Not at all. I identified a particular historical event where the French failed badly. Identifying one country's specific mistakes doesn't imply that others are angels. For example, obviously no one would claim that Germany and Japan were "angels" during WW2, but that goes without saying, right?
In fact, I responded to another commenter who called them out for racism and arrogance because that is far too general a claim with no evidence.
I've watched Toronto decline over the last 20 years, and I'll tell you what the problem is, and it is pretty obvious. Too many big businesses, big government offices, and big health care organizations are located downtown. Hundreds of thousands of people need to get to these places every day for work. No one likes a long commute, so people try to live as close to where they work downtown as possible, which leads to extremely high housing costs, which leads to more suburbs, more car use, and then demands to build more road infrastructure. Also, with so many giant office buildings downtown, it's vibrant during the day, but then almost everyone leaves at night, and people don't want to invest in community infrastructure because they actually live in the suburbs.
So, why are all the big institutions of business and government located downtown? It would be far better to spread big workplaces out across Ontario. In the olden days, sure, it made sense to centralize business, government, academia, and tertiary care hospitals for convenience, influence, cross-fertilization, and all that. It was also a centralization of the elites for prestige, and the decision-makers were always people who could afford to live downtown. But, nowadays, that is totally unnecessary. People chat online now and try to avoid having to go to in-person meetings if they can avoid it.
There should be a total ban on locating any more government or quasi-government offices downtown, and they should slowly be spread out to other cities. It would make everyone happier and shorten commutes. Over time, those big buildings should be converted back to residential use, so people can actually afford to raise a family downtown.
No, calling someone a liar is making an assumption about their intentions,
which, in most cases, you do not know.
Sure, when you hear false statements from a public figure all the time, like Trump for example, you can eventually have enough data to conclude that he is a liar. Do you have that kind of data on the commenter you replied to? No? Well, then it is more appropriate to assume they are mistaken. At least in English, calling someone a liar is very, very aggressive.
Maybe the upvotes have nothing to do with the statement about how Hamas was elected, which is frankly not that interesting, and everything to do with the fact that the commenter correctly identified Hamas as a religio-fascist organization. You can disagree without calling someone a liar. It is more conducive to conversation to assume that someone is mistaken or has different information than you do. Calling someone a liar is contrary to the spirit of good faith debate.
The current bad reputation of the French is mostly because of WW2. They surrendered after only 6 weeks of fighting and then heavily collaborated with the Nazis. French collaboration was so heartfelt that they refused to hand over their navy to the British when requested to do so. They even fired on American ships and troops in North Africa when the Americans arrived to liberate them from German occupation.
The French were also enthusiastic participants in the Final Solution. According to Wikipedia, "the Nazis in France relied to a considerable extent on the co-operation of local authorities to carry out what they called the Final Solution. The government of Vichy France and the French police organized and implemented the roundups of Jews."
After the war, De Gaulle promoted the narrative that the French heroically resisted the Nazis, but this was not at all true. The famous French Resistance was tiny until the last part of the war, and only grew once it became clear that Germany would lose. The French government also denied their role in the Holocaust for over 50 years until 1995 when Jacques Chirac finally admitted that, "[T]hose black hours soiled our history forever. ... [T]he criminal madness of the occupier was assisted by the French people, by the French State. ... France, that day, committed the irreparable."
So, yeah, that's why people dunk on France, particularly when it comes to military matters. They certainly did not live up to the ideals of the Revolution or the martial prowess of Napoleon.
I think you've nailed it here. There is so much focus on the genetic advantage a trans woman has in women's sports, but at the elite level genetics already plays a determinative role. It's in every sport. I saw a video the other day on powerlifting. Sure, we all know that weight classes are important, but this video was about femur length. The guy with the world record for squat, in his weight class, has very short femurs, and the video showed the physics of how this gives him a purely genetic advantage in the squat over others who have trained just as hard and are just as strong. At the elite level where everyone is training hard and has good diet and coaching, the difference between winning and losing often comes down to genetic variation. It's not just purely physical advantages either. At the elite level, psychological fitness is also critical to success and psychology is also profoundly influenced by both genetics and early childhood development, which are not under the individual athlete's control. On top of that there are economic disparities. On average, a person from a very poor family is much less likely to end up as an elite level skier or hockey player.
There are so many genetic and social factors that contribute to success in elite sports that I don't think the women who are complaining about trans athletes have much credibility.
That explains it. Each book gets progressively darker. The first book was written for 11 year olds, if I recall correctly. It doesn't really get into politics. The subsequent books expose the corruption of the class system and the horrifying complicity of the bureaucracy.
I don't care about HP, but it's just a standard fairy tale. I read the books to my kids. Stories about knights, kings, princesses, super heroes...pretty much any story in which a normal person can fantasize about being someone who has much more power than they do, have been the stock-in-trade for story-tellers forever. Harry Potter lives a terrible life with his abusive relatives until he gets whisked off to a fancy private school where, it turns out, he is pretty special. Does it glorify the British class system? Sure, in some ways. But, it also undermines it insofar as Harry's friends are mostly from the lower classes, and the villains are mostly "old money" and those who are obsessed with genetic purity. Also, the entrenched authorities like the Ministry of Magic are shown in a rather poor light, with their dementors, cruel bureaucrats, and insanity-inducing prisons. Hermione is meant to symbolize someone who got to Hogwart's based on ability, not birth or connections. So, the story is at least partially about the transformation of the old structures of power from being based on money and birth to being based on ability. It shows British power structures in transition, I would say. What do you think?
That's most of the internet now. I mean, yay, we're calling bad stuff bad. I do it, too, and I'm also addicted to orange man news like all you other rubber-neckers, but yawn it's all getting a bit repetitious and homogenized. Unfortunately, as we get bored, the more these nutty politicians do crazy shit for the media to report on, all to keep our attention. It feels like a death spiral.
That's true. I think there is a reasonable chance that the right-wing could split or collapse.
There is an interesting parallel here with Canada, which also has a FPTP system. Canada is more progressive than the US, so it already has two left-wing parties (one more centre-left than the other). But, for about a decade in the 90s, the right wing party split in two and this guaranteed electoral success for the centre-left Liberal Party. The interesting thing is that this was actually bad for the Liberal Party. They became arrogant, internally fractious, and scandal-prone. When the two right-wing parties re-merged, the Liberals suffered their worst defeat in history.
If the Republicans in the US split into two right-wing parties, there might be room for two left-wing parties as well. In fact, it would be good if a left-wing split ensured that the Dems weren't guaranteed electoral success, as this would lead them into making stupid mistakes. However, if the right-wing later re-united, the left would have to be prepared to reunite again as well. The problem is that the US is more right-wing than Canada, so vote-splitting on the left is more of a worry.
All of that said, it would be interesting to see how much support a left-wing working class party would have. I recall that there were midwest working class voters who were prevaricating between Trump and Bernie, not between Trump and Hillary/Biden. They didn't care about left vs. right politics as much as they wanted to vote for someone who would bring good working class jobs back to the Rust Belt. A left-wing party that really focused on bread and butter working class issues and not culture war bullshit might do well, but it's too risky when Trump is the alternative.
Correct. I'm pretty sure that "illegal" is just the short form of "illegal alien". And is that the accepted legal term for a foreign national who is in the US illegally, right?
Honestly, all of this language policing just turns the average person right off. I mean, I suppose it wouldn't be necessary if the Republicans weren't constantly sneering at people, but still. It is better to reclaim terms the Republicans abuse rather than try to language-police hundreds of millions of people. It is very, very off-putting.
Not at all. I identified a particular historical event where the French failed badly. Identifying one country's specific mistakes doesn't imply that others are angels. For example, obviously no one would claim that Germany and Japan were "angels" during WW2, but that goes without saying, right?
In fact, I responded to another commenter who called them out for racism and arrogance because that is far too general a claim with no evidence.