Post a video, present me a POV!

Robear wrote:

D'Souza is not even worth considering.

Pretty much any time someone brings up anything from Dinesh D'souza, I write them off as a tinfoil hat crank.

And Goldwater was pro choice, advocated for gays in the military, and fought against the invasion of evangelicals into the GOP.

He was very much the source of Reagan Republicanism, however.

Startling Facts About the Government that Made Me Feel Good

Cruz 101

Hillary, No!

It is a CBS video clip so I can't embed but this is some serious not answering the question dodging by Elizabeth Warren. Kind of disappointed in her.

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/03/...

Super Tuesday Part Three Proved They Need To Retire The Franchise

Samantha Bee Records What Happens When You Send An Atheist Into A Pit Of Republicans

Why do atheist organization leaders have to be such flaming dickheads. He's not a "firebrand" he's a jerk. It's no surprise why so many USAans think atheists are evil.

Also, I'd put good money on the line that the Koch brothers are behind Turning Point USA.

BadKen wrote:

Why do atheist organization leaders have to be such flaming dickheads. He's not a "firebrand" he's a jerk. It's no surprise why so many USAans think atheists are evil.

"Why do minority/LGBT/feminist organization leaders have to be such flaming dickheads. He's not a "firebrand" he's a jerk. It's no surprise why so many USAans think minorities/LGBTs/feminists are evil."

Yup. It reads as poorly as I thought it would.

Uh, non sequitur?

I'm an athiest and I feel extremely poorly represented by people like David Silverman and Richard Dawkins. I feel like their antagonistic antics have set back acceptance of atheism considerably. Even Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation can be super abrasive, despite a lot of good legal work the FFRF does. Sam Harris' anti-Islam tirades are tiresome, too. There's no reason to run around spouting nonsense like "kill all religions," as Silverman does.

Organized atheism has a dickhead problem at the top.

BadKen wrote:

Uh, non sequitur?

I'm an athiest and I feel extremely poorly represented by people like David Silverman and Richard Dawkins. I feel like their antagonistic antics have set back acceptance of atheism considerably. Even Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation can be super abrasive, despite a lot of good legal work the FFRF does. Sam Harris' anti-Islam tirades are tiresome, too. There's no reason to run around spouting nonsense like "kill all religions," as Silverman does.

Organized atheism has a dickhead problem at the top.

Full agreement here.

And I'd rather have someone represent me that's isn't going to stress remaining passive and largely invisible in the face of the religious masses.

Religious believers are going to feel antagonized by merely having to acknowledge that non-believers exist. And they're going to feel even more antagonized when atheists push for more active and prominent roles in society and politics. The history of the civil rights movement, feminism, gay rights, etc. has show that there will always be pushback by the majority. There's simply no way around it.

So I'd rather have an atheist leader hip check religious believers and force them to get out of the public space that belongs to atheists (and that religious believers have been squatting in for centuries) than have to wait a couple of decades for them to get comfortable with the idea that perhaps religion doesn't equal morality and that atheists aren't evil.

OG_slinger wrote:

And I'd rather have someone represent me that's isn't going to stress remaining passive and largely invisible in the face of the religious masses.

Religious believers are going to feel antagonized by merely having to acknowledge that non-believers exist. And they're going to feel even more antagonized when atheists push for more active and prominent roles in society and politics. The history of the civil rights movement, feminism, gay rights, etc. has show that there will always be pushback by the majority. There's simply no way around it.

So I'd rather have an atheist leader hip check religious believers and force them to get out of the public space that belongs to atheists (and that religious believers have been squatting in for centuries) than have to wait a couple of decades for them to get comfortable with the idea that perhaps religion doesn't equal morality and that atheists aren't evil.

All of which could be achieved better without hip checking, which, at it's most literal, constitutes physical assault, or you know, "being a dick".

Jonman wrote:

All of which could be achieved better without hip checking, which, at it's most literal, constitutes physical assault, or you know, "being a dick".

Being a dick is using religious beliefs to harm, hurt, and shame millions of people. It's using religious beliefs as the foundation for dangerous TRAP laws. Or, most recently, it's insisting that Oklahoma's broke-ass schools, who aren't required to provide students with any sexual education, now have to specifically teach children that life begins at conception and spend millions to advertise religiously run anti-abortion "pregnancy crisis clinics."

Those are things that actually hurt people and f*ck up their lives.

An atheist saying that it's not a good thing for politics and religion to be in the same cart doesn't do that. An atheist saying there tens of millions of non-believers in America so it's probably not wise that political groups insist politics have to support and maintain particular religious beliefs doesn't do that. Nor is doing those things "being a dick."

Being a dick is what this school board director did--insisting that *his* religious beliefs had to take priority over everyone else's and doubling down with the absolute ignorant-ass belief that atheists = teh devil.

An atheist handing out literature at the slimiest, holier-than-thou conservative political convention didn't make that guy think atheists came from "hellholes." His own sh*tty, narrow-minded religious upbringing did. And I'm certainly not going to walk around on glass because that asshole might get offended.

"The other guy was a dick too!" is not a great excuse for being a dick. Particularity when you're trying to persuade that guy that dickishness won't help either of you.

I mean, what's your end goal in this? If it's to feel self-righteous, then dick away. If it's to actually solve a genuine set of problems (which you rightly point out actually exist), then

force them to get out of the public space that belongs to atheists

is not going to solve those problems, it's just brushing them under the rug. Which has a big picture of a dick on it.

I think sometimes OG falls back on the old adage 'fight fire with a giant bag of well-informed and extensively researched dicks'

Jonman wrote:

"The other guy was a dick too!" is not a great excuse for being a dick. Particularity when you're trying to persuade that guy that dickishness won't help either of you.

I mean, what's your end goal in this? If it's to feel self-righteous, then dick away. If it's to actually solve a genuine set of problems (which you rightly point out actually exist), then

force them to get out of the public space that belongs to atheists

is not going to solve those problems, it's just brushing them under the rug. Which has a big picture of a dick on it.

I don't consider announcing my existence to the majority and letting them know that I don't believe in the things they do (and that them using politics to ram their beliefs down everyone else's throats isn't cool) isn't "being a dick."

The problems that politics and religion cause won't be solved by non-believers being silent and passive so as to not upset the religious majority (which, as can repeatedly be demonstrated, get upset at our mere existence).

It will be solved by non-believers seeing other non-believers speaking out and understanding that they aren't alone and that there's millions of us. It will be solved by us understanding that our political views are just as--if not much better--suited to modern America than people who think our country is either exclusively or predominantly a Christian nation. And, importantly, that it's entirely OK for us to politically organize and seek out to dismantle the terrible ills that decades of the over-involvement of religion and politics have inflicted on our country.

Each of those things is going to be interpreted by many religious believers as atheists removing god from his rightful place in the country. And there's pretty much nothing that can be done to change their impression, especially in the truest of the true believers.

So why try? Why worry about what a bunch of close-minded and simultaneously terrified and angry people think about you? Why worry that they aren't going to like you? Why worry that they're going to think you're a dick?

Supreme Court Battle | Full Frontal on Samantha Bee |

The video said it best: "every movement needs an asshole." The loud and obnoxious dicks get the conversation started, and are good to get the word out when the going gets really tough. They're the ones who open doors for more moderate and polite people to continue the discussion. The flip side of "well behaved women seldom make history" is "loud assholes do."

What I need is a gif of "I'll pray for you." "Okay, I'll think for you."

We could probably use a thread for Samantha Bee, because she's been killing it!

Why The War on Drugs Is a Huge Failure

Is Donald Trump Actually Just a Really Mean Teenage Girl?

Keith Olbermann on Moving Out of Trump Building

Andrea Mitchell: Donald Trump Is 'Completely Uneducated' About The World

sometimesdee wrote:

We could probably use a thread for Samantha Bee, because she's been killing it!

There sure are a lot of people against immigration in poland but the rest of USA and Europe as well. I hope their beliefs are ill-founded and have no legitimacy to them. I would hate to think that immigrants and refugees actually are a big a threat as all these people say they are.

FiveIron wrote:

There sure are a lot of people against immigration in poland but the rest of USA and Europe as well. I hope their beliefs are ill-founded and have no legitimacy to them. I would hate to think that immigrants and refugees actually are a big a threat as all these people say they are.

If they were, they sure would seem to be taking their time about things.