Words matter.
Always use simple direct language.
- Help the poor
- Healthcare for everyone
- Good treatment at work.
Don’t use complex words.
One of many lasting “gifts” of Reagan.
We’ve got to get all those
welfare queens25 year old males playing video games back to work! They’re getting a free ride that they don’t deserve. People only have value when they are working!He started that evil welfare queen idea back in California. It gained traction there so he continued to use it on the national side.
dont you love the misogyny in that “queens” label? because who makes a better scapegoat than black mothers?
Currently? Mexicans and Middle easterners, it would seem. They’re all criminals and rapists apparently.
/s
I’m glad Reagan’s dead
I’m not. I much rather he lived forever. Forever wasting away, seeing his loved ones perish, losing his sanity little by ever so fucking little, inhabiting a hell all of his own.
Regan
loved ones
I don’t think it’s healthy to dehumanize our villains. He probably had loved ones. You don’t need to be a monster to do monstrous things. All humans have that capability within, you and me included.
It’s like that famous answer to “what stops you from murdering and raping?” “Nothing, I rape and murder as much as I want, which is zero."
I agree. We shouldn’t demonize our opponents.
Humans can be monsters, but there are different kinds of monsters too. One special group is the psychopaths.
I believe Regan was one, and I think he saw relationships as transactional.
OK, maybe he wasn’t, let’s assume. But he gladly saw to massive swathes of destruction of American people because he did not see them as humans. If someone can be that callous with human lives, I can think and call him a monster. Because, how can you tell the difference?
Wym? Just a few more decades, and the trickling down will surely start. I can already taste it on their boots
Propaganda works
I’ve always said that if you really wanted communism or socialism to take off in the states you’re gonna have to call it something else
I also don’t use cis because the machine has already made that a thing people don’t want to be called
I don’t mind being called a cis male, but I’m secure in my sexuality and manhood. Conservatives not so much.
This one gets it. The key takeaway should be that humans are very fallible and propaganda works alarmingly well.
We shouldn’t be trusted with our own care.
Fucking lazy ass aliens taking their sweet time… Just invade and incorporate us into your galactic empire already!
Yeah, straight/heterosexual people didn’t want to be called that, either. They want being cis and heterosexual to just be “normal” and any variation to be abnormal. Fuck that, they’ll do the same thing to whatever euphemism you pick instead.
Oh bullshit. No one in the history of ever has been offended by “straight/heterosexual”.
It might have something to do with the word ‘cis’ being used as a slur and a form of othering early on
What’s wrong with the Commonwealth of Independent States?
Hello fellow old person.
“Cis” is fucking silly, that’s why I don’t like it. We already had “hetero”. It’s like “they/them” for an individual. Try reading a novel where one charter is “they/them”. It’s needlessly confusing, and bring the hate, it’s a stupid fad. Seen this kinda thing come and go, 20-years, no one will be using it.
Cis is just the opposite of trans, but it has nothing to do with orientation. You can be cis and heterosexual, you can be cis and homosexual.
Honestly did not know that. Don’t know how I would have, given the context in which cis is commonly applied. Context being: heterosexual male. Additional context: Often as an insult. See also: Breeder. (Was that usage archaic? More on that in a moment.)
So we really need a word to define 99.5% of Earth’s population? When we have a word to define the remaining .05%? Do you have any idea how silly that sounds?!
20-years, no one will be using it
Been there, seen that, done that. And fuck anyone who doesn’t like it. I’ve equated trans rights with civil rights since before most of you kids touched social media.
Yes, we do need a word, because it’s useful to be able to describe things. That’s what language is for.
Further context you may not know: “cis” is indeed much older than even the internet.
Dude not even heard of Transjordan and Cisjordan?
Don’t know how I would have
School? It’s a scientific term, trans people did not invent it.
Context being: heterosexual male.
That is not the context it is used in.
“Blue” is fucking silly, that’s why I don’t like it. We already had “tall”.
Those are two different things. Please look up what these terms means.
Try reading a novel where one charter is “they/them”. It’s needlessly confusing, and bring the hate, it’s a stupid fad.
It’s literally been used in the singular for hundreds of years for any individual where the gender is not known, and has never in my life been confusing. For example:
“The suspect entered the store, then they exited through the back.”
English is my first and nearly only language and has been for 42 years, and there has never been a time that a singular “they” was not used. It is not a fad, the fad is taking issue with it. And hopefully in 20 years we won’t have to deal with this fake “all of a sudden” bullshit, whether it’s “they/them,” vaccines, or any other nonsense that people suddenly take issue with because some talking head told them to and acted like it was new.
While it’s true that the singular they/them has been used for a very long time, it was used in a very narrow context. It was used almost exclusively for an unknown person, or a theoretical person. In your example, the suspect is unknown, if it was known that it was a male suspect or a female suspect, the suspect would no longer be as unknown and so the sentence would probably be changed to “The suspect entered the store, then she exited through the back.”
You can tell that it had a very restricted use because of how “themselves” was used. For example, “anybody who wants one can get themselves a beer”. That’s a singular construction, but in a way that it might apply to multiple people individually. There was no need for “themself” because “they” was always used for unknown or theoretical people.
Using it for a known person, especially a person who might be currently sitting in the room, is a brand new and confusing use. Now, it’s not like English doesn’t have other confusions, even around pronouns. Take: “she was drunk and her mother was angry, and she slapped her”. Who slapped whom? Sometimes the pronouns alone aren’t enough and you need to restructure the sentence to make it more clear. But, the fact that the singular they is used with the same verb forms as the plural they can add extra confusion. Take a non-binary player playing a team sport: “They’re not playing well but they are.” If the personal pronoun version used “is” instead of “are” it would be less confusing in situations like this, but it would be more confusing in other ways because “they” could use both plural and singular verb forms.
It would be just as confusing if people suddenly started using “one” as a pronoun not used for a theoretical person, but for a concrete and actual person. One has been used as a subject pronoun: “One must remain vigilant”, and an object pronoun: “Wounds can make one weary.” But, it is always a theoretical construction, it has never been used to refer to a specific, known person. So, it would be confusing to start using it that way: “Give it to one, one doesn’t have one yet.” But, even that would be less confusing than singular “they”, because at least “one” uses singular verb forms, etc.
They/them for a specific, known individual is a new way of using “singular they” and it adds a lot of confusion You can argue that despite the confusion it’s necessary, but you can’t pretend that it doesn’t add confusion.
I don’t think it adds any more confusion than the pre-existing pronoun confusion you already described as part of the language (your she and her example) and there is already an established answer for it (you don’t use a pronoun for one of them, you use their actual name or what you are referring to).
Pretending that it adds some grand new confusion that makes it difficult to keep up with because in very rare circumstances someone who is already really bad at communicating with pronouns (because one would have to have problems with your “she slapped her” reference to have problems with singular they/them) might have difficulty communicating what they mean by “them.”
Language reflects the culture in which it is used. In these times, there’s more acceptance (though not universal) of the premises that a) sex and gender identity are separate concepts, and b) a person can have a gender identity that does not map onto a ‘male/man-female/woman’ scheme.
Given this, singular they/them makes sense - on discovering the identity of individual who, while almost certainly male or female (though intersex exceptions exist), does not neatly fit into the category of man or woman, they can remain a ‘they’ where someone who is distinctly a man or woman doesn’t. This assumes they do not use other pronouns (some do, but neopronouns get a lot of flack).
I’ll be candid and say I don’t get why this throws people off, and I’ve had to fight prescriptivist English profs about it before. It only makes sense to me if we discard the premises noted at the beginning, and that doesn’t make sense to me. To my fellow men - how many times have you been told you are/are not a man on the basis of factors beyond having an Y chromosome, a dick and male secondary sexual characteristics? And you’re still certain that gender identity is inherent on the basis of biological sex alone, rather than related but distinct social constructions?
does not neatly fit into the category of man or woman
What defines the category of man?
Great question, and one that’s pretty fraught at the moment. I don’t have an answer beyond a tautology - a man is someone who identifies as a man - and the knowledge that some cultures assign adherence to certain behavioural norms to that (ex. A man acts as breadwinner, is competitive, has a certain type of physicality distinct from women, etc.), most of which crumble with any hard look at them.
To be frank, I don’t really care about what a man or woman is. If identifying as a man if female, or a woman if male, makes it so someone doesn’t want to blow their brains out, then that’s a cool and good thing. But note the distinction - man != male and woman != female in my statement.
some cultures assign adherence to certain behavioural norms to that
Isn’t that sexism, something we should be fighting by saying “women can do that too?”
Hetero means straight, but was needlessly confusing (it’s literally Greek), right? So in the future, English will have a different pronoun that means the same as singular they.
They got me! I have to admit, “welfare” leaves a bad taste in my mouth where “helping the poor” sounds fair enough. I grew up under Reagan, heard the bullshit, know it’s bullshit, I get it.
And you know damned well what those words really mean. Welfare = black, poor people = whites. (That’s from a GenX perspective.)
Welfare = black, poor people = whites.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner.
So weird. As a Scandinavian, “welfare” to me means schools, healthcare, elderly care, sick pay, paid parental leave etc., paid for by the shared burden of taxes for the benefit of everyone.
It is a word with entirely positive connotations for me.
Our famous and revered constitution actually says in its thesis statement that one of the purposes of our government is to provide for the general welfare
“Think of how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin
I heard a working theory that we have too many humans on the planet. Some of them were supposed to be reincarnated as ferrets or insects but came back as humans instead. These are the people who are now in charge.
I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that modern medicine has saved the life of too many idiots who went on to have idiot children. It’s hard to have that conversation without people assuming you’re venturing into eugenics but it is a real thing.
Idiocracy is real! I just thought it would actually be hundreds of years into the future, not 20.
because welfare has been propagandized as used by “lazy and homeless, and poors, and blacks” its usually based on racism as well, the true welfare queens are Conservative voters.
Oh the TRUE welfare queens are billionaires, corporations get more assistance than people
Oh this definitely
Ah, ~40% of Americans are complete fucking morons, that sounds about right.
~40% of Americans also read and write at an elementary school level or worse, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
… I think we’ve found the mythical ‘independent, median voter’.
Ah, ~40% of Americans are complete fucking morons, that sounds about right.
You’re leaving out the 29% who are against it no matter what you call it.
Those are evil people, who do not want to help other people. But this 40% are the people who would do the correct thing but they are convinced it’s bad and vote against their interest
Those are seniors on social security and medicare
thevoidzero basically captured my response, but yeah.
A total fucking moron is a person who is literally too stupid to understand anything going on around them at anything but the most basic level of abstraction.
They have no ability for critical analysis, very little independent thought going on beyond what immediately and directly affects them, personally.
That isn’t to say they can’t learn. Its just that they can’t really ‘think’.
‘The mark of an educated man is the ability to honestly entertain a thought they do not believe in.’
They can’t do that, that would be very difficult snd confusing for them, cause them immense discomfort.
Functionally too stupid to be responsible members of a modern democracy, easily tricked by propoganda… essentially amoral, because they cannot formulate nor adhere to any kind of consistent, intentional moral framework.
…
The 29% below… well, they may or may not be relatively stupid, but they at least have a consistent belief, albeit an evil one… this shows they have an above elementary capability for abstraction and consistentcy.
Which unfortunately also means that only about 30% of people are, at worst, well intentioned, but could also possibly be stupid, though not as stupid as our glorious 40% in the middle that is easily swayed by rhetoric, phrasing, emotional manipulation, “vibes”, etc.
54% of Americans read at below a grade 6 level.
Welfare is may litterally just mean ‘moocher’ to an American who has been drowned in propaganda their whole life.
I read about that and i’m not sure what to make of it. My nephew is in second grade soon, and he can read pretty well. He doesn’t like it, because it’s still hard for him. But i’m sure in 2 or 3 years he can read well enough to become president of the united states and not be a nazi. So i’m not sure if the reading level is the problem.
As someone that works with the general public.
People are fucking dumb. Like not I’m not even kidding, there’s a skill gap to even get to a site like this…and not everyone has the ability to do it…I’m not even kidding. People are just stupid.
The timeline is this. The 1950s boomed and created the middle class. Why? FDR decided subsidizing the American people, instead of the robber Baron class, was the way. This subsidy approach to the working class had never happened before in American history.
A middle class cannot happen organically in a capitalist society. It requires government subsidy.
The 50s were built on the backs of women, forcibly ejecting them from workplaces to be housewives, and excluded people who were not white. But the American middle class was born due to these subsidies.
And so it went.
Then, in the 80s. The concept of the evil welfare queen was touted on the national level, and our government decided subsidizing corporate instead of a middle class was the way.
This doesn’t happen overnight, but they begin chipping away at subsidies for Middle Class America and flip those subsidies to corporate America. The belief is, or at least the sales pitch is, subsidizing corporate America is more fiscally efficient than subsidizing the middle class and will ultimately benefit everyone to create a booming, thriving nation.
And so it goes for 40 yrs. Both parties, in tandem.
The chipping away to go back to the subsidizing of a middle class started in the oddest of places. 2020. After the massive destruction of the middle class, and abject proof of how disastrous to the working class subsidizing corporate America is, absolutely squeezing everyone making less than $300k/yr, by the numbers, it was that old man’s admin that tried to shift back on the disaster. Infrastructure, junk fees, internet as an essential utility, student loan forgiveness, etc
The breadth of the problem cannot be fixed in 4 yrs. Or even 8 yrs. Consider how long it took from the 80s to truly feel the oppressive shift of the subsidy change. (I’m old. I mark ~2012-2014 when things started to feel squeezed.)
Also note that you can’t mention Reagan or trickle down economics in this or you lose people.
Could FDR have done what he did without what Theodire Roosevelt did? Teddy has his faults but I feel he built the groundwork that FDR could build on. Granted it had diminished between them, but he faught for the inheritance tax and income tax to become a thing rather than just Tariffs. Tariffs were what were used at the time and created the “Robber Barons” that the Heritage foundation is trying to re-establish.
This is not my area. I’ve simply consumed a lot of Heather Cox Richardson. She’s a Harvard educated American History professor. Posts on YT. Not very popular last check.
It’s calm, historical perspective which I rather enjoy.
I’ll have to try to remember that, I’ll bookmark her. Been trying to listen to ebooks and such when I lay down to sleep now, it actually has been helping me fall asleep much easier. Hardest part is remembering where you left off if you care about the books. I’ll have to find one of those don’t stop playing after the screen is off and see if I can listen to her as well. (Instead of laying there for an hour feeling like I’m not tired and fidgetting I just listen and I’m usually asleep in 30 minutes now). <Vast improvement
Smart audiobook reader has a sleep timer so does YouTube revanced
Thanks I’ll have to look into the audiobook one! Was trying to dodge YouTube, but I couldn’t get any of those videos mentioned above to play in Tubular. I hadn’t tried that app in a while, so maybe it’s just the app and I’ll find another
Anyone can be poor, but only they are on welfare.
Publishers note: They usually refers to African Americans, but can be used for any suspicious minorities.
its almost always used as negative connation against blacks, or unsavory demographics. while the people, white conservatives railing on these people are the biggest welfare queens.
don’t forget wall street and corporations. if you fuck up, congratulations now you’re homeless. if they fuck up, congratulations you’re gonna bail them out.
That actually follows from the traditional argument against possibility of welfare - if the state can do such help, it’ll first give it to closest to it, which are the people who need it the least.
But I think with direct democracy it’d be fine. At least some middle ground would be found between those voting for “free money” and those voting so that others wouldn’t get “free money”. Unlike now when depending on who you are it’s either always free money or always fuck you.
EDIT: In general radical political models are better thought through fundamentally. Real world ones work in arcane ways, usually not the ones publicly declared, and rely on lots of inertia to be functional. But both radical marxism (direct democracy and full on social involvement) and radical ancap (no common decisions at all, no common social involvement at all) lack such vulnerabilities. That’s unfortunately the reason people with real world power don’t need them. If you have real world power, you’d support the change that gives you more power or preserves what you have. So for a model to be plausible it needs to have vulnerabilities, to attract real-world support. Only disadvantaged people really want a perfect model, and they are not the ones deciding.
Hence another radical variant - radical agnosticism of political systems, try to always keep as variable and diverse mix as possible, so that power, advantage and disadvantage were more or less equally spread, allowing people to live maybe not in heaven, but not in hell too. Decision-making systems as mixed as possible, legal spaces as diverse as possible, and so on.
People are emotional creatures.
Someone was joking in another thread, but maybe we should seriously consider just taking socialism and calling it, like, americanism.
Yeah if you want to pitch socialism to people who don’t know what it is, just describe its parts as individual policies. Don’t actually use the word “socialism” - that makes the rednecks scurred >_>
And if you do say socialism, say it along with something they like that isn’t scurry. For example, “socialism, like the fire department”.
“It’s like crowdsourcing, but with community and business supporting resources!”
Yup, look at the overwhelming support citizens have for the Affordable Care Act… but haaaaaaaaaaaate Obamacare.
american dreamism
“Freedomism”
Don’t use the buzzwords Republicans have spent decades poisoning.
yup, including entitlements, Woke,etc.
Entitlements is a weird one. A person who wrongly believes they are entitled to money/power/respect is “entitled” in a derogatory sense. A person who has paid into the Social Security and Medicare programs for three or four decades is truly, genuinely, entitled to the payout of those programs.
And Republicans believing entitlement programs are bad, when so many of them are dependent on these programs to maintain a basic standard of living, is an astounding level of doublethink.
Yep. Never use a ten dollar word when a 50 cent one does the job better. The left wing needs to dump it’s highbrow (and cringe celebrity endorsements) and use the language of the common people in simple terms that cannot be demonised (or would sound insane to try).
Also, this is a prime example of how demonising words, especially buzzwords, is the strategy they use to make it lose all rationality with the public… the notion of being “woke” originally a good thing, welfare a good thing, etc…
Doesn’t work, they take the cheap words too. “Fake news” was originally used for right-wing propaganda. The only solution is education so that future generations are more aware of and resistant to dog whistles and doublespeak.
They managed to make DEI a divisive word, I presume because they always used the abbreviation, because how else can you poison these words.
Sadly, more than 50% of Americans a grade school vocabulary. Imagine trying to convince a kid in grade 6 that helping the poor is not bad.
Ngl but most of the kids have no problems with helping other people.
Kinda like ACA/Obamacare.
I’m of the opinion Americans want help and want to help others, but get lost in political rhetoric and a culture war designed to ensure no one gets anything.
Our old babysitter lost her insurance and was suffering. Ex-wife suggested the ACA, showed her how to apply.
“Thank you so much! At least it isn’t that damned Obamacare!”
These people exist, millions of them. And most Americans can’t fucking read and understand a novel.
As an old friend of mine once had a habit of saying in a sing song voice:
Read a book, read a book, read a motherfucking book!
Nah. A lot of people are stupid and selfish. You should look into the new evangelical mantra that “empathy is a sin”.
IIRC “ACA” and “Obamacare” had similar divides. Propaganda is a helluva drug.
One of the main reasons why USAID was the first part of the government targeted was because of things like this.
If you frame their work as “Assistance to disasters” or other variations, plus the context of it being under 1% of the Federal budget, Americans were find with it. If you call it “giving taxpayer money to foreigners” then it’s wildly unpopular.
Which is to say that the lesson is that most people are idiots and have no idea what’s going on in the world. Framing a narrative can get the same individual to simultaneously support and hate literally the same thing. It can get people to support policies and actions that directly harm them.
Which is to say that the lesson is that most people are idiots and have no idea what’s going on in the world.
Not that the information channels that inform them blast high-octane corporate-friendly propaganda since childhood, leaving no attention for any other perspectives?
I wonder what the general opinion of USAID would have been if it had been described as “feeding poor people so their rulers can buy US weapons instead”.
