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[smjjames]

We have this as well, but I hadn't really heard of it before:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Management_Australia

That sounds like the Australian counterpart to FEMA as its at the federal rather than state level.

[Reelya]

Except it doesn't have the same functions that FEMA has by a longshot. FEMA has a 13 billion dollar budget. GDP-proportionally, EMA would have to have around a $1 billion dollar budget here, but it's nothing like that. I looked up the budget for the Attorney General's department, of which EMA is part. The AG's department had a $400 million dollar budget, but almost all of the that was the budget of Australian Federal Police and ASIO (our versions of the FBI/CIA basically), about $120 million was disaster/emergency related spending, but $95 million was in disaster support payments, so that leaves about $25 million for our entire EMA spending, compared to $13 billion in the USA

Yeah ... so you could downscale FEMA, if you trust the states to run their own disaster relief network. The big difference here is that the states here support each other no matter who's in power, whereas in the USA, if California was on fire, your Red States would probably be dancing going "yeah fuck those blues!"

[Reelya]

I haven't even watched the video but I say burn the witch!

But it is cherry picked. It's not just the alt-right that say campus mobs have crossed the line, it's nytimes and washington post:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-turns-on-its-own.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/05/26/professor-told-hes-not-safe-on-campus-after-college-protests-at-evergreen-state-university-washington/

And that's a left-wing liberal professor. He had a mob of brown-shirt acting types coming after him because he questioned an exclusionary event where they wanted to force all white people to leave the campus for a day. And he did it in a private email to the organizer, asking her if she thought it was a good idea, then she doxxed him.

There are other examples I could cite as well, such as feminist professors having Title IX thrown at them, for basically not being the exact right shade of feminists.

Sure, there are ratbags on the right exploiting the way the campus leftists have ended up as a complete pile of fucktards. But that doesn't change the basic fact that they're able to do that ... because modern campus leftists are in fact ... a big pile of fucktards.

[smjjames]

Well, states in Australia are much bigger poportionately landmass wise, so, disasters are more likely to be confined within a state, meanwhile, here, disasters tend to affect multiple states. So, a different approach is needed I guess.

I can see state based ones being more accountable, but even then, they'd still have to ask for federal help when things get bad and you need an agency for that.

@caroline: The guys transgender? Your flipping gender noun every sentence is a bit confusing. Not that it actually matters to me, just wondering as I'm a bit confused. Didn't watch video because I'm on mobile.

[RedKing]

Now we poke around the time related stuff and... jeez, what the hell happened in '93? I'd actually guess it was some sort of change in tracking and enforcement, but incidents bloody doubled that year, while general crime was starting its downslope.

*cough* Waco *cough* (April 1993)
*cough* Ruby Ridge *cough* (Aug 1992)

As much as I like Biden, he's also got a history... and far too many creepy pictures of him touching women and girls to make him a safe choice to run in such an uncertain era.

Yes, and if 2016 taught us anything, it's that an old man with a penchant for creepiness and grabbing women and girls isn't electable. At all.

[ChairmanPoo]

when you are a star they let you do it

[Reelya]

EDIT: I know it's cherry picked within the first few minutes because of the broad-brush dismissal of the claims, which are in direct contradiction to evidence, then trotting out alt-right strawmen to be dismantled. Cherry picked straw men is all I need to see.

I recommend this read, it came up from a facebook chat with a friend:
https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/on-leaving-the-sjw-cult-and-finding-myself-1a6769b2f1ff

This is from a self-avowed SJW type, female, still a feminist, but she calls the whole movement a cult, which she had to deprogram herself from because she saw how toxic the whole thing has become. In the comments on the article other SJWs also chime in about how if they said even one word wrong, they were being labeled as Nazis by the other SJWs, and stuff, so people in SJW circles are scared to express themselves lest they accidentally question the one true orthodox belief system. It's a cult. Plain and simply a cult.

Also Jonothan Haidt is a great commenter on the whole free speech on campus debate. I don't see a single SJW person pointing him out and debunking his arguments, they always go for the low-hanging fruit of Milo & other ratbags.

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/03/08/the-foundations-of-the-campus-free-speech-crisis/
I think Jonothan Haidt is one of the most important intellectuals to understand what's happening right now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs41JrnGaxc

I looked him up on RationalWiki and the only complaint they could come up with was effectively that he's too moderate and sees both sides of the debate, which RationalWiki implies is a Bad Thing and you shouldn't listen to him. (rationalwiki is rational in the same sense as Ayn Rand's Objectivism is objective. i.e. it's not at all, it takes an advocacy position).

Don't trust him he's one of those filthy moderates who will explain both sides arguments to you, instead of doing the good and proper thing of stroking your ego while demonizing the other side!

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't necessarily agree with the base premise of the video ("the left is killing free speech", parts of both the left and the right are trying to do that) and so can't respond to it in full, but the largest flaw I see here is the exclusion of neutrality. This video is also fairly directed towards the right, so as a leftist of a different stripe it becomes increasingly long-winded for me to respond.

Much as everybody likes to bring up the Nelson Mandela quote about neutrality being support of "the oppressor" in any given situation, I find this argument flawed. ContraPoints even contradicts this argument almost immediately after referencing it by saying "if you don't have any problem with people calling feminists sluts on youtube then you shouldn't have any problem with people calling [the right wing] nazis on campus". This to me directly demonstrates the existence of a true neutrality, because by allowing arguments to be a crucible of humanity's wretchedness instead of regulated both of these things happen fairly commonly. Since I don't actually have a problem (in philosophical terms, we probably would be better off if we were all nice to each other but lbr) with either the right or the left insulting one another, this establishes the neutral ground.

There is also no distinction made between restrictions of speech in the workplace and restrictions of speech on college campuses, which are not the same. A workplace is a private, insular group who need to be civil to one another. A campus is usually a state-owned area and so is under a different standard, that being the same standard as the government (and ContraPoints says at the beginning that hate speech laws are wrong, which therefore turns all campus arguments). An individual classroom is a more clear analogy to a workplace, but the campus as a whole is a free-for-all. I had enough evangelical Christian pastors screaming at me on my college's mall to demonstrate that, and I wouldn't have seen them barred even though they aren't just politically divorced from me but epistemologically and metaphysically divorced from me.

We also should be skeptical towards our own ideologies, because that opens the door for new ideological progress. Humanity at large was pretty slow rolling with ideology in the past compared to now, so I think this is a benefit far greater than the costs of being more tolerant than we generally want to be. It isn't just genocide and fascism that started their paths outside of acceptable society, most of the modern conceptions of human rights began as the odious and the unthinkable as well. Dare you move the door more shut now, after all we have seen?

I do like the editing, though I'm not sure if a physical phone is really a metaphor for destiny.

[Playergamer]

she

his

meh. got about a minute in before the strawmannery and memery got too much for me. this is why I stick to articles, videos from e-celebs are annoying as hell.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't necessarily agree with the base premise of the video ("the left is killing free speech", parts of both the left and the right are trying to do that) and so can't respond to it in full, but the largest flaw I see here is the exclusion of neutrality. This video is also fairly directed towards the right, so as a leftist of a different stripe it becomes increasingly long-winded for me to respond.

MSH, the video is from a leftist viewpoint.It doesn't state the left is killing free speech. Please, everyone watch it before you go of theorizing about everything, for chrissakes.

My statement is a reference to the title of the video, not the idea contained within the video. I watched it and understand that the basic premise is a refutation of "the left is killing free speech", not its affirmation.

My disagreement with the base premise is that a part of the left, but not all of it, is anti-free speech.

[Reelya]

@Playergamer and Reelya: Contra always does very flippant intros where she strawmans herself and opposing viewpoints. The first five or so minutes are joking, and she often makes exaggerates for her jokes. Expect random flippancy throughout the video. The real meat starts about from the second third to halfway through the video.

But ContraPoints argument is "X doesn't exist" e.g. ContraPoints is denying what's happening on campuses, but there's direct evidence from various non-rightwing sources that this is indeed happening. Even left wing academics are talking about it. That just torpedoes whatever bullshit rhetoric ContraPoints is speaking. Rhetoric that something isn't or can't happen is trumped by direct evidence that it is in fact happening. Doesn't matter what some idiot puts in one youtube video.

In one of the links I mentioned, it was mentioned how even terms like "mansplaining" are about shutting down dialogue. By accusing someone of "mansplaining" it's a passive-aggressive ad hominem attack (against something the other person has no control over: what gender they were born with) that gets you out of an argument without having to make a valid counterpoint.

[Neonivek]

Mansplaining hits an unfortunate area of bastardization.

Where originally it was just a empathetic word that was basically like "You know how guys like to explain stuff to us as if we know nothing about it just because we are women? That sure is annoying isn't it?"

And now it is "Your a man with a opinion? Mansplaining, get him out of here"

---

Mind you I think the major cause of this is because... It isn't the 1930s anymore and a lot more men want to be at the table and also do not necessarily have all the sway either.

As well feminist debates aren't exclusively about women anymore... and that is a area of contention.
-Then again... It was sort of like this for a long time. Yet it didn't reach the "Perhaps we should treat young boys differently than girls after all" levels it has since the 1990s and on.
--Or rather... Feminism has started to merge with direct egalitarianism.

[Max™]

I stand by my previously established prejudice: I'm not listening to some fucking random youtuber babble about anything, provide your argument in a written form so it can be parsed without having to sit through your much slower presentation because I'm not turning up my volume for any random shmuck to jabber about something based on "watch the video before judging it" requests, sorry Caroline, put a baby sloth or a McClaren 720S in there and get back to me?

In other news apparently a stillborn attempt at repealing Dodd-Frank is being tried, but despite a few bipartisan measures it's still got too many "kill it with fire" chunks to make it anywhere.

[nenjin]

'Mansplaining' to me pretty much encapsulates to me why Americans can't talk to each other anymore. It's a belief that's in the eye of the beholder and it can't really be refuted by the person accused of it. They can talk to you in the most neutral, non-judgmental or condescending way possible and if someone wants to keep calling it mansplaining, what are you honestly going to say to change their mind?

Extend this level of "I know what I know and I know what I mean" thinking to say, Trump. You can present him data all day but because he believes differently, and the content of that belief is utterly subjective, he can stand by his beliefs that 'the country has been going downhill' or 'there's some nasty people out there doing nasty things' or whatever vague idea he wants to tout.

I feel like we as political body had a hell of a lot more respect for basic facts in the past, and we were able to separate tone and condescension from facts. Now "feels" and "facts" are fluidly interchangeable in people's minds, and when you actually tell people to hold to facts and not feelings, you're either just told to shut the fuck up or you get a token acknowledgement that yes, there are facts, before someone goes flying right back into their feelings and belief-based arguments.

It's like, before you really only had to contend with religious people trying to debate like this seriously and in the open. Their whole belief system and arguments are based on unproveable beliefs, and they'd take that realization into any argument and generally not walk away having changed anyone's minds or given their own beliefs any new validity in the minds of others. (Creationists are the primary example of this.) Since at the end of the day, most of us rely on facts to sort out how we should feel about x, y and z, things like "I believe an invisible power made the earth and all the animals in 7 days" didn't tend to go very far with us, versus the mountains of scientific data that we're far more willing to trust because it involves rigor and not belief. Believing shit is easy. Proving it takes work.

But I feel like somewhere right around 2000 the religious right realized that not being bound to facts can be a benefit in our media-frenzied world. (I feel like Bush's know-nothing attitude, and his rejection of scientific knowledge as a basis for governance was the start of this. I.e. climate change.) Nobody is taking the time to establish what actually is anyways before they open their mouth. If you're not beholden to facts to make your point, you don't even have to argue on their level, you can argue a level or more lower and twice as loud. This attitude that belief overrules facts kept picking up steam in the Bush years and went into fucking overdrive when Obama was elected and many were willing to believe just about anything about him without a shred of evidence. See: birther claims as a mild example.

Now some elements of the left have taken up the same attitude. I guess if you feel like you can't beat em, join em? You can't prove someone is or isn't 'mansplaining" to you, because if they're a man and they're 'splaining, well, they're mansplaining. So if you convince yourself you're being condescended to, in your head you're the only arbiter of what is or isn't happening since that's the only thing you give a shit about listening to. And there will be no shortage of shortsighted people to agree with you and reinforce your echo chamber, and drown out the people telling you to clean the selfish out of your ears and fucking listen.

Sometimes I just wish everyone were willing to admit, humbly, that they can be wrong, or that they were wrong. Even about stuff that's important to them. To suck up the shame, the loss of power, the disgrace of having to climb out of the hole they dug themselves, and just fucking grow a little.

Hell, I told Neonivek straight up in the Shadow of War thread that he was wrong about Saruman being able to forge a ring of power if given enough time. Totally couldn't believe it, wouldn't. But it ate at me. Was I wrong? Did I do him a disservice by dismissing him? It bugged me until I hit google and looked it up and found out he was right. And I could have sat on that knowledge and just continued with my internal and external belief that he was wrong.....but I didn't. I went back to the thread and said "you know, you were right."

If everyone in America were eating a regular dose of humble pie and learning how to live with it, we might actually be able to get this fucking country back to some sort of political functionality again, instead of this hot mess we've put together.

[Frumple]

I'unno, I remember the past re: basic facts more characterized by flat ignorance than respect. Didn't really have the same degree of pointing to contradictory bullshit, but folks also just kinda' didn't bloody hear about a lot of junk.

Half willing to posit is awareness is exactly what happened: You had the same sort of folks back then (fairly literally in a lot of cases), but they didn't have nearly as much interaction with stuff they disagree with for whatever reason. Nowadays more people get pricked with the cactus needle of reality and react by doing that blood laser thing those lizards do. The blood flinging lizard people were always there, but there weren't as many cacti and the cacti that was around didn't have thorns of near the length and girth they do today.