Miller’s history in debate / student activities at Duke University indicate he’s the exact sort off asshole you punch when they try to get a public stage for the exact same set of reasons you punch Nazis**:
* He’s a racist, sexist, hateful bigot. You name it he probably hates it. He probably hates your dog. He definitely hates your cat.
* He’s NOT coming to the debate in good faith. He’s there to push the bounds of reality to fit the world that would enable his hate.
He doesn’t actually believe what he’s saying and he’s not experiencing cognitive dissonance. He knows what he’s saying is out of bounds… but it’s what he want’s to establish as in-bounds so he acts as if it’s true in an attempt to establish for others that ‘clearly it must be true!’ Or at least should be considered because ‘why else would he believe it so strongly?!’ It’s the same techniques he used in high school and at Duke. And it works if given enough time and repetition and polite consideration by others in public.
He is simply not at this debate for the same reasons others are. He’s not there to answer questions or make convincing arguments or
listen to your convincing arguments. He’s not trying to win others over to his side – he’s trying to change
the standards his arguments will be judged by in the future. Pointing out reality or logic will bounce
off him because he knows reality andthat’s not the point of why he’s there.
Normally, if this were a rational discussion it would be so laughably out of bounds it wouldn’t be under consideration at all. By letting him speak you let him establish his position as one that can be rationally debated in public – which is what he wanted in the first place.
** FWIW: these two requirements are what I use as my personal metric for “reasons to punch” or at least to shout down Nazis if they occur in public discourse. One without the other is distasteful but at least not actively dangerous. Combined? That’s fucking dangerous. It’s why CNN standing up to Conway and refusing to have her on shows after her repeated attempts to do this as well – is a good thing. It’s absolutely NOT the government’s job to do this: governments are historically bad at judging either of these two standards. We must consider what would happen with any laws we pass if they were in the hands of our worst enemies. It’s why the ACLU defends bad guys too even if they don’t like them. Enforcing standards of debate is the responsibility of the community or the individual. So we must be ready to hold to established standards of discourse and show those people the door.
tl;dr; Miller is a vampire the same way Nazi’s are. Everything that comes out of his mouth should be considered a deliberate manipulation attempt.
I’m just super fucking bitter that once the flint water crisis got it’s 15 minutes of fame people stopped giving a shit. The water is still poisoned, people! Donations have plummeted and people have been forced back into drinking and bathing with the water! The medical effects of this are astounding, cases of legionnaires disease have skyrocketed, people are having seizures, people are having weird rashes break out over their body, people (including me!) are having their blood poisoned, and it’s not just lead! it’s coliform bacteria! it’s THMs! it’s all in the water and it gets into the bloodstream and breaks down blood vessels, causing bruising and petechiae and internal bleeding and no one gives a shit anymore and it’s only gotten worse like how many people are going to have to die until people realize this is still a problem
I would like to add that the people of Flint cannot sell their houses, because selling a house with leaded water is illegal. Additionally, households with children can’t stop paying for the water because living in a house without running water is cause for CPS to take their kids. Flint has been living this way for over two years.
a new law is about to be passed in Saudi Arabia that will allow the government to execute people for coming out or being openly gay online.
ignoring the fact that this is literally something out of some kind of dystopian novel, in the interests of safety i’ve emptied out my face tag and may temporarily deactivate or password protect this blog.
please reblog this and get the word out, and if you pray, please pray for me and my fellow Saudi LGBTQ+/MOGAI family.
ALSO, for those who need it [x]. its a post on erasing all traces of yourself from the interwebs.
this is not something to read and keep to yourself. please spread this around. may Allah keep everyone safe.
What the hell
People, this stuff is serious and seriously wrong. I do hope that you are able to survive this send it to a safe space.
329 Cannon House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Phone: 202-225-2931 FAX: 202-225-2944
Woodstock District Office
9898 Highway 92, Suite 100 Woodstock, GA 30188 Phone: 770-429-1776 FAX: 770 -517-7427
Cartersville District Office
135 West Cherokee Avenue, Suite 122 Cartersville, GA 30120 Phone: 770-429-1776
Galleria District Office
600 Galleria Pkwy, Suite 120 Atlanta, GA 30339 Phone: 770-429-1776 Fax: 678-556-5184
it would be best if constituents from these districts called! ask some questions and let them know we are not ok with this!
Please please please call these reps and the reps in your own state. We NEED to maintain protection for these species, as it is the only way to preserve the ecosystems that we DIRECTLY DEPEND ON for carbon sequestering, clean water, and clean air!!
there was a 15 year old pakistani boy who was beaten half to death with a baseball bat by two white men in ontario, canada not far from where i go to uni and he had to crawl home and was in surgery for days for his cracked skull and several other injuries and is experiencing serious issues with memory and motor skills now. i literally can’t stop crying because he’s just a kid and when he finally did make it home, he lied to his parents that he “just fell” because he didn’t want to worry them and that’s literally tearing me up inside that this boy was so severely beaten that he almost died and still his foremost concern was not worrying his parents. no one deserves to be attacked like this, but the more i learn about him and how shy and quiet and inward of a kid he is it just fills me with the utmost rage that someone could do this to such a harmless, innocent, completely defenceless kid. idk how demonic these two white men had to be that they could beat anyone, let alone a child, so savagely
wait….are any americans aware that the cia overthrew the democratically-elected premier of iran in 1953 because he wouldn’t concede to western oil demands….and how that coup was the reason for the shah’s return to power, the iranian revolution, and the resulting fundamentalist dictatorship…..like, america literally dissolved iranian democracy and no one knows about it???
No. No we don’t know about it.
Americans aren’t told this shit.
The only thing we’re taught about any Middle Eastern country in school is that 1) the region exists 2) it’s where The War is happening and 3) Muslim people live there. That’s it. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get into the Hammurabi Code and some early Babylonian stuff but American schools seem to think that if it happened outside Europe and before the colonial period, or makes America look bad and isn’t about A Very Watered Down Version of What Slavery Was, it’s not important.
Info on this is almost notoriously hard to find. It’s not in any texts on American and Russian involvement in the Middle East during the Cold War that I can find. You have to specifically look for a book about the Shah’s return to power, and even then you’d be hard pressed to find a book like that at your local bookstore. Once you get into some higher level college courses you might know about it, but the people who can afford those are more likely to already be indoctrinated into a certain Way of Thinking (read: they’re racist as shit) by the time they get there. And it’s almost like you have to know about it beforehand if you want to find information on it.
The only reason I knew about it is because there’s a thirty second summary of the event in Persepolis. Those thirty seconds flipped my entire worldview.
“All the Shah’s Men” by Stephen Kinzer is a good, accessible text for people who want to know more about this.
!!!
I had to explain literally this to one of my co-workers, who is so fuckin racist against Middle Eastern people it’s insane.
She’s 60. She never heard of this.
As I was explaining this and how, during the Regan years, we funded Osama Bin Laden to fight against Russia, leading to the destruction of much of the infrastructure in the region, one of the plant workers came in to get his badge fixed.
He works in the quality control lab. He served 15 years active duty in the Army. Super smart guy, has a masters in chemistry and another masters in biology, raises saltwater fish in his spare time for sale, has the saltwater aquarium setup of the gods. Raises rare corals too, some of which he donates to be used in re-seeding reefs around the world, but that’s a side tangent.
And he listened for a minute, then nodded and said “Yeah. I was there during that. I helped train people to fight. They wanted us to help them build schools and hospitals, after, but we were only interested in them as cannon fodder. Left the whole area in ruins. I wasn’t surprised when they hated us for it later. Told people then it would happen. We let them know then that they were only valuable to America as expendable bodies. Why wouldn’t they resent us for that?”
And she just looked floored.
“So…” She started, after a few minutes. “What do you think of Trump?”
“I hate him. He’s a coward and he’s going to get good people killed.” He didn’t even blink. “
She looked back and forth between us for a second, and then asked how I knew all this.
“I research things.” I said. “Google is great.” He nodded enthusiastically.
And she just sat there for a second and then said, really quietly, “I didn’t know.”
She lived through it.
American schools don’t teach you any of this sort of thing.
I’m finding these stickers around town. The url is www. tightrope. cc
This is not okay.
If you want to take them down only do so with another object (something you can scrape it away with). Do not use your bare hands. There have been cases in the past of sickos putting razor blades and sharp objects behind posters and stickers like this to hurt whoever tries to take them down. I’m sorry you had to see this garbage. Stay safe out there.
Bothers me this only has 5 notes. A saw two more at the fucking school I teach at.
reblogging for the PSA about removal methods
If you can, hair dryers work pretty well. They melt the glue and you can scrape them off easier. Same with steam.
y’all need to get yourselves a putty knife because these posts say “DON’T USE YOUR HANDS” and then they never tell you exactly what to use instead
putty knives look like this:
and come in various widths, but for this purpose you only need something that’s about an inch or an inch and a half wide and metal, not plastic, because plastic is too flimsy for dealing with stickers and razor blades
you can get them at the home depot or other hardware stores for as low as $1.50 to about $7.00 for a fancypants one
to make the scraping easier, some sort of oil-based lubrication is needed, but keeping a bottle of mineral oil in your bag could spell disaster for what else is in there, so a tube of chapstick is fine.
smear chapstick all over the blade of the knife and carefully get to scraping the sticker off with it and yeah. be careful.
other tips:
you may also want to invest in a pair of leather or nylon/nitrile work gloves to afford your hands extra protection and grip if you feel like you need it (the nylon/nitrile ones may be particularly useful for disabled individuals who need a lil more dexterity – u gotta get the right size tho)
keep the gloves, putty knife, and chapstick in a gallon ziploc bag with some paper towels, alcohol prep pads, and bandaids if an accident does happen
store the knife with its blade wrapped in paper towel for safety – they’re not particularly sharp but caution is always good
and keep an empty altoids tin with you to store any blades you may find under the stickers until you find an adequate disposal area
anyways
y’all need putty knives
If you have the time, make a note of the locations the stickers show up in, and be careful not to commit to a noticable routine sweep pattern. Counterforce is most likely to be deployed if you’re obviously committing to a routine, and you may want to mix up your patterns (observe, return later; observe, intervene; observe, report for others to intervene).
Be careful, and be mindfuil of your surroundings if you find yourself having to commit to removing a sticker at the possible sacrifice of situational awareness. Stay alert, fuck their shit up, but always be ready to leave in a hurry.
The Betsy Devos Era of Education House Bill 610 is terrifying.
Please inform yourselves.
This bill will effectively start the school voucher system to be used by children ages 5-17, and starts the defunding process of public schools.
In addition the bill will eliminate the Elementary and Education Act of 1965, which is the nation’s educational law and provides equal opportunity in education.
It would repeal ESSA (Every Students Succeeds Act):
ESSA is a big comprehensive program that covers programs for struggling learners, AP classes, ESL classes, classes for minorities such as Native Americans, Rural Education, Education for the Homeless, School Safety (Gun-Free schools), Monitoring and Compliance and Federal Accountability Programs.
The Bill also abolishes the Nutritional Act of 2012 (No Hungry Kids Act) which provides nutritional standards in school breakfast and lunch.
The bill has no wording whatsoever protecting Special Needs kids, no mention of IDEA and FAPE.
Some things ESSA does for Children with Disabilities
-Ensures access to the general education curriculum.
-Ensures access to accommodations on assessments.
-Ensures concepts of Universal Design for Learning
-Includes provisions that require local education agencies to provide evidence-based interventions in schools with consistently underperforming subgroups.
-Requires states in Title I plans to address how they will improve conditions for learning including reducing incidents of bullying and harassment in schools, overuse of discipline practices and reduce the use of aversive behavioral interventions (such as restraints and seclusion).
Please call your representative and ask him/her to vote NO on House Bill 610 (HR 610) introduced by three Republican reps (now that’s a surprise!)
Call your representatives. Wake them up. Demand they not only vote no but actively block, fight and campaign AGAINST this bill. They’re stripping children of food, access to educations and the right to use the fucking bathroom. THESE ARE FUXKING KIDS.
It’s way too late for this, but it’s important to note that NASA didn’t discover the new earth-like planets. It was a group of astronomers lead by a dude name Michaël Gillon from the University of Liège in Belgium. Giving NASA credit for this gives the United States credit for something they didn’t do, and we already have a problem with making things about ourselves so. just like…be mindful. I’d be pissed if I discovered a small solar system and credit was wrongfully given to someone else.
This is valid. NASA’s involvement in this was predominantly in the use of of Spitzer data to validate findings from a primarily European funded program (TRAPPIST). There were Americans (or at least, an American) on the team, but beyond it being a collaborative and data-sharing arrangement this isn’t primarily an Agency achievement.
I’m here for the Belgians in the tags and also…totally didn’t know trappist was the name of a beer, I fucking love learning shit on my own posts.
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