"Absolute truth does not exist" is an oxymoron and if you believe that then you're irrational and not worth arguing with.
Tennessee, USA
Joined January 2023
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Neo retweeted
Mr. Obama, your own administration selectively targeted people for their political beliefs.
Your IRS flagged Tea Party, Patriot, and 9/12 groups by name for years. Your IRS asked for prayer contents, membership lists, donor lists, backend access to websites, and more. Congressional testimony revealed Tea Party donors were 6 times more likely than the average taxpayer to be individually audited. Your actions chilled Tea Party groups, and many groups shut down rather than paying thousands to attorneys and accountants to answer the invasive, unconstitutional questions from your administration.
At the same time, your FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Unit repeatedly contacted True the Vote, an organization that grew directly out of the Tea Party, and its founder Catherine Engelbrecht, seeking membership lists and information about attendees. Your office audited her business and personal taxes and subjected her to ATF and OSHA inspections, all beginning after she applied for nonprofit status.
We know what selective targeting looks like because we lived it under your watch. Spare us the lecture.
It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say. But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
To understand why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts. Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old. Five years later, her father became a naturalized citizen. If Ilhan had been 18 at the time, she would have had to apply for citizenship separately. But because she was 17, she became a naturalized citizen automatically.
Congresswoman Omar went on to graduate from college, work as a community organizer, become the first Somali-American legislator elected to public office in the U.S., and win a seat in Congress. There, she has been one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics, which has led the president to repeatedly single her out as someone who he believes does not belong in this country.
Now the Administration is actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar, seemingly based solely on the unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and therefore is not a citizen. Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case.
Think about that. The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.
In those cases, the prosecutions either stalled or were dismissed for having no basis in law, and the same is likely to happen in this case. But not before Congresswoman Omar’s life has been turned upside down, her legal bills have piled up, and she’s been forced to spend time fighting unsubstantiated charges instead of serving the people of Minnesota.
The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.
Neo retweeted
Almost all of Israel’s neighboring countries have codified ethnic and/or religious national identities. The “we just don’t like ethnostates” line always rings hollow when one small country in the Middle East is the singular focus of this particular critique.
Neo retweeted
“The response to the Charles Manson thing. It wasn’t ‘Maybe we need to look at what we’re doing if it makes some crazy person do this.’ Actors’ response was to take their faces off magazines and get security. It’s like, you don’t think you need to examine this? You’re not the president. You’re just an actor.”
.@billburr criticizes corporations' reaction to Luigi Mangione's killing of a health care CEO:
“The response to the Luigi [Mangione] thing. It wasn’t ‘Maybe we need to look at what we’re doing if it makes some crazy person do this.’ [Healthcare executives’] response was to take their faces off the internet and get security. It’s like, you don’t think you need to examine this? You’re not the president. You’re just the CEO of a business.”
Neo retweeted
We’ve reached peak “every day will be pizza day in the cafeteria if I’m elected class president.”
Trump pledges a $5,000 ‘dividend’ to all US adults if the GOP wins the midterms dlvr.it/TVPpsm
Neo retweeted
In American schools, when lunch ends,
children throw their trays into plastic bins and walk away.
A hired janitor comes in later to sweep up the mess.
In Japan, there are no janitors.
At 12:15 p.m., the students put on white smocks, hairnets, and masks.
They carry heavy pots of soup from the kitchen themselves.
They ladle out equal portions for their classmates.
Nobody touches their spoon until everyone is served and they say "Itadakimasu" together.
Then, at 1:00 p.m., something even more profound happens:
O-soji. Cleaning time.
Seven-year-old kids get on their hands and knees with white cloths — zokin.
They push those cloths down the long wooden hallways,
polishing the grain until it shines like glass.
They wipe the chalkboards. They clean the toilets.
The teachers clean alongside them.
Why make children scrub floors?
Because when you spend fifteen minutes on your knees scrubbing a floor,
you will never, for the rest of your life,
drop a piece of trash on it.
It teaches a child that no work is below them.
No human being is born a master.
A high-trust society isn't born from laws.
It's born on the knees of seven-year-olds
taking pride in a clean floor.
🤖 Made with AI
Neo retweeted
I think this is a fair criticism honestly. What if, as a compromise, we were to create a legislative branch that was coequal to the Senate but whose members were allotted proportionally to population instead of just representing a whole state… A Representative House, if you will
Neo retweeted
I’ve experienced literally all of these things, and worse. I’ve been dirt poor. I’ve supplemented my hourly wage with Uber and pizza delivery to cover the bills. I’ve been to Aldi with the last $30 in my bank account thinking how on earth I would feed my family for a week. (beans and rice, btw) I’m doing better now, but struggled for many, years.
You forget—I didn’t say “you poors can just eat cheap slop.” I literally said “Hey guys, this is what we ate for dinner last night and it was great.” I’m not Marie Antoinette in this picture. I’m a normal person saying “here’s what I do, you can do it too” and it ENRAGES people.
A lot of commentators and people in media and podcasters and politicians have never actually had to worry about how they would afford groceries. They've never had an overdrawn checking account. They've never been hassled by a landlord because their rent is overdo. They've never had their cell service cut off because they couldn't pay it. They've never had to put two gallons in their tank because they couldn't afford to fill it all the way up. They've never had a car break down because they couldn't afford to take it to the mechanic. I'm not one to talk about "lived experience" (which is a term I hate) but I do think that actually experiencing the stress and indignity of not being able to afford to participate in modern life is extremely clarifying, and gives you a perspective that sticks with you even after you achieve financial success. I think this is one of the dividing lines in the affordability debate. People who are flippant about affordability concerns obviously lack the perspective that being broke gives you.
Neo retweeted
No, I didn’t. That “Christ is King” troll was started to support proven blasphemer/slanderer/Jezebel Candace Owens over a meaningless (in the grand scheme of things) feud with non-messianic Jew Ben Shapiro. It clearly violated the commandment against taking the Lord’s name in vain. It had nothing to do with whether it offended Ben or any other non-believer, but the fact it broke God’s Law and offended Him. We’re not Muslims, who believe unbelievers are chattel. We’re Christians, who must love our neighbors as we do ourselves. And we don’t get to violate His Law to pester or provoke unbelievers. God will not be mocked.
Neo retweeted
This is of course all a lie.
Leftists do not, in fact, typically reason in consequentialist fashion.
If they did, they would be willing to discuss such things as what the harms and benefits of e.g. their radical ideas about racial equality, demographic replacement, etc., are. Or the harms and benefits of rejecting sex in favor of gender identity.
Instead, everything on the Left is framed, in fact, as deontological absolutes:
"Trans women are women", "no human is illegal," "borders are illegitimate", "all racial disparities or inequities are illegitimate," etc.
The Left is famously the side that DOES NOT BELIEVE that there are always trade-offs.
Hence it is FALSE that Leftists typically reason in terms of trade-offs.
And they certainly do not in terms of abortion. Leftists believe that women have AN ABSOLUTE RIGHT to abortion. To them, it has nothing to do with a greater or lesser evil.
And when they do try to use the language of lesser evil, they are very bad at it. Hence the typical pro-abortion move: "this child might have a difficult life; therefore it is better to murder it."
Conservative brain can be interesting. They start with a deontological premise, that you must always do good, abortion is murder and therefore evil, you cannot have an abortion.
They assume liberals use the same moral framework, except in reverse. They think we think that murder is good or even doing evil is better than doing good, so they get very confused and cannot understand how liberals reach the conclusions they do.
When conservatives reason like this, it doesn't cross their mind that liberals are not, that we don't look for universal principles or rule-based ethics, and often reach conclusions from a consequentialist framework.
Liberals think abortion is permissible because the alternative in a lot of cases is far worse. That's all that is going on. Which a conservative with a very deontological bent cannot see, so they project their own reasoning patterns on liberals and get wacky conclusions.
Neo retweeted
Honestly, if academics truly believe this about themselves, just shut the whole thing down. No public funding for university academics. It was a fun experiment but taxpayers should no longer pay for people to professionally hate them.
Neo retweeted
8 thousand atheists unironically believe this is a great point. I mean… where do I even begin.
I guess I’ll start with what should be obvious. Saying “morality is something I just make up” is a massive concession. That means on atheism, morality is like God, made up. Things like obligations, right and wrong, evil, are in the same category as things like angels, fairies, and unicorns: Fiction 🦄
The other obvious problem with this is that as soon as you say you make up morality, you’ve lost any chance of claiming moral high ground. If morality is made up, whatever you make up is no better or worse than what I make up. We’re literally arguing fiction. It’s like children using their imagination and arguing about who’s made up monster would win in a fight…
This means saying “I happen to be against slavery” is no more meaningful than saying “I happen to like pineapples on my pizza, unlike God.”
The atheist rejects the exact standard they’re implicitly appealing to when they attempt to virtue signal that their morality is somehow better than God’s morality.
And no matter how simply you explain this to them, they can’t get it. It’s like trying to teach physics to a chicken.
Neo retweeted
Public school v homeschool: what does the data say?
To answer this question, we need to get beyond anecdotes and even beyond individual studies. What does the majority consensus of studies say?
Out of 24 different studies on that question, 62% showed homeschool outperforming public school by a statistically significant margin. 17% found no statistical difference in performance. And only a single study suggested public school did better in its sampling.
Okay but what the soft skills-- interpersonal and emotional development? You get about the same numbers-- 64% of studies favor homeschool, with a small minority favoring public school and a healthy percent of no difference.
What about lifetime success in adulthood? Not as strong, but still slightly favoring homeschool: 54% in the homeschool camp a few favoring public school, and a lot of "it doesn't matter."
And while many homeschoolers report "culture shock" following school, the effects are short-lived, and homeschoolers also show in the studies to later develop lower rates of substance abuse, higher rates of charity, and other pro-social behaviors in adulthood.
So, is homeschooling the cause of these generally better results? Well, there are a few asterisks. The biggest is this:
Homeschooling generally correlate with stable, middle or upper class households with two involved parents. That home life has always been the strongest indicator of success in schooling and in life. So do the homeschoolers outperform because their family chose to homeschool? Or just because their family is involved at all? Current studies don't seem to answer that question well, yet.
But this much we can tell from the statistics: if homeschooling has any causative effect, it's certainly doesn't appear to be a negative one. From the data, the vitriol toward homeschooling is undeserved.
Here's a full Perplexity research prompt with 29 sources so you can read all the studies, the findings, and the asterisks for yourself:
perplexity.ai/search/who-doe…
🤖 Made with AI
Neo retweeted
I agree that conservatives should engage in pro-social acts of collective sacrifice... when it is necessary
But it's important to note that "you need to make this sacrifice for the collective good" is a strategy that is commonly employed as a power play
It is the argument for recycling (a useless practice), it was employed endlessly during Covid on masking, vaccination, and social distancing
The request for pro-social sacrifice only works if people feel like they are a part of their community. But if you ask people to set they thermostat to 78 and then the city buildings that are actually under your control refuse to do so, the request sounds less like "sacrifice for your neighbors" and more like "you common folk need to sacrifice so your betters can have good things"
This is fascinating to me, because beyond the surface level it illuminates why conservatives are often so full of shit.
The baseline here is that there's a heatwave, and Mamdani asked New Yorkers to adjust their thermostats to help the grid. This is regular practice in red and blue areas of the country. Daniel posts a defiant "I'm not gonna do what mommy tells me!" style post. He surely thinks he's a very clever boy here.
Now if the message is "This is a free country, and I love my AC, and by god it's my house and no government bureaucrat can force me to change", then fine. Sure. But there is no law being proposed here. No police are bursting down your door demanding to check your thermostat. It's a request from a community leader, a polite ask that you engage in a very small pro-social sacrifice.
You would think conservatives would understand the idea that local communities should pull together in times of need. For the 'common good', perhaps. You'd think. And that they'd be happy if no government force was involved, if they could act merely because they had strong moral character and believed in private charitable action.
"Nobody should ever ask anyone to sacrifice for the common good, even if it's just a polite request" is just dipshit nihilism.
But I suspect Daniel doesn't actually believe in those conservative ideas. Or if he does, they're a distant second to the true guiding star of conservative thought: owning the libs. Given the chance to help people or own the libs, conservatives will always own the libs. Given the chance to demonstrate strong principles or own the libs, they'll always abandon the principle to own the libs. The actual philosophy of the right is merely "We hate the left". And it's sad.