I do want conservatives on here

[Ramrouser]

No.

Every group has outliers.

She's clearly a nut, but I'm not sure she can be considered the norm for how people treat animals.

Noem got extreme blowback from MAGA/Republicans after this came out. It instantly ended any chance she had of being the VP.

Why she thought people would be impressed by that story is beyond me.

 

[4thgenheel]

No.

Noem got extreme blowback from MAGA/Republicans after this came out. It instantly ended any chance she had of being the VP.

Why she thought people would be impressed by that story is beyond me.

yeah man, it really tanked her career. from governor of piddly-ass south dakota to *checks notes* DHS secretary.

18th in the line of succession to the presidency. what a fall from grace!

 

[superrific]

No.

Noem got extreme blowback from MAGA/Republicans after this came out. It instantly ended any chance she had of being the VP.

Why she thought people would be impressed by that story is beyond me.

She got from that story exactly what she wanted: a cabinet position.

1. Let's illustrate the idea of subtext with an example: Have you ever read the bible? You know how some of the stories seem, well, trivial if you take them at face value? Let's consider the parable of the Judgement of Solomon -- the famous story about two moms who both claim to be the baby's mother, and Solomon proposed cutting the baby in half, at which point the true mother revealed herself. Why would that completely insignificant story be included in the history of the Jewish people? Moses parted the red sea. The Jewish people had powerful military triumphs but also heartbreaking defeats. Sometimes God created miracles. And also, this one time, the king didn't kill a baby.

So that's weird and bizarre, isn't it? It's especially weird that, in the story, the mothers acted idiotically. The idea that the fake mother would agree to accept "half" of the severed child is absolutely nuts (also, who would have severed the child in two? What technology would have made that possible? The king was really going to order a soldier to split a baby in two with an axe?). It obviously didn't happen that way. Nor would the real mother simply renounce her claim, unless she thought Solomon was a bloodthirsty tyrant who meant what he said about splitting the baby -- and that would be a strange thought, given that the story and many others are specifically demonstrating that he was not such a tyrant.

Obviously, the story is metaphorical. We're not supposed to think of the baby literally. Rather, the baby represents something else. A lot of people, as far as I know, think that the baby is a metaphor for the Jewish people. The story thus describes the nature of leadership, and it also sets forth the values that define the Jewish people: empathy and sacrifice. The baby-splitter mom symbolizes a nakedly transaction view of the world, in which the goal is to get your share regardless of what is required. Solomon realizes that's not the society God wants.

[Note: there plenty of other subtextual stories in the Bible that work somewhat similarly -- Abraham and Isaac for instance.]

2. So, what's the subtext of Noem's story? Like the Solomon story, it's meant to describe a form of leadership -- but one that is very different in nature, given that Solomon preserved the baby and Noem killed the dog. Both stories are trying to communicate a leadership principle. Solomon shows that empathy is a defining aspect of the Jewish religion. Noem is trying to show that she's cold-blooded enough to kill when it's needed.

Why does she call the dog "extremely dangerous"? It obviously wasn't. It looked like a puppy, but deep down it was a killer that needed to be put down. Hmm, who does that resemble? Oh, yes: migrants. They seem like innocent people who come to the US to escape oppression and who just want to earn money for their families -- but Trump and the GOP claim they are anything but. They are a sinister shadowy group of people who are extremely dangerous, who are invading our country, whose gangs take over towns and terrorize the residents. Now, it would be especially bad form for Noem to brag about killing a human, so she demonstrates her lack of empathy by killing a dog.

Does this interpretation of the story -- i.e. as a parable about jettisoning toxic empathy -- fit Noem's later actions? Oh yes it does. Look at her cosplay at the El Salvador prison. She killed the dog because it had to be done to protect. They shipped the people to El Salvador without due process, because it had to be done to correct. She was advertising her heartlessness, which is exactly what Trump wants out of DHS.

3. So does it make sense now why she included the story? It wasn't an accident and it wasn't a bad judgment. She knew what she was communicating, and it was in fact communicated to the person who cared.

 

[rodoheel]

I'm not sure the German people would agree with you. I don't think it's a coincidence that the internet hate-o-sphere emerged at the same time as the resurgence of neo-Nazi activity in the past decade.

And I also think that most virtual spaces would be made worse by people posting shit like, "slavery was a good thing," or "Hitler was right."

I think you're framing the question slightly differently than I did. I'm not saying that it's a good thing for people to be able to post things like "slavery was a good thing," or "Hitler was right." My point is that outright banning people from saying things is not a productive or helpful way to deal with the issue, because it always leads to a difficult and contentious line-drawing process. It's easy when you frame it as obviously odious speech, but it's much harder to agree exactly where the line is.

I actually think that the German/European experience supports this. Have Europe's much stricter speech rules, especially around things like the Nazis, done anything to quell the rise of right-wing nationalism across the continent, including in Germany? No, not really. You can't choke a viewpoint out of existence by outlawing anyone from expressing it, no matter how obviously odious it might be, and in some ways those laws can actually help such viewpoints flourish. I think it's similar on a message board. We don't need to try to create ever-expanding rules about which speech is so self-evidently wrong that it should be outright banned, and we will never all agree about what those things are anyway. Liberal use of the ignore button, or just excoriating people who say such things, will work at least as well.

 

[rodoheel]

I regularly travel through rural Georgia on my way to the coast. I obviously see what you describe but you're painting these folks with waaay too broad of a brush. Being poor doesn't mean you have bad character or morals. Lot's of decent poor people in the South.

I still see Rebel flags in rural Georgia but they are A LOT less common than 10 - 20 years ago.

Being on welfare or unemployment or being an undocumented immigrant doesn't mean you have bad character or morals either, but you would sure think that from hearing Republicans talk about these issues and what their preferred policies all.

 

[superrific]

I actually think that the German/European experience supports this. Have Europe's much stricter speech rules, especially around things like the Nazis, done anything to quell the rise of right-wing nationalism across the continent, including in Germany? No, not really.

My point was that Germans would probably not agree with you re: "no, not really." Those speech rules DID quell the rise of right-wing nationalism, which didn't start to emerge until right-wingers in Germany and elsewhere could be organized from abroad, outside the reach of German law. The German law didn't criminalize the reading of such speech; and Germany wasn't about to ban social media, so the anti-Nazi laws were defanged.

The rise of the right-wing only occurred after social media eviscerated (in practice) the laws against pro-Nazi advocacy.

About 12-14 years ago, the law school brought a visiting professor from Germany to teach a seminar on comparative law. That scholar's focus was on speech codes. I didn't read her work, but I did attend her talk and basically her thesis was that America should adopt German-style speech codes on issues pertaining to grotesque ideologies like slavery, fascism, etc. I did not get the sense that the effectiveness of those laws was widely questioned in Germany. As far as I know, the German anti-Nazi laws are quite popular. It's just that they can be circumvented via social media, in their present form.

 

[superrific]

I regularly travel through rural Georgia on my way to the coast. I obviously see what you describe but you're painting these folks with waaay too broad of a brush. Being poor doesn't mean you have bad character or morals. Lot's of decent poor people in the South.

I still see Rebel flags in rural Georgia but they are A LOT less common than 10 - 20 years ago.

A person's sympathies tell you a lot about him or her.

You drive through Georgia and your sympathies automatically extend to these poor white racists, some of whom are decent despite loudly broadcasting traitorous sympathies for one of the most virulently racist (and fortunately short-lived) "countries" in human history.

I drive through Georgia and my sympathies extend to the people who are affected by that white supremacist mentality. I'm not going to deny that I care a lot more about the victims of racism than the character of those who fly their stars and bars or willingly live among those who do.

I'm very comfortable with my moral, ethical, political and policy instincts here. I suppose you are as well . . . except for your habit (and all MAGA habits) of vehemently denying the obvious implications of your own posts and behavior. Racists are as racists do -- unless the racists are your friends, in which case we should stop vilifying them and instead turn our attention to brown people who labor for our benefit.

 

[Bobfripp]

I regularly travel through rural Georgia on my way to the coast. I obviously see what you describe but you're painting these folks with waaay too broad of a brush. Being poor doesn't mean you have bad character or morals. Lot's of decent poor people in the South.

I still see Rebel flags in rural Georgia but they are A LOT less common than 10 - 20 years ago.

Uncle Billy travelled through rural Georgia on his way to the coast in 1864, and unloaded a can of whoop-ass on those racist, slave-owning, 'good' folk.

 

[superrific]

Uncle Billy travelled through rural Georgia on his way to the coast in 1864, and unloaded a can of whoop-ass.

LOL. The ultimate in retaliatory trolling.

 

[TarSpiel]

I think you're framing the question slightly differently than I did. I'm not saying that it's a good thing for people to be able to post things like "slavery was a good thing," or "Hitler was right." My point is that outright banning people from saying things is not a productive or helpful way to deal with the issue, because it always leads to a difficult and contentious line-drawing process. It's easy when you frame it as obviously odious speech, but it's much harder to agree exactly where the line is.

I actually think that the German/European experience supports this. Have Europe's much stricter speech rules, especially around things like the Nazis, done anything to quell the rise of right-wing nationalism across the continent, including in Germany? No, not really. You can't choke a viewpoint out of existence by outlawing anyone from expressing it, no matter how obviously odious it might be, and in some ways those laws can actually help such viewpoints flourish. I think it's similar on a message board. We don't need to try to create ever-expanding rules about which speech is so self-evidently wrong that it should be outright banned, and we will never all agree about what those things are anyway. Liberal use of the ignore button, or just excoriating people who say such things, will work at least as well.

In the end, I'm super buddhist/christian about this, along the lines of Thich Nhat Hanh, the only way to heal these divisions is to listen & love, and remember that the person you're talking to is in the end your brother or sister.

I just don't think banning/yelling/scapegoating/mocking the other guy ever leads anywhere good, even if "they did it first" or "but I'm right."

But that's damn hard enough for me myself to live up to, so I don't really expect anyone else to either, or blame them for it.

 

[Ramrouser]

She got from that story exactly what she wanted: a cabinet position.

1. Let's illustrate the idea of subtext with an example: Have you ever read the bible? You know how some of the stories seem, well, trivial if you take them at face value? Let's consider the parable of the Judgement of Solomon -- the famous story about two moms who both claim to be the baby's mother, and Solomon proposed cutting the baby in half, at which point the true mother revealed herself. Why would that completely insignificant story be included in the history of the Jewish people? Moses parted the red sea. The Jewish people had powerful military triumphs but also heartbreaking defeats. Sometimes God created miracles. And also, this one time, the king didn't kill a baby.

So that's weird and bizarre, isn't it? It's especially weird that, in the story, the mothers acted idiotically. The idea that the fake mother would agree to accept "half" of the severed child is absolutely nuts (also, who would have severed the child in two? What technology would have made that possible? The king was really going to order a soldier to split a baby in two with an axe?). It obviously didn't happen that way. Nor would the real mother simply renounce her claim, unless she thought Solomon was a bloodthirsty tyrant who meant what he said about splitting the baby -- and that would be a strange thought, given that the story and many others are specifically demonstrating that he was not such a tyrant.

Obviously, the story is metaphorical. We're not supposed to think of the baby literally. Rather, the baby represents something else. A lot of people, as far as I know, think that the baby is a metaphor for the Jewish people. The story thus describes the nature of leadership, and it also sets forth the values that define the Jewish people: empathy and sacrifice. The baby-splitter mom symbolizes a nakedly transaction view of the world, in which the goal is to get your share regardless of what is required. Solomon realizes that's not the society God wants.

[Note: there plenty of other subtextual stories in the Bible that work somewhat similarly -- Abraham and Isaac for instance.]

2. So, what's the subtext of Noem's story? Like the Solomon story, it's meant to describe a form of leadership -- but one that is very different in nature, given that Solomon preserved the baby and Noem killed the dog. Both stories are trying to communicate a leadership principle. Solomon shows that empathy is a defining aspect of the Jewish religion. Noem is trying to show that she's cold-blooded enough to kill when it's needed.

Why does she call the dog "extremely dangerous"? It obviously wasn't. It looked like a puppy, but deep down it was a killer that needed to be put down. Hmm, who does that resemble? Oh, yes: migrants. They seem like innocent people who come to the US to escape oppression and who just want to earn money for their families -- but Trump and the GOP claim they are anything but. They are a sinister shadowy group of people who are extremely dangerous, who are invading our country, whose gangs take over towns and terrorize the residents. Now, it would be especially bad form for Noem to brag about killing a human, so she demonstrates her lack of empathy by killing a dog.

Does this interpretation of the story -- i.e. as a parable about jettisoning toxic empathy -- fit Noem's later actions? Oh yes it does. Look at her cosplay at the El Salvador prison. She killed the dog because it had to be done to protect. They shipped the people to El Salvador without due process, because it had to be done to correct. She was advertising her heartlessness, which is exactly what Trump wants out of DHS.

3. So does it make sense now why she included the story? It wasn't an accident and it wasn't a bad judgment. She knew what she was communicating, and it was in fact communicated to the person who cared.

Thank you for that. I think you are (as usual) overthinking the situation but your post was thought provoking and entertaining.

 

[Ramrouser]

Uncle Billy travelled through rural Georgia on his way to the coast in 1864, and unloaded a can of whoop-ass on those racist, slave-owning, 'good' folk.

The kind of people in rural Georgia we've been discussing were certainly not slave-owning folks. Their great/great grandparents were likely just as poor as they are today.

 

[finesse]

The kind of people in rural Georgia we've been discussing were certainly not slave-owning folks. Their great/great grandparents were likely just as poor as they are today.

Slave catchers and overseers. You know, the people that turned into cops and civil servants after the war.

 

[superrific]

Thank you for that. I think you are (as usual) overthinking the situation but your post was thought provoking and entertaining.

1. You're welcome, I guess. Your response reminds me of every criticism of advertising. "It doesn't affect me!" "You're overthinking it -- imagery that barely exists on screen doesn't affect our mentality." And yet, companies spend billions upon billions of dollars in advertising. The companies that do it best typically thrive. So clearly the overthinking critique is misplaced. What some people call "overthinking" is actually just thinking.

2. An example. This Nike ad is one of the greatest ads ever created.

After the intro with T-Mac, the very first image is of a black kid, presumably somewhere outside of the US, blowing leaves out of his hands. Why the hell is that image there? What work is it doing? I suppose the answer might be that these experienced, accomplished, highly paid advertising creatives were just overthinking things. But I suspect the real answer does require a bit of thinking. Maybe even "overthinking."

Here's the logic of the ad: We, Nike, make products to help you train to be the best athlete you can be. If you're not working out like Steve Nash or Kevin Durant or the other athletes, you're not going to be a winner. You need our products. And the competition is global. The poor kids in other countries are also practicing really hard, so you REALLY need our product.

Indeed, throughout the ad, interspersed with the images of athletes, there are images of kids playing outside. Sort of sports, but sort of not. Most of these images are of black kids, and they are presented in a way that at least suggests they live outside the US, probably in Africa or South America or wherever. It is impossible to make sense of those images without understanding the "overthought" subtext: you are competing against the world

There's also an image of a small frog jumping off a tree branch. It's almost half a second, which in a TV ad is an eternity, and just to make sure people caught it, they put it immediately after video of a drummer (i.e. these images are not going to get lost in the background). What does a frog have to do with Nike gear? Well, there's a suggestion that maybe you'll be able to jump like a frog, which would probably be awesome because that frog can really fly for its size. But more importantly, it is placing the location outside the United States. That frog image looks like a tropical rain forest (famous for their frogs). So there's a picture of a drummer on a football field, which is obviously in America, and then a picture of a frog, which is coded as outside.

Again: the message is that your competition is global. Everyone is doing sophisticated training. If you're not running with parachutes or doing sit-ups with medicine balls, you're falling behind.

3. Now maybe you think I'm overthinking it, but again this is widely regarded as one of the best ads ever -- or if that is exaggerated, it's definitely considered excellent. And it has these images that are hard to make sense of otherwise. I mean, go ahead, answer the question with the proper amount of thinking. I suspect you are going to have trouble.

I'm using the same analytic style here as I did with Noem. It's basically just paying attention to subtext.

 

[ZenMode]

In the end, I'm super buddhist/christian about this, along the lines of Thich Nhat Hanh, the only way to heal these divisions is to listen & love, and remember that the person you're talking to is in the end your brother or sister.

I just don't think banning/yelling/scapegoating/mocking the other guy ever leads anywhere good, even if "they did it first" or "but I'm right."

But that's damn hard enough for me myself to live up to, so I don't really expect anyone else to either, or blame them for it.

The other aspect of Thich Nhat Hanh's/Buddhism's teachings, that is especially relevant when interacting in such an impersonal manner, is that there is no self. There is no thinker doing the thinking. That means that we can only be how our thoughts make us. We have no true mediator to make decisions on posting or not posting something or the tone with which we respond.

 

[UNCatTech]

The kind of people in rural Georgia we've been discussing were certainly not slave-owning folks. Their great/great grandparents were likely just as poor as they are today.

Hell, that's sad too.

But the ignorance that a flag that represents racism is their heritage is incomprehensible.

But, I want the best for those people also. And this country has the resources. We need to start with adjusting our educational system to have multiple paths to success and to be a inclusive a possible. If we don't educate we are doomed, and this administration is clearly demonstrating that they don't want people to be educated.

 

[BlooVooDoo]

Every group has outliers.

She's clearly a nut, but I'm not sure she can be considered the norm for how people treat animals.

I posted that not to suggest she’s representative of conservatives (although I understand why it may have seemed so). I was trying to point out that Kristi Noem and/or her advisors expected that it would be well received in the eyes of the MAGA base. What does it say about conservative voters if an elected official, popular with that group, thinks that’s the way to bolster support?

 

[Lando]

Hell, that's sad too.

But the ignorance that a flag that represents racism is their heritage is incomprehensible.

But, I want the best for those people also. And this country has the resources. We need to start with adjusting our educational system to have multiple paths to success and to be an inclusive a possible. If we don't educate we are doomed, and this administration is clearly demonstrating that they don't want people to be educated.

I would rather help people that want to be helped.

 

[Healing]

After the intro with T-Mac

LaDainian Tomlinson

 

[superrific]

LaDainian Tomlinson

Oh, right. I don't focus on that bit at the front.