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Consequences for Veterans and/or retirees in the 2021 DC Riots

SlickAg

Registered User
pilot
I'm not against free speech. I never said that the US government should punish people for posting dumb shit on social media.

However, if [pick your favorite social media personality] posted some stupid meme such as that the COVID-19 vaccine causes mad cow disease, you bet the US would share it and believe it within 24 hours.

I just don't think it's unreasonable for a private company to hold its users to some standard of posting things that are verifiably true, particularly when they can sway the opinions of millions of people. And in the case of pending criminal trials, they can permanently influence someone's quality of life in a severely negative way.
Except when that private company’s founder says things like this on the digital medium which his company founded:

28882

Just because you think a meme is stupid shouldn’t stop someone from being able to share it. Just as someone shouldn’t be stopped from expressing a political viewpoint simply because you disagree with it. Pretty much everyone here is calling for a return to civil discourse in our national political discussions, while some are seemingly turning a blind a eye as to what that might actually entail.

The US isn’t (currently) punishing people for expressing freedom of speech on social media platforms. But there are people out there who are USING social media platforms and websites to publish names and addresses of people who contributed to Trump’s political campaigns. That’s about as un-American as you can get. And hopefully the government doesn’t stand by and do nothing while companies like Parler, who is currently midnight since AWS kicked them off their servers (not to mention being kicked off the App Store and whatever google uses) are being shut down for daring to have people use their platform to share views which Democratic politicians and the mainstream media find threatening.

I fear that we’re becoming less and less the “land of the free, and the home of the brave” and morphing into the very thing we’ve been fighting against for so long.
 
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hlg6016

A/C Wings Here
Wait, what ????
YHGTBFSM . . .
Respectfully, Call it what it is. These people didn't go down there as part of a high school field trip. Put them in front of a judge to explain themselves. Our country has shown a very ugly side in the past few days and if we are going to fix it it has to start here. Let the dominoes fall (my 2 cents)
 

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
pilot
Contributor
Just curious, and I know I’m painting with a broad brush here, do you think that those who study history are more, equally, or less liberal than those in academia typically tend to be?

I’m wondering if one’s deep understanding of how we got to the present day skews them one way or the other, relative to other liberal arts academics.
Good, and hard question to answer. The situation with academia - painting with a broad brush here - is that academic departments tend to replicate themselves around the given institutions hiring rules and goals. So, if most of my colleges are "grievance studies" types who want to "concentrate on heterodox, non-conforming studies that view otherness on the global stage of real and perceived white supremacy" then that is who they are going to hire to create a happy faculty family. Layer that over a university decision to concentrate all new hires on this race or that gender and the pool gets shallow fast. So a history department that was once well known for "20th Century European studies with world respected faculty" might today be well known for "advancing new studies in the field of post-colonial Euro-Otherness with a globally connected, media savvy faculty." They are two wildly different things.

Years ago people used to mock the "ivory tower" for being aloof from ordinary problems. Today I would argue that the "ivory tower" is just as strong as it once was, they simply import the muck and mire of ordinary life, view it from an aloof position that is impossible to assail, and pretend to be "engaged." An example...a recent book review sparked a tempest-in-a-teacup kind of thing when the writer disagreed with a review and noted that the reviewer, being a white male, had no right, standing, morality, or capability to questions the work. In short, "you can't be evaluate my work because you can't possibly understand it." It is a terrible state to be in.

But, back to the question. It depends on the History Department and on the school (and even type of school). At community colleges, "day faculty" (full timers) faculty tend to be more liberal while part-timers trend more conservative. In a cute twist of the words, Liberal Arts College faculty members openly identify as liberal in numbers that swamp those who identify as conservative. Even more fascinating, I found that the more "activist" faculty are the one's about to retire. New faculty, not in line for tenure, tend to toe a much more "moderate" line. With faculty tenure about to die, I think this trend will continue.

All of this, however, leads to one final point. It really isn't about the existing faculty it is about who they admit to graduate programs. Despite what polls attempt to tell us, there are plenty of well-educated conservatives who find the door to further admissions (think graduate education) blocked because they got an undergraduate education at a place considered "conservative." This is entirely an issue with liberal arts departments...STEM people don't really care as long as you have the brain-power...as it should be.
 

taxi1

Well-Known Member
pilot
...hung out "RESIST" flags on their $1million dollar homes in 2016 were stunned when the other side decided to resist in 2021.
I almost remember the losing candidate in 2016 congratulating the winning candidate the day after.

I'd have been fine with everyone just putting up RESIST flags.
I think I understand. Your suggestion, long term, might help more people feel like they had a voice, which I think is a huge part of the problem in American politics. But I think we'd need to couple that with improvements in campaigning and primaries to yield better candidates. Even a lot of staunch republicans can't stand Trump, they just hate the other side even more. That's not a healthy way to move the country forward.
This is also a key step in the right direction. With big data, gerrymandering has gotten out of hand, leaving us with reps that only worry about getting primaried from the left or right. This needs to happen in every state.

Voters amended the state constitution in the November 2018 general election to make citizens — not legislators or special interests — responsible for drawing district lines (called “redistricting”). The commission will be composed of 13 randomly selected Michigan registered voters: four who affiliate with the Democratic Party, four who affiliate with the Republican Party, and five who do not affiliate with either major political party.
 

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
pilot
Contributor
I almost remember the losing candidate in 2016 congratulating the winning candidate the day after.

I'd have been fine with everyone just putting up RESIST flags.

This is also a key step in the right direction. With big data, gerrymandering has gotten out of hand, leaving us with reps that only worry about getting primaried from the left or right. This needs to happen in every state.

Voters amended the state constitution in the November 2018 general election to make citizens — not legislators or special interests — responsible for drawing district lines (called “redistricting”). The commission will be composed of 13 randomly selected Michigan registered voters: four who affiliate with the Democratic Party, four who affiliate with the Republican Party, and five who do not affiliate with either major political party.
Please don't get me wrong, put any flag you want on your house and vote that way that is best for you and your family. I am fine with that. I am simply noting that I am amused that people who thought resistance was romantic four years ago are horrified when the other side of the political realm uses the tactic today.
 

Seawolf42

Active Member
HAL, Thanks, On your six, rolling in hot anytime. What I see is the classic case of two clans on mountain tops throwing rocks at each other. The rocks are all falling into the valley. The valley is where all the food is grown. The valley is becoming filled with rocks.
 

Jim123

DD-214 in hand and I'm gonna party like it's 1998
pilot
What I see is the classic case of two clans on mountain tops throwing rocks at each other. The rocks are all falling into the valley. The valley is where all the food is grown. The valley is becoming filled with rocks.
That's a pretty good analogy.

There are a lot of people in the foothills close of one mountain or the other, and these people have legitimate grievances as well as misguided concerns. The more the extremists throw rocks and the more their foothills people excuse or rationalize that bad behavior, the more the people in the other foothills will climb their own mountain out of fear. The thing is, those people in the foothills aren't crazy or bad, they're scared. Some of their fear is imagined and exaggerated but a lot of it is real.


Every time someone from either side claims that the summer riots were very different from the D.C. riot, that's contributing to the divide! Both of those have a lot in common- both have substantial segments of the population who believe they have some very serious concerns. As a country, we ignore and dismiss either at our peril. Both also have extremists who resorted to criminal acts.

Which is worse- burning down the local police station or overrunning the Capitol? One of those things directly affects my day-to-day life of what it means to live in safety, the other affects my sense of my future and what it means to wake up in a free country every day. I hate both, and if somebody told me I had to pick one then I'm not sure which choice I hate more. If I had to pick one in which the perpetrators go unpunished then that's a tough choice for me too.

If we try to understand why throngs of those foothills people were demonstrating and protesting then we might be able to get somewhere as a country and start healing.
 

Hair Warrior

Well-Known Member
Contributor
That's a pretty good analogy.

There are a lot of people in the foothills close of one mountain or the other, and these people have legitimate grievances as well as misguided concerns. The more the extremists throw rocks and the more their foothills people excuse or rationalize that bad behavior, the more the people in the other foothills will climb their own mountain out of fear. The thing is, those people in the foothills aren't crazy or bad, they're scared. Some of their fear is imagined and exaggerated but a lot of it is real.


Every time someone from either side claims that the summer riots were very different from the D.C. riot, that's contributing to the divide! Both of those have a lot in common- both have substantial segments of the population who believe they have some very serious concerns. As a country, we ignore and dismiss either at our peril. Both also have extremists who resorted to criminal acts.

Which is worse- burning down the local police station or overrunning the Capitol? One of those things directly affects my day-to-day life of what it means to live in safety, the other affects my sense of my future and what it means to wake up in a free country every day. I hate both, and if somebody told me I had to pick one then I'm not sure which choice I hate more. If I had to pick one in which the perpetrators go unpunished then that's a tough choice for me too.

If we try to understand why throngs of those foothills people were demonstrating and protesting then we might be able to get somewhere as a country and start healing.
A long, well-written post with no memes or gifs? Who are you and what have you done with Jim123?
 

sevenhelmet

Low calorie attack from the Heartland
pilot
That's a pretty good analogy...

...If we try to understand why throngs of those foothills people were demonstrating and protesting then we might be able to get somewhere as a country and start healing.

Bingo. Parties have become so powerful in this country that they've lost touch with John Q. Citizen. People don't feel well represented in government, because, quite frankly, they aren't. The vast majority of politicians are out of touch, and those that are tend not to get elected, arguably due to party politics. There's a deep well of frustration across the country and the political spectrum about that.

Identity politics, authoritarianism, and reactionary/radical policies are all signs of that frustration.
 

Griz882

Frightening children with the Griz-O-Copter!
pilot
Contributor
That's a pretty good analogy.

There are a lot of people in the foothills close of one mountain or the other, and these people have legitimate grievances as well as misguided concerns. The more the extremists throw rocks and the more their foothills people excuse or rationalize that bad behavior, the more the people in the other foothills will climb their own mountain out of fear. The thing is, those people in the foothills aren't crazy or bad, they're scared. Some of their fear is imagined and exaggerated but a lot of it is real.


Every time someone from either side claims that the summer riots were very different from the D.C. riot, that's contributing to the divide! Both of those have a lot in common- both have substantial segments of the population who believe they have some very serious concerns. As a country, we ignore and dismiss either at our peril. Both also have extremists who resorted to criminal acts.

Which is worse- burning down the local police station or overrunning the Capitol? One of those things directly affects my day-to-day life of what it means to live in safety, the other affects my sense of my future and what it means to wake up in a free country every day. I hate both, and if somebody told me I had to pick one then I'm not sure which choice I hate more. If I had to pick one in which the perpetrators go unpunished then that's a tough choice for me too.

If we try to understand why throngs of those foothills people were demonstrating and protesting then we might be able to get somewhere as a country and start healing.
28890

More Jim than Jim!
 

BigRed389

Registered User
None
@BigRed389 : the reply format was weird so I’m doing it this way instead.

You said you agreed with the Congressman’s tweet. He wants to remove someone, for cause, without seeing the results of an investigation. Maybe, just maybe, she sees disinformation coming from the “other” side, and that’s why she feels so strongly about her political views. And maybe she did use her training and left when she saw things getting out of hand. We may never know.

No, you're not actually recalling what I said correctly. This what I actually said:
Her actual culpability can't be determined here (ie did she stay back and not go into the Capitol?) and would be up to the appropriate UCMJ authority to determine.
From what I see she resigned voluntarily and wasn't denied due process at all. I don't blame her, because I suspect she realized that association with something like this is NOT something you can easily recover from (probably bottom of the pack in every rack and stack while she's at that command for poor judgment).

Let's not use hyperbole, because that's exactly what got us here in the first place.
I agree the Congressman's opinion is not "helpful" but I would have a hard time disagreeing that a PSYOPs Captain in the SF who can't recognize misinformation probably isn't going to be very effective at her job in support of the SF mission.

I didn't agree with the Tweet.
If I were her CO, I would've just benched her pending the proper UCMJ investigation.

Except when that private company’s founder says things like this on the digital medium which his company founded:

Just because you think a meme is stupid shouldn’t stop someone from being able to share it. Just as someone shouldn’t be stopped from expressing a political viewpoint simply because you disagree with it. Pretty much everyone here is calling for a return to civil discourse in our national political discussions, while some are seemingly turning a blind a eye as to what that might actually entail.

Nobody is censoring memes for being stupid. Censoring is only happening when it creates harm.
If someone takes a shower cam of your wife or daughter, is it OK to just let it go viral? There are many examples of where it has caused real, not theoretical, direct harm to people when social media has been abused.
In the absence of any real regulation to guide them, companies, as private entities, are policing themselves. As long as they are doing that, you're going to continue to get an imperfect result.
Do I think that enforcement is not completely fair? Absolutely. However, the ones getting themselves Twitter bans are pretty heinous people and groups. Like the literal American Nazi party. Or Hamas. So...are we saying it was wrong to boot those groups from social media?

The US isn’t (currently) punishing people for expressing freedom of speech on social media platforms. But there are people out there who are USING social media platforms and websites to publish names and addresses of people who contributed to Trump’s political campaigns. That’s about as un-American as you can get. And hopefully the government doesn’t stand by and do nothing while companies like Parler, who is currently midnight since AWS kicked them off their servers (not to mention being kicked off the App Store and whatever google uses) are being shut down for daring to have people use their platform to share views which Democratic politicians and the mainstream media find threatening.

You are mixing up freedom of speech the Constitutionally protected right, and the use of a service, which is a privilege.
And it is also within the First Amendment rights of a private company to express themselves by choosing not to affiliate themselves with a service they do not agree with. Remember gay wedding cakes? The decision was you can't force a provider to do something they don't want to do, that's a violation of THEIR First Amendment rights.
Parler, IMO, is running into the same problem that other social media platforms had when they started, but now that they're realizing they actually DO need to moderate content (and not just say it in their TOS) they were not at all prepared for the storm when it hit.

I fear that we’re becoming less and less the “land of the free, and the home of the brave” and morphing into the very thing we’ve been fighting against for so long.

This may be true, but the right wing isn't some kind of "answer".
I dislike the left's stance on gun rights and entitlement spending, but there are plenty on the right just as guilty of being narrowing "freedoms" they don't happen to agree with at any moment. So people on the middle are supposed to pick between a decline into either socialism or fascism? Fuck that.
 
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taxi1

Well-Known Member
pilot
tenor.gif
 

Ghost SWO

Well-Known Member
Contributor
Wasn't political affiliation held very close to the chest several decades ago? Now political affiliation is worn on your sleeve and it's splitting America down the middle. Maybe we should get back to you vote for who you want, and I vote who I want, and we don't need to discuss petty things. It seems a lot of discussion in this current political climate is unresolved, and only increases the crevasse between us. We need things to bridge the gap, a common goal or problem to solve. America is so wealthy and carefree that we're pointing fingers at each other instead of fixing problems.
 

BigRed389

Registered User
None
This is also a key step in the right direction. With big data, gerrymandering has gotten out of hand, leaving us with reps that only worry about getting primaried from the left or right. This needs to happen in every state.

Voters amended the state constitution in the November 2018 general election to make citizens — not legislators or special interests — responsible for drawing district lines (called “redistricting”). The commission will be composed of 13 randomly selected Michigan registered voters: four who affiliate with the Democratic Party, four who affiliate with the Republican Party, and five who do not affiliate with either major political party.

What I like about this is putting folks who are less likely to be party ideologues into the position to draw a framework. So they don't need to decide on policy, just to provide a fair representation of the people.

I am absolutely exhausted of having to choose between 2 obviously batshit crazy extremes.
Just about everybody agrees the extremists on both sides are fucking crazy, but it seems like they're the only ones who actually get a vote. It's ridiculous.

And in reality, I also know that most of those politicians are not nearly as fucked up as some of the things they will spew publicly (with some "notable" exceptions), but they're pinned in a system that requires a "purity test" before you get to go anywhere.
 
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