ELECTION RESULTS

[blues]

There are plenty of white thugs, they just can’t pronounce thug properly due to meth mouth.

You can’t rellace it with “urban” because I can assure you there are plenty of white, black and Hispanic scumbags who embrace the criminal lifestyle in rural areas. They “country.”

Those parts of the map are marked “Jesus and Meth.”

So that's how Methuselah abbreviates his name...

"...been around for a long, long year...stole many a man's soul and faith..."

[JRB]

I miss the good old days of, say, 10 years ago. When I could condemn someone's behavior or actions in clear terms. And I could do so without having to tap-dance through a minefield full of common words that suddenly started carrying some racist or otherwise bigoted connotation that I neither knew about or agreed on.
What's worse, is most of the time these terms can be used freely without those connotations so long as you're *NOT* you know, a white male.
To be clear, I'm totally okay with the double-standard on the 'N' word, and after the flap with Bill Maher using that word carelessly on his show some time back, I thought Ice Cube explained it perfectly and in an understandable way - he said that "It's our word now, just leave it alone". Cool. Done. It wasn't in my vernacular anyway.

But the snowballing of additional words to carrying that kind of negativity is just bullshit. Thugs, assholes, deadbeats, monsters, shitheads, turds, animals, etc all speak specifically about someone's *WILLFUL BEHAVIOR* and nothing else. When I hear or read 'Thug' I understand that to be someone who is proud of engaging in violent criminal behavior and victimizing other people. You can find that behavior in folks of all flavors and colors. Similarly, when something is described as 'Third World' I'm imagining massive corruption in Gov/LE and a stark wealth/equity stratification between the 'haves' and 'have nots'.

I resent the hell out these changes in our vernacular. I have spent the majority of my life doing my level best to avoid unintended offense to people, because being polite and considerate of others was important when I was raised.
But there's no hesitation anymore. It's just instant accusations of being racist. Not 'That can sound racist to some people', not 'That comes off as racist because of XYZ', no, I'm just instantly and automatically a fucking racist. It feels to me like one side is simply trying to weaponize our own language against us to give them that much more reason to attack me and people who think like me, and share the experience of this mortal coil with a similar melanin content and XY chromosome pair.

Now, with how little it takes to be aggressively called a 'racist' or 'sexist' or 'bigot' or anything else, I find myself caring about those accusations less and less. There's a growing population of folks that will emphatically declare that it's impossible for me to NOT be racist because of my skin color and XY chromosome pair. The few times I've tried to earnestly and openly engage and try to understand those sorts of folks it just elevates into shrill screaming and nastier accusations. I don't understand it and they refuse to budge or acknowledge anything else.
Basically because I exist as I am, I should be exterminated if I can't be converted, coerced, or incentivized to adopt one of an 'okay' list of deviant lifestyle decisions such as dating other dudes or substantially altering my appearance with tattoos, body mods, etc and thereby join ranks with them as a somehow marginalized population. I don't want to do those things nor do I agree with many of their views - even though I emphatically agree with some. Barring that conversion, the only thing left in their mind is to condemn me and try to destroy me and anyone like me, it seems.

So I rapidly reaching a point where I just don't give a shit about being called 'racist' or 'sexist' because I feel powerless to defend against it, and nothing productive occurs from attempting to defend against it. That is *NOT* a good thing. But I can't maintain civility and empathy forever against people that steadfastly refuse to show me even a shred of it in return, or even acknowledge my right to my own beliefs and views.

And every time I see someone (especially otherwise intelligent, rational people) get 'triggered' by an inadvertent use of common words that were clearly not meant in the way they're being interpreted - the closer I get to that event horizon of just not giving a tenth-inch slice of microwaved MRE shit what any of them think or say, if they can't be bothered to even *TRY* to understand what I'm actually saying in the first place.

[jetfire]

R's saying thug is almost always racist, gotcha, it's like when D's say urban, I'm tracking with you now.

(ETA: and for the record, if we ever meet up somewhere, the first round is on me...esp if its bourbon.)

Deal.

I mean who doesn’t like bourbon? Terrorists, that’s who.

[Mike C]

For those that don't get what Jetfire is saying, there is a large reloading forum that has an unmoderated members only political subforum. If you join up and read the posts, you'll quickly understand that the undercurrent is pretty ugly.

Yeah well the only problem I have with that is comparing people here who might use the word thug in comparison to those who might with a, "racist undertone." Jetfire is also the one who brought skin color into it unless I completely missed a post. As Blue's and I think HCM pointed out the term Thug transcends race. In addition PF isn't that forum and probably never would be given the quality of our mods and the members that comprise PF. I can see his responses being a little inflammatory despite now understanding where he was coming.

[Chance]

From BBC News:

If Donald Trump has one undisputable achievement during the first two years of his presidency, it's that he has succeeded in increasing the political engagement of a large share of the American public.

Preliminary figures for nationwide turnout in the 2018 mid-term elections are in, and they've reached a mark not seen in more than a century. Across the US, 49.2% of the voting age public cast ballots. In 2014 that number was 37%, and the average over the last few decades has hovered around 40%.

The last time turnout for a mid-term topped 50% was 1914 - before women had the vote in the US.

In some states, the numbers were even higher. Washington and Colorado, which heavily utilise voting by mail, topped the list at 69.4% and 65.5%, respectively. Minnesota, always a high-participation state, came in at 64.3% this year.

Even states with lower 2018 turnout saw sharp increases over recent mid-terms. In Texas enthusiasm generated by Democrat Beto O'Rourke (who was narrowly defeated) helped boost turnout to 46.1%, compared to 28.3% in 2014. Georgia, which had a contentious governor race, saw an increase from 38.6% to 55%.

In California, where several prominent Republican congressional incumbents have been unseated, turnout rose from 30.7% to 47.8%

[Bart Carter]

One of the things I notice is how much money is spent by the left to beat Republicans. And how well it works. Although I still can't believe that 70 million dollars were spent on Beto O'Rourke's campaign to beat Cruz and he still lost. But not by much.

[OlongJohnson]

R's saying thug is almost always racist, gotcha, it's like when D's say urban, I'm tracking with you now.

"Urban lifestyle" was just a marketing term in the early 2000s to refer to a particular segment of the custom car scene and the associated culture. It was stereotyped as comprising mostly black people, but nobody wanted to not be able to sell stuff to the Hispanic, Asian and white people who chose to participate in it by excluding them. It was a polite, professional characterization of a culture for the purposes of selling stuff to it, taking pains to avoid including race or judgement of any kind in the description.

If it's since been co-opted by actual racists as an actual dog whistle, I'm fully on board with saying f that, they don't get to own the language just by using it. I've heard anti-racists basically forward the position that once racists start using a term, it's fully off-limits for everybody else, because non-racist use of it provides cover for the racists. I think that's stupid. Surrendering unconditionally as soon as the bad guys show up is not how to win a fight. Letting them take over the whole field just by walking into it is not how to keep them on the fringes.

That said, I am familiar with the use of "thug" as Caleb describes, and agree that it is abhorrent. I just don't believe that was the intended use here.

So that's how Methuselah abbreviates his name...

"...been around for a long, long year...stole many a man's soul and faith..."

Do you mean Mephistopheles? Methuselah was just a really old dude, if I remember correctly.

[blues]

Do you mean Mephistopheles? Methuselah was just a really old dude, if I remember correctly.

No, otherwise I'd have made a remark in reply to Jesus and Meph. But thanks all the same. (You'll catch me napping one of these days.)

[OlongJohnson]

It was your waxing lyrical that threw me off. I now have no idea why you chose to include that.

[Peally]

This thread is quickly approaching trainwreck level. Folks, if you were offended in here grow a thicker skin, buy a ladder, and get over it. I swear if one more person gets triggered I am going to slap a ho.

Yes, you may contort my usage of "ho" in the most offensive manner you see fit, I'm just glad your jimmies were rustled over something so pathetically trivial.