicians can lead and sometimes culture can be the driving force.

The other thing that is important to realise is that there is no moral certitude – just because a culture is a certain way does not mean that is going to be a morally ‘good’ thing - culture can be degrees of good and bad – you can have a racist culture which pushes for racist laws – in such a case those politicians and people that try to fight that racism and change opinion and laws are going against the cultural stream – is that a bad thing? And in the other way if there is a tolerant multicultural society and some try to change promote divisive and even racist ideas- is that a good thing?

As to smoking as many have pointed out it is similar to the climate change issue, in that wealthy vested interest held change up by trying to discredit and distort evidence and by claiming those opposed to smoking were ‘anti-business’ and opposed to ‘freedom’.

Try reading

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, [in which] historians Naomi Oreskes and Erick M. Conway document how a handful of right-wing ideologues — all scientists — have (mis)shaped U.S. policy for decades, delaying government action on life-and-death issues from cigarettes and second-hand smoke, to acid rain, and now, finally, to climate change.

From tobacco to climate change, ‘merchants of doubt’ undermined the science

 

I've actually lost some interest in football for this same reason! It's not just the women that it objectifies that bothers me though. It's this sort of idiotic feeling I get when I watch football. And it's not so much the game either. The game's fine. It's all the rhetoric. All the eating. All the beer. All the truck ads and touch screen cell phone ads. It's the latest and greatest, and the credit card that will get you there (and well into debt!). It's like football has become the medium for abusing the American public or something. And then they show the cheerleader... oh, how dumb can I get?!

 

I think any serious study of the Civil Rights advances of African-Americans would come to a different conclusion. Back in 1954, after the Supreme Court delivered its bombshell opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, the reaction from your counterparts of that era was "You can't legislate morality." Yet I think it's clear that the court got the ball rolling, and people came to accept racial integration. There was no big cultural upsurge behind this decision. It was something of a surprise. In Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, the Supreme Court ended fifteen years of foot dragging by school districts to order "integration now"! Then came the Civil Rights legislation of the Johnson Administration. The public demonstrations in 1963 paved the way, but I think it would be difficult to have brought about the transformation without the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 196, and the Supreme Court decision in 1965. There was resistance from parts of "culture", you being a prime example, but it got the job done and it's doubtful it could have been done otherwise--at least not in our lifetimes.

 

Hi.

Feminist here.

I think this is unneccesary. The Grid Girls didnt even wear sexy, revealing clothes. They dressed pretty cute, almost old fashioned like what was considered sexy back in the 50s

But this is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. As a libertarian I'm sure you know every privately owned business and corporation is allowed to make decisions regarding how they present their brand.

If this backfires they'll lose profit. That, my friend, is the free market at work.

 

Okay. So I had to look up "grid girls." From what I can tell they are basically cheerleaders for racing?

This is BS. I was a cheerleader. And if someone had told me I couldn't be, because I was too dumb to realize I was only allowing myself to be objectified, I would have been really upset. And I would have missed out on a lot of fun and excitement, and competitions and friendships.

I wish feminism was all on the same page like it used to be. Now it's fractured into a million different directions. If it's true that feminists caused this, they're basically policing these other women. Telling a woman how she should live her life to your standards is feminism like being imprisoned is freedom.

I hate it when people fuck it up for the rest of us.

 

LOL Like Papa John's? That made me laugh.

 

To each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her need.

I am not a Marxist and I do not believe we are all born equal. Some of us are born with different talents and capabilities. These traits can be acquired by both nature and nurture.

Thus, if you're good at something, you can put your skills and talents to better yourself and the rest of society. If you are not born with a naturally acquired talent, you can still take the time to learn it if you dedicate yourself.

This is the same with men and women. Women are generally better than men at certain tasks, and men are generally better suited than women at others. But if a man wants to take on a womanly task like early-child education or interior design, there should not be any barriers to stop him. And if a woman wanted to take on a traditionally manly role like enginerring or trash collecting, there shouldn't be anything to stop her.

The problem is, when the corporations and government all mighty tries to enforce and regulate equality, they always create inequality for the rest of us. Diversity quotas and laws put on by government and companies to promote a more diverse work place on skin color, ethnicity, and gender. All this does is inhibit people who could be more talented and better suited for the job who doesn't meet the diversity criteria. Plus, there is no factual evidence that a more diverse work force is a more productive and effective work force.

 

I sure hope you're right, in that this decision will impact their back account and viewership to the point they'll bring them back.

Exactly.

If you're blessed with the physical beauty and athletics to be a cheerleader, then you should have the freedom to utilize it for your personal gains. It's nobody else's business what you want to do with your own body. If your cheerleading talents and good looks make others jealous, to hell with them.

The problem is that feminism has poisoned the well. I won't be the least bit surprised if radfems start protesting cheerleading in the future.

It's no wonder more ugly people are being drawn to it, and beautifu people are being pushed away from it.


I think what we're seeing is a cultural shift here. The radical left is becoming the miserly social conservative rightwingers of yesteryear. The same horrible social conservatives who used to bitch about sex and offensive words in the media. The left is no longer liberal.

 

Thank you for proving my point. Without the public demonstrations of 1963, there wouldn't've been a passing of a law in 1964.

Culture is upstream from politics.

All it took was to change cultural attitudes toward discrimination and segregation to transform the policy. In fact, Eisenhower tried to pass a civil rights act during his tenure, and couldn't get enough democrats to support it in the 1950s.

 

It's an interactive process. The Brown decision long antedated the Civil Rights Act, and without the JFK assassination in November, 1963, and LBJ's aspirations to take over his mantle, there the wouldn't have been a passing of a law in 1964. The "Big Six" organizers of that demonstration--the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Congress On Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the National Urban League--were rabble rousers much like Black lives matter, the kinds of people who are targets of your derision. The Act told private businessmen like Ollie McClung that they couldn't refuse to serve blacks in their own restaurants even though they wanted to discriminate. The outrage! The federal government making people do what they don't want to do! And there were people like you deploring the encroachment on our liberties. The change didn't come about because people decided that racial discrimination was gross and that they wouldn't patronize establishments that didn't serve blacks. If we'd have waited for that to happen, we'd still be waiting, because that's a utopian fantasy.

 

6

As with nearly every right winger I’ve talked to here you do have a tendency to ignore or evade questions and criticisms you are unwilling or unable to answer.

Ho hum it’s disappointingly dishonest but not a surprise.

*
Yet you promote and push Social Darwinist ideas and neo-liberal economic ones both of which are very much about the promotion of inequality.Ideas that you cannot defend from the criticism that they do promote inequality and which even yourself call ‘utopian fantasy’.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”

Again with you simplistic black and white thinking and pushing out statements you seem to have given little study or even that much thought.

Please can you just take some time to try and improve your knowledge and think about what you are saying and also try and be more self-aware?

I never said you were a Marxist and thing is that I’m not a Marxists either - you have this mental block which seem to make you think any person to the right of your position is a Communist.

Oh yes when you are pulled up on it you cry that you don’t think that only then to go on and say something that indicates that is exactly what you think, it’s like you have never thought about what you think (or at least only in the most superficial way).

 

6

People are born with a range of talents but inequality can mean that some have a lot better chance of fulfilling their potential that others.

Someone could be born with a great deal of talent but a huge number of social and economic disadvantages while someone else can be born with medium talent but a great deal of social and economic advantages.

Let’s take a race in which there are two runners – one (let’s call them X) is a very good runner but is forced to begin on the 100 yard line and the other (Say Y) is a reasonable runner but is allowed to begin on the 20 yard line, however well X runs they are never going to catch up Y.

Basically the left want to level the plain field and make the race fairer while the Social Darwinist and neo-liberal economic ideas you push would actually make inequality worse by further entrenching the advantages of the already advantaged.

 

6

Oh thank you 6 – this is a perfect example of the mentality that perpetuates inequality.

Women are generally better than men at certain tasks, and men are generally better suited than women at others.

But you do say but if a woman wanted to take on manly roles like engineering there shouldn't be anything to stop her.

But there is something making that more difficult.

Because certain men (like you) are always going to think she is not really suited for that job and will never be as good as a man, because men are just better at some jobs.

So when it comes down to recruitment and there is a man and women going for the engineering job and you are the man in charge and the type of man that think men are just naturally suited to certain jobs then it’s likely, in fact probable, that you will recruit the man.

Don’t you see that is exactly how inequality of opportunity comes about - some peoples prejudices they might not even be a conscious prejudices but they can still have an effect.

Same if you are the type of person that while probably not thinking of themselves as being racist, does however think that black people are, you know, more lazy, more likely to be troublemakers or just not as intelligent as white people then it’s likely that you’ll employ white people – many studies have shown that people with ‘black’ sounding names are less likely than their white-sounding ones to get called in for interviews even when the resumes where exactly the same.

Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination

 

6

Now it’s not surprising that the biggest protests against those trying to make societies fairer come from those whose advantages are being eroded.

I mean if you have been used to beginning the race on the 20 yard line you are likely to be unhappy if you have to go back to the 40, 60, 80, 100 yard line and find that you have to actually compete on an equal footing.

And so it’s not surprising you get a lot of wealth sponsored propaganda attacking left wing ideas about helping people to fulfil their potential, but I am surprised that some people fall for the con game.

It’s the kind of propaganda that plays on some people’s grievances, fears or prejudices

– ‘why should I be forced to employ a woman who I don’t think is ‘naturally’ suited to the job’

– ‘why should I be forced to employ a lazy, trouble-making and unintelligent black person’

– ‘if women were as good as men and black people were not so lazy they wouldn’t need help to get a job’

and so on and so on