On Sinema at the Sinema: October 2021 US Politics thread

on a very simplified level, it's evangelicals who want to blow up the constitution and turn the country into a theocratic hellscape, and mainstream protestants who want to take some good ideas and means test them into oblivion because so we don't undermine the concept of "work"

fwiw, Calvin died in 1564. It is 2021. Any influence his thinking has over our modern US evangelical sects is extremely tenuous and has passed through dozens of filters, been half-forgotten, adapted, and re-adapted. For example, I don't think such craziness as speaking in tongues has the slightest connection to Calvin's thought, but it is a conspicuous feature among our fundamentalist loonies.

Mandated vaccine in my workplace due in a month and a half. Several managers are going to retire rather than get the jab, and some factory workers will quit or retire. Rip off the bandaid, leave now! But I think the next month and a half will be their chance to vent about government injustice daily, and not to be missed. I don't get leaving a career at a well-paying company on this issue, but hey, if that's the hill they want to die on...

every person faces a test, the first time they're in the midst of a congregation with multiple people speaking in tongues at the same time. you have to figure out how to act, and there isn't time. you either at least nod along to it or you leave afterward and never come back. you can gyrate between those poles for a while but not for long. it is not a simple decision, which is why it is very fucked up to make children do it while they're still learning not to shit their pants

https://wallup.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/162408-calvin-and-hobbes-comics.jpg

To defend VHS (for once) I think he was referring to the Nordic countries, which are (nominally) Lutheran. Although their post-war social democracies also coincided(?) with an extreme drop in church attendance and religious belief...

We're not talking about those countries, tho, and this country was settled by persecuted religious extremists who enjoyed persecuting others, which has ultimately set the tone for how things have gone since then.

this country was settled by persecuted religious extremists who enjoyed persecuting others

Yeah, like those Quakers in Pennsylvania. It's all gotten much more complicated since 1750 or thereabouts.

Cue “American Protestantism isn’t Christianity, it’s the worship of white supremacy, ego and capital.”

Quakers had no problem killing and stealing from the Lenape.

INteresting reading about Quakers in Ibram X Kendi's Stamped too. Them being slavers too who were working against abolition initially.

& the Mayflower passengers were a bunch of self righteous drama queens who thought puritanism wasn't strict enough in England so went to Holland to be more extreme and then headed to the US to be even more sanctimonious innit

they couldn't quite explain it, they'd always just
goooonnnnne
theeeeerrrre

I don't know if this thread is the right one to discuss this or not and I'm genuinely still not sure what to make out of the whole "Havana Syndrome" thing (though I'm leaning closest to believing there is some very stupid, benign reason for this and not some evil super genius' ray gun), but I will say the rabid insistence of people online that it's completely made up and that sufferers are too dumb to realize when they have a hangover is kind of gross. It just feels all too familiar to the years and years of telling (mostly women!) that their Lyme disease symptoms were all in their heads. Idk, I just feel like we can search for more rational explanations outside the realm of science fiction without insinuating that every single sufferer is just making shit up.

Part of the issue with the US and many (not all) settler colonies is that it was settled by people who were persecuted, who then took that as justification to persecute others. The pattern continues in many of these settler colonies today.

Re: Havana Syndrome, hasn't it come out that it was "crickets"?

https://www.businessinsider.com/secret-2018-state-dept-report-havana-syndrome-noise-crickets-2021-10

I will say the rabid insistence of people online that it's completely made up and that sufferers are too dumb to realize when they have a hangover is kind of gross

My heart bleeds for CIA bureaucrats. Saying that it's mass hysteria is not the same as saying sufferers are "making shit up."

There is no magic headache ray.

you've never met my father in law

xxpost https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DeXZSVkU8AAOfzn.jpg

(And I mean, there's no evidence of "chronic Lyme" either.)

lol I should have known better than to attempt anything that could even remotely be considered sympathetic for bureaucrats. but to be clear I am reacting very specifically to the tweets I’ve seen this week that straight up quote the “sufferers” from various articles saying literally “they are making this shit up” or “morons don’t know what a hangover is”.

I also thought the crickets things was only explaining a few incidences and was ruled out for other regions where cases were reported.

I don’t disagree that mass hysteria is part of it, but I also think the dismissiveness of people’s suffering can quickly get gross. America has a long history of doing just that.

But by all means milo, dunk away since you have such an axe to grind against me.

???

This may be the only thing milo and I ever agree on, but I also think "Havana Syndrome" is bullshit and media-driven mass hysteria.

dismissiveness of people’s suffering

creating and dismissing suffering is the lifeblood of the cia higher ups who have headaches now

what about all the headaches the CIA has given us? Eh?

We're not talking about those countries, tho, and this country was settled by persecuted religious extremists who enjoyed persecuting others, which has ultimately set the tone for how things have gone since then.

― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table), Wednesday, October 20, 2021 3:33 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

That's what happened throughout the Americas, I do not believe the catholics really have been more progressive. I understand we are not talking about these other countries, but how come Canada, which a has very strong presence of Protestant ethics and culture, same for a whole bunch of other countries, have managed to be much more progressive than the US, then? What explains it? I just think the answer lies elsewhere. People have pointed out at a particular brand of evangelism and I already I personally find it a little more precise.

xp - milo, I'm annoyed because you seem to be taking a minor point of my post and attaching me for it, completely ignoring the larger point I was trying to make. You seem to do that, to me very specifically, at an alarming and almost worrying consistency.

Regardless of whatever Havana syndrome is or isn't, I was simply trying to say that it's absolutely gross to see anyone dismiss people's symptoms as "hysterical" or "made up", even if this is a media driven frenzy. It makes it too easy for more people, esp women and POC, to have their symptoms written off and ignored. That's all I meant.

"attacking"

I agree with the sentiment Jon, there's also been dismissal of symptoms wrt to low wage workers and mental health sufferers, and it's never a pleasant sight. But I can't say I didn't laugh at “morons don’t know what a hangover is”.

how come Canada, which a has very strong presence of Protestant ethics and culture, same for a whole bunch of other countries, have managed to be much more progressive than the US, then? What explains it?

Weed, iirc

xp - milo, I'm annoyed because you seem to be taking a minor point of my post and attaching me for it, completely ignoring the larger point I was trying to make. You seem to do that, to me very specifically, at an alarming and almost worrying consistency.

"Havana Syndrome" is little different from people who develop Stanky Leg Syndrome after getting their Pfizer vaccine and start gofundmes for it - dismissing a made-up syndrome (which exists to further ulterior motives - the gofundme vs. everything the CIA and American foreign services do + getting extra $$$ from Congress) is not dismissing someone else's entirely valid illness. And as I said, it's not even dismissing the (alleged, oft-changing) symptoms, but the syndrome itself and everything that's being ginned up around it.

People joking about CIA flacks being too stupid to recognize a hangover are making a joke based on the assumption that the people in question are bad people who spend their lives doing bad things so who cares if they have a headache. If that's not your attitude toward the American intelligence state, this POV will be incomprehensible.

Canada is not that much more progressive than the US.

People joking about CIA flacks being too stupid to recognize a hangover are making a joke based on the assumption that the people in question are bad people who spend their lives doing bad things so who cares if they have a headache. If that's not your attitude toward the American intelligence state, this POV will be incomprehensible.

I don't disagree that CIA flacks are generally bad people, however, I also don't like to see the normalization and cheering on of dismissing/ignoring symptoms of people suffering from something that feels legitimate and very real to them. You laughing at it because it is happening to pawns of the American war state now just makes is easier for the next group to be dismissed, which is a lot less funny when it's an already marginalized group being told their symptoms are mass hysteria.

xpost I don't know I think you would like living in Quebec.

I mean, this weapon that America has used as yet another tool to marginalize women and POC for decades is funny now because it's happening to CIA spooks is not exactly the stance I want to take.

I don't disagree that CIA flacks are generally bad people, however, I also don't like to see the normalization and cheering on of dismissing/ignoring symptoms of people suffering from something that feels legitimate and very real to them.

You could say this about literally any fucking thing. I am reminded of the parody newspaper headline "World Destroyed In Nuclear Exchange - Women, Minorities Hardest Hit".

are we also not allowed to laugh at cops who have panic attacks after touching fentanyl

if Havana Syndrome is “real”, then there is a 99.9% chance it’s an invention of our own security state, being deployed on their own unsuspecting employees to justify budgets and very existence.

if it’s the 0.1% scenario and it is actually Cuba or China or Iran or whomever we’re antagonizing this week—and we somehow can’t get to the bottom of it after the trillions of dollars we’ve wasted just this century while people go without healthcare or food or housing, then
a) GOOD, and
b) shut it all down because clearly don’t deserve to be a globe-bestriding empire any longer

From: Kamala Harris

Look ______,

These are DARK days. But there's still HOPE. Give $5 in the next 25 MINUTES, and you'll be added to our petition asking PRESIDENT CARLSON to SHUT DOWN the camps and entered into a raffle for dinner with CAMILA CABELLO!

Can we count on YOU?

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) October 20, 2021

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/10/senator-joe-manchin-democratic-party-exit-plan-biden-infrastructure-deal-exclusive/

can somebody please just bribe this guy???

I should've said: I'm not sure I'm buying that story. Manchin voted to impeach Trump. Twice. The party would never accept him, not even to stick it to Schumer and Biden.

otoh

MANCHIN to @burgessev and me on the report he is threatening to leave the Democratic Party if his demands are not met on infrastructure: “I can’t control rumors and it’s bullshit, bullshit spelled with a B, U, L, L, capital ‘B’”: pic.twitter.com/ex8iHMIiSs

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) October 20, 2021

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/6e69ce0b-7fb1-48b6-a8e0-fb438dd304fe

I mean, this weapon that America has used as yet another tool to marginalize women and POC for decades is funny now because it's happening to CIA spooks is not exactly the stance I want to take.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, October 20, 2021 5:32 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think the point is mostly to reiterate how edgy and cool it is to dismiss CIA workers and I wouldn't take it personally.

b) shut it all down because clearly don’t deserve to be a globe-bestriding empire any longer

I mean, I think this could be said regardless, without any qualifiers tbh.

BULLBshit

but how come Canada, which a has very strong presence of Protestant ethics and culture, same for a whole bunch of other countries, have managed to be much more progressive than the US, then?

If you honestly believe that Canada is a bastion of progressivism, then I can't take anything you say seriously, fwiw.

are we also not allowed to laugh at cops who have panic attacks after touching fentanyl

That's not even comparable though, that's just born out of sheer stupidity and will always be hilarious.

Quakers had no problem killing and stealing from the Lenape.

― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table), Wednesday, October 20, 2021 3:44 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

INteresting reading about Quakers in Ibram X Kendi's Stamped too. Them being slavers too who were working against abolition initially.

& the Mayflower passengers were a bunch of self righteous drama queens who thought puritanism wasn't strict enough in England so went to Holland to be more extreme and then headed to the US to be even more sanctimonious innit

― Stevolende, Wednesday, October 20, 2021 4:00 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is one of the best things in Mason & Dixon, how the ideals/rhetoric of the enlightenment in this country didn't exactly match the reality, especially with regard to indigenous people and Africans.