Lit Apropos of Nothing - ACKBAR IN CAPITALS - The Lit Forum Social Thread, v2.0.15

Good god. Ugh.

In other weird news, apparently there's another supposedly Slenderman-related stabbing (in this case, Slendy is only circumstantial and the motive had nothing to do with him). An Ohio woman was stabbed by her thirteen-year-old daughter. Slendy's relation to the case is only in writings and a Minecraft mod. Thus, naming this case a "Slenderman stabbing" is ridiculous. It's like calling a car accident a freak lugnut killing because the wheels have lugnuts on them.

And then there's the Las Vegas killing involving a couple who cosplayed as the Joker and Harley Quinn...

If they play up the cosplaying angle (which the article I read did not, though they did lead off the article with a cosplay photo), then it seems to me that the news outlets are just looking for new media scapegoats. I have strong suspicions about the Ohio stabbing, as there are other factors in play more than Slenderman.

 

Listen, if it eases your mind at all: I think there are elements of the philosophy which work, when properly applied.

However, I'm most likely not talking about you. 95% of every party is comprised of its worst, most simple-minded adherents, and that's who I'm talking about. In the case of Libertarians, that happens to be the sort of people who don't want to be told what to do, and who don't want anyone taking their money, no matter what for. In the end, that winds up taking funding away from programs which I personally believe are necessary (for instance, mental healthcare, a problem we're still cleaning up 30 years after the Reagan administration emptied the mental hospitals). Shuck and jive this way and that, but nobody can get around the fact that Libertarian ideals eschew public programs, so on those grounds alone, I'm out. I wanna put a little money in to know that there's a safety net for people like me, however bureaucratically hamstrung it might be.

Now, that means that 95% of Democrats are also the worst; I despise Tumblr activism and social justice McCarthyism. I frankly have no political stake; I was born to a family of solid-but-poor small business owners, and never once has there been a political party which actually cared about people like us. The tea party saw that gap and tried to fill it, but I personally see its grassroots appeal as a clever disguise for bigwigs with taxation agendas of their own, looking for a gullible voter base. Now, I say, "I personally see it" that way to be polite and not to provoke an argument... but the fact is, wherever your alliances lie, I'm sure you'd agree that you can only see it as the lesser of a few evils. A wholly, legitimately virtuous political body is just wishful thinking. Libertarianism just so happens to be the one I'm lamenting in this instance.

 

i've read this like 5 times and tbh i am still not sure what the first clause has to do with the second


posted from my phone

 

It's a "for instance." I get that you're trying to make the point that not everyone is this thing or that thing, but they're just a couple outright bad examples of human behavior from that side of the aisle (and if you're confused by "social justice McCarthyism," I'm talking about people policing one another for political correctness or cultural appropriation or vague associations with rape culture detached from contexts and such).

The point is that 95% of people are the worst, at least as far as they associate themselves with a mass of some sort.

Seriously now... I'm trying to be equally judgmental of everyone. Yall gotta stop picking out one thing to quote which, out of context, de-neutralizes my overall point. Maybe don't pick on something when I'm just trying to conduct a little damage control with a frustrated fellow poster.

 

I don't like people either. Well, I don't have anything against specific people, most people are nice enough in person, it's people I don't like, the human race in general.

 

Yeah, we're kind of a bunch of turds for the most part. People have always been terrifying, but there was once an ignorant simplicity to that, and it was balanced by the simple old-world beauty of people living however the land around them demanded. Now I think we know a little bit too much, as a civilization. We're not products of our environment anymore... We all decide who we are. There's not a whole lot of romance in that. Instead of just playing the game, we all spend hours reading the manual. When we decide to put down the manual and live, it's because a different manual told us to. We literally have no chance to be not meta, to be un-self-aware with our behaviors. It's a complicated time to be alive.

 

And I thought not liking sand was bad.

You guys are literally worse than Darth Vader. Feel bad.

 

Oh, they gerrymandered the district so it is more solidly right wing, and that bit an establishment republican on the arse?

I'm not happy with some of the crap the Democrats pull, but I'm far more anti-Republican (mostly. One of my close friends is a local republican chairman, but he is less partisan and more pragmatic) and especially anti-Tea Party. So this news is awesome to me. I also plan to call my friend later when he is awake and talk to him about this. IIRC he had issues with Cantor's office and was not a fan.

 

Muahaha I turned the Social Thread into a Senate discussion.

Aaaaand you lost me.

 

Jello's comments have made me re-think this whole evil Empire thing. It doesn't seem that bad anymore, there are just all those thousands of evil leaders. The Empire itself can't have been that bad.

 

They're political idealists, not murderers.

Well, except for the murderers.

 

Don't worry, buddy, I understood. *pats head*

 

I understood it too, I just gave another example.

In one-year-late TV news, the second season finale of Person of Interest: Programming Is Magic was quite good.

 

Lugija's new, he doesn't remember the days when Jello was a died-in-the-wool Quaker.

 

Were people arguing about politics?

 

There's dog poop on the streets! Why doesn't the government do anything?

 

Thanks obummer

 

I hear Bowe Bergdahl is a total Jacobin sympathizer.

 

Latest I heard was that he was going Galt when he walked off the base.

 

Well where am I supposed to empty my bucket if the streets are already full? It's a disgrace! I'm a working man, oppressed by my neighbors. I say, I work the whole day, man has to have time to learn to play trombone.