George H. W. Bush Dies at 94

She’s just mad because her puppy ran away when she was little. To the next door neighbors. Then barked at her if she came near.

I’m saying that the leftists of today are taking their ridiculous outrage culture to ever higher heights of absurdity. It can’t just be a touching picture of a dog in front of a casket, can it? No, you’re all rubes for being moved by it, because people on twitter or something.

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Someone brings up can’t we stay partisan free and partisan argument breaks out. Sounds good.

Fuck Democrats and Republicans.

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Yes. Politics are definitely less civil now than ever.

On second thought, American politics are probably more civil than ever before. Very few politicians disagree with one another on anything of substance, and disagreements are very slight even then.

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Are you not for the elimination of feel-good fluff pieces that serve no purpose but to use emotional appeal to spread falsehoods?

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(sigh)

@twojarslave:

And the Right is not guilty of the exact same crap?

Please…

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Not to the extent we see from today’s leftists. Not even close. Here we have a prominent liberal media outlet going after service dogs and the people who are moved by them. You can find crap like this on a near-daily basis from Slate and their ilk.

I await your example of something similarly ridiculous getting published from any prominent conservative leaning media outlet. Point it out and I’ll gladly join you in the ridicule.

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No you won’t, @twojarslave

It’s there to see if you choose to see it.

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What falsehoods were being spread that needed debunking? I followed her links and, so far as I can tell, the author took offense to what some people on twitter said. So the dog wasn’t a lifelong companion of a guy who was in his 90’s, as someone on twitter said. I was astounded to learn that Sully the service dog wasn’t 700 dog years old.

Well then, an example should be easy to come by.

My Dad’s best friend, who died of after a bout of Alzheimer’s, was a big fan of GHWB. He worked in the Secret Service, specifically with the VP’s communication team IIRC and always appreciated the way GHWB called him “Chief.” It was his professional title, after all, but something about old Mr Shafer loved hearing the vice president call him that.

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This is a silly example, of course, but you sound outraged that people shouldn’t just give in to knee-jerk reactionary emotions upon seeing a picture. You sound way more outraged than the author does.

It was a fluff piece, someone commented on the fluff piece, and you sound, strangely enough, like you’ve been “trained to find things to be critical of and outraged over.” The article makes a good point - there are pieces all over the internet like this. 99 year old veteran walks 16 miles to visit his wife every day! Except he’s not 99, not a veteran, walks 1 mile. It’s sweet, it’s nice, but it’s filled with lies. Sneak in enough little lies into something, and when does the truth become overshadowed by all the bullshit?

Oh, and here are some headlines from Breitbart:
“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy”
“Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?”
“LGBT Hate-Flag Replaces American Flag over Reno City Hall”

You saying the word ‘leftist’ every post (and all over this forum), does absolutely nothing but further widen the political divide. You don’t even talk about them like they’re people.

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Goddamn you beat me to it. I had just pulled this from my cousin’s FB

He’s got a hella family itellyouwot

That’s not my intention and I apologize if that’s the impression I’ve given. I try to stick to ideas and back my points up with facts and evidence, which is why I always challenge people to provide examples. You won’t find me citing any articles from Breitbart, and I’ll gladly agree that their standards are just as low as Slates.

Edit: For the record, I still think most of the ideas being put forward by modern leftists are objectively terrible and I’ve spoken extensively about my line of thought regarding this, but please do not confuse that with me disliking anyone on a personal level. Some of my very best friends are die-hard liberals. The only person in my life that I have a personal problem with due to politics is my sister-in-law, and that’s due to her choices and conduct. I rarely speak of politics outside of this forum.

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Was there an actual line from the slate article you disagreed with? I admittedly only glanced through it when Legalsteel posted it, but upon rereading, it comes off very calm.

I’d be interested in your take on what, specifically, you disagreed with the author on.

I absolutely accept this, I was in no way implying that any of your ideas were invalid. It’s just that overusing the term “leftist” (or right-wing) waters down the meaning until it’s a dehumanizing term. It’s roughly 50% of the country, and of that 50%, how many of them actually share the same views? We’re talking from Doug Jones to Antifa; from Lindsey Graham to Neo-Nazis. The most left-leaning ideas are not representative of most of the left, and the same goes for right wingers. You yourself frequently roll in BJJ with a trans individual (caught me, I have read a bunch of your training log, it’s good stuff), so I wouldn’t just say you’re right-wing, though general conservative values decry large parts of the LGBT movement.

My use of “outrage culture” was, in hindsight, not the best choice of words. In this particular case, “sucking the joy out of life” culture might have been more appropriate.

My issue with the article is that it took something that is non-partisan and (almost) universally considered positive and decided to throw shit all over it, using links to twitter comments as backing material. It’s not like Fox News was out there saying the dog was some kind of wunderhund or making up stories about it. The links went to twitter comments and CNN. Even if people on twitter wanted to believe that the service dog was, say, a psychic spirit animal watching over Bush 41’s ghost as it made it’s way to the great big Haliburton in the sky, nobody was being harmed by it. There was no policy involved. It was a nice picture no matter how you cut it, unless you’re an author at Slate. So they found a person on twitter who thought the dog was a lifetime companion? Great, you can find people on twitter who will say that their dog is Jesus. That’s not newsworthy. It’s just, to steal Legalsteel’s words, partisan rancor.

On a broader note, this seems to fit with the pattern I’ve observed of far-left activists turning over every leaf in sight to find things to be offended by, or, in the absence of offense, critical of. The pattern I’ve seen is that this is very selectively applied, which is why we have San Francisco radio stations banning “Baby It’s Cold Outside”, which someone decided is offensive after over 70 years.

I understand the arguments of why it was banned, even if I disagree with them. I’ll take those people seriously on an intellectual level when they have the stones to level the same arguments against the misogyny found in top 40 pop music. Or broad swaths of the Muslim world.

It’s never been my case that wack-job editorials are the exclusive domain of the left, but my lying eyes tell me that the party of '92 Clinton is nowhere in sight. It’s gone, replaced by people who I can’t seem to find very many lucid thoughts flowing from at all.

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Point taken, and point well-made. Specific language is important.

Yes, and my trans-friend is one of the very few people I actually discuss politics with in real-life.

I’m very conservative, but there’s nothing inherently anti-LGBTQI in conservative principles. Conservatism as I practice it (and vote, as well as I’m able) advocates equality for all, which is why I oppose legislation that steps into the very murky waters of mis-gendering someone, like Canada’s bill C-16 and similar legislation being introduced at various levels here in the USA. There are plenty of conservatives who don’t like gay people or trans people because Bible this or that or they’re just plain insecure, but I don’t particularly care about other people’s wacky beliefs. I care about policy.

I do my very best to refer to my friend in the gender neutral pronouns it prefers (and yes, “it” is one of the pronouns my friend wants to use). I’m not used to calling someone “it”, especially if they are jacked and have a deeper voice than me. I call it “he” all the time, and I get forgiven constantly. I wouldn’t be friends with the person if I was being held hostage to linguistic gymnastics. I think that’s why it values my friendship too. That said, I have a hard time agreeing with most policy recommendations you hear from LGBTQ advocacy groups, aside from including trans people as a protected class with regards to labor law. If I was my trans friend’s boss in Canada or certain US jurisdictions, I could be subject to lawsuits and all kinds of other horrible consequences because I can’t keep up with the linguistic gymnastics.

If you think you can do it seamlessly, get a trans friend and try to not slip up! My trans friend and I were out at the bar tonight btw, which is why I’m still up typing past midnight.

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Which line specifically threw shit all over it? It seemed to be a very calm opinion piece that simply pointed out the dog wasn’t a longtime companion, as was becoming the prevelent message online. It even went on to say the dog may be even experiencing the dog equiv of grief.

Well, right. It was a fluff piece about a fluff piece?

Like getting upset about a fluff piece referencing a fluff piece? A fluff piece that didn’t disrespect GW or the dog?

You would, of course, extend this sentiment to the party of 88 Bush, right? This seems to be a kinda strange duh statement. Neither party exists in the format of even 15 years ago. Let alone 20-30