#41
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#42
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It's not a question of being smart or clever. It's a question of wisdom, experience, classical learning, and maturity. I don't doubt a sixteen year old could be better at many things than most of us, but this is not one of them.

Stop embarrassing yourself, and stop setting up children for embarrassment.
#43
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#44
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please give us another demonstration of how that works, tpaine
#45
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#46
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#47
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#48
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#49
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good friends and good times here at the rhizzone,
#50
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speaking of 300, has anybody seen the ads they're running for the Legend of Hercules movie? Unfuckingbelievable. You want to talk about arresting people, let's talk about the people responsible for that movie. I did not see hercules in a lion skin pelt, I did not see him with a club, I did not see him with a bow, I did not see apples or any other sort of identifying marks or objects. he doesn't even have a beard. I am deeply troubled and I fear the movie will be truly bad and offensive to the memory of herakles. Unless the movie is different than the ads suggest, the people responsible should have their assets seized and children need to be warned about this so they don't get the wrong ideas about herakles.
#51
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#52
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Lykourgos posted:

speaking of 300, has anybody seen the ads they're running for the Legend of Hercules movie? Unfuckingbelievable. You want to talk about arresting people, let's talk about the people responsible for that movie. I did not see hercules in a lion skin pelt, I did not see him with a club, I did not see him with a bow, I did not see apples or any other sort of identifying marks or objects. he doesn't even have a beard. I am deeply troubled and I fear the movie will be truly bad and offensive to the memory of herakles. Unless the movie is different than the ads suggest, the people responsible should have their assets seized and children need to be warned about this so they don't get the wrong ideas about herakles.


Lol your mad about a shitty movie made on the cheap and dumped by the studios in july.

#53
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Lykourgos decides to sit down and watch Clash of the Titans, the Disney Hercules, and Gladiator and he ends up ranting and raving and jumping up and down on the couch.
#54
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Edited by Lykourgos ()

#55
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"It was Hera who was trying to kill Hercules! not Hades, and the classical Hades did not have blue fire hair" Unfortunately he's telling this to a woman arrested in a raid on a Thai massage parlor who barely speaks English.
#56
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swampman posted:

'swamp man' i didn't respond to your hyperbolic cynical argument because i thought it was boring and reactionary

reactionary in what way?

roseweird posted:

i don't see where you get off just dismissing this girl bc you think you're some amazing radical stomping around new york with some people's dogs.

I am not dismissing the girl, i am dismissing the liberal, imperialist, pro-Western viewpoint that uses her persona to promote itself. I have nothing to do with Malala on a personal level, sorry! If Malala was advocating for race purity because Indians are genetically stupider to Pakistani, I would dismiss that too, and so would the rest of the world because there isn't a lot of need for foreign teenagers' race hate in the American propaganda machine. The only reason you know anything about Malala is because her viewpoint serves Western interests.

maybe a smart girl living in a warzone in a country whose women and children probably sewed half the clothing you own knows more than you do about revolutionary socialism and has some idea of the best posture to take, young though she is.

Ok. She is a smart girl. A smart 16 year old. What is she, a leader in her field? She gives speeches and interviews and she says coherent, honest things. It's not really that hard. Liberalism is easy for teenagers to fall into because it's all about "rights." Okay, she should have the right to an education, and actually, since she was a pupil, on her way to school when she took a bullet, she did have that right. Great, what is she going to use it for, it looks like... to go advocate for the right to an education. Okay, what are her classmates going to learn? Well, pretty much anything strip mining related, and some "life management" skills so they have more time in the day to work for others.

i listened to the interviews with her and the interviewers were stupid shit people saying stupid shit things, but malala and her father ignored them and used the publicity opportunity as best she could because wouldn't you ?

When an outright racist conservative politician blusters right past questions to put the focus on the issue of how often they talk about fucking in rap music (it's a lot), his outright racist conservative constituents say the exact same thing.

it's so easy for you to criticize and dismiss them as "pro-western" (god forbid!)

And made all the easier because it's not just my criticism, it's the criticism of Pakistani people, in Pakistani, who see her as a CIA-fronted distraction from drone strikes. This guy agreed with me that a pro-education is code for white people to take over the region. "Waziristan isn't safe for education?! Well, education is a right, so I guess we need to make it safe."

You should feel as dumb as you look for buying into this absolutely manipulative fluff journalism.



in your race to become the most anti-western badass this side of starbucks you've somehow gotten around to dismissing "rights" as liberal decadence and racism. congrats i guess.

#57
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and you managed to concoct a stand on the number of bio teachers in pak literally as they are being bombed
#58
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a stand?
#59
sup b*tch
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rights are liberal decadence and racism, you goober
#60
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yeah its not like the ideas of universal rights have ever formed the backbone of an emancipatory struggle
#61
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new york city
#62
Dont Mess With Sucess
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c_man posted:

yeah its not like the ideas of universal rights have ever formed the backbone of an emancipatory struggle

i defy you to name one universal right

#63
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how about not being born into slavery? that's a good one imo
#64
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But slavery is a social institution. How can you have a right to be free from a social institution before it exists?
#65
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somehow we manage
#66
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
But, a lot of child sex slaves are definitely born into slavery. So it looks like, that's not a universal right. If that's a more important right than the right to an education, why is Malala in the headlines when she's not from Jakarta and hasn't been raped by white guys all her life? I mean it must be more important, because we've put the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner on it already, while the right to an education remains an impossible dream for... not for Malala xherself, but for the underaccomplished barbarian children xhe represents.

Popular support, your support, of certain issues is manipulated by the idea that people have "rights" that are being denied. Each right gets trotted out on its own as needed to justify our belligerence. In this case, the right to an education is the focus in north Pakistan, that should be a basic right! We all got educations and look how we turned out -the brightest, coolest bunch of great people, USA #1! Oh, what about the right not to fear every second that your teenage brother is going to get splattered like a Mr Potato Head by a predator missile strike from 2km away? Well, the Taliban are the ones hiding in civilian populations instead of confronting the world's most demonic destructive force in honorable combat on the open field.

The civil war was about the North maintaining control of the total Union. Slavery allowed the south to get too rich and powerful and abolition was the answer. You might call abolition the pretext for invasion, trust me, if the North could have come up with a way to conquer the south and still keep slavery, they would have. When slavery was abolished there were still children working in factories, there was still prostitution, these are both forms of slavery that we conveniently do not call slavery. And they still exist today, child labor, sex workers, hey at least these are workers and laborers exercising their freedom to work! That is the point of rights-based thought, to make these horrors of the world palatable because now we are good because slavery is illegal here, but in Malaysia, they are bad, because they violate people's right to be free! Yes, I know they do it to sew shoes faster, but you need to at least pay them a few cents an hour so we can reclassify it please. Thank

Edited by swampman ()

#67
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humanism and any talk about rights are utter gibberish.
#68
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
Think about it this way. You have the right to say anything you want, with some restrictions. Those restrictions can be summarized as, anything that would be damaging to the social order. That's because, the right is still granted to you by the social order. If you try to say anything that is actually damaging to the social order, you will find yourself stopping yourself, either out of fear of the repercussions, or by reminding yourself of the logical justification for the restriction. All rights are bundled with these restrictions because they are protective to our social order. Another example is the right to peaceably assemble. Don't forget, one bottle gets tossed and things are no longer peaceably for anyone - and american protesters understand this and police themselves.

Here in USA, we have these rights. You don't have these rights because you are bigot hillbillies so we must civilize - sorry, I forgot what century it is. You're cool but we must liberate you from your bigot hillbilly masters. Side effects may include child deformities and selling us your oil.
#69
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
And remember, one of the most important components of the human right, is that there is no maximum restriction to the exercise of that right. So the obscenity of jet travel, private jets, private luxury jets for just a few people, these are all protected by the right to travel. Idiot children of the bourgeois can waste their time at 4 year schools, in MBAs, getting badminton lessons or taking a muffin class because they have the right to an education. And so on. There is also the issue of human rights easily and logically extending to business/other organizations, so that freedom of speech justifies mass manipulation and propaganda by media and advertisers.
#70
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swampman posted:

But, a lot of child sex slaves are definitely born into slavery. So it looks like, that's not a universal right. If that's a more important right than the right to an education, why is Malala in the headlines when she's not from Jakarta and hasn't been raped by white guys all her life? I mean it must be more important, because we've put the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner on it already, while the right to an education remains an impossible dream for... not for Malala xherself, but for the underaccomplished barbarian children xhe represents.

Popular support, your support, of certain issues is manipulated by the idea that people have "rights" that are being denied. Each right gets trotted out on its own as needed to justify our belligerence. In this case, the right to an education is the focus in north Pakistan, that should be a basic right! We all got educations and look how we turned out -the brightest, coolest bunch of great people, USA #1! Oh, what about the right not to fear every second that your teenage brother is going to get splattered like a Mr Potato Head by a predator missile strike from 2km away? Well, the Taliban are the ones hiding in civilian populations instead of confronting the world's most demonic destructive force in honorable combat on the open field.

The civil war was about the North maintaining control of the total Union. Slavery allowed the south to get too rich and powerful and abolition was the answer. You might call abolition the pretext for invasion, trust me, if the North could have come up with a way to conquer the south and still keep slavery, they would have. When slavery was abolished there were still children working in factories, there was still prostitution, these are both forms of slavery that we conveniently do not call slavery. And they still exist today, child labor, sex workers, hey at least these are workers and laborers exercising their freedom to work! That is the point of rights-based thought, to make these horrors of the world palatable because now we are good because slavery is illegal here, but in Malaysia, they are bad, because they violate people's right to be free! Yes, I know they do it to sew shoes faster, but you need to at least pay them a few cents an hour so we can reclassify it please. Thank



so, "rights" cannot even be conceived as being universal if some people in the world are denied them? it sounds like you're mad about selective application and the news media rather than the idea that "rights" are a thing that can be conceived and discussed in relation to an emancipatory struggle. obviously people are still de facto enslaved today and its important to work to end that. you can pretend that i dont care about coerced sex workers or media bias or whatever as long as it lets you go on a long rant about how much you hate The West but at the end of the day there is something very much like the idea of universal rights at the heart of the ideological support for the fight against things like slavery in the past and today, and just because some groups you dont like have co-opted some good ideas to serve their own agendas doesn't mean that we need to abandon them wholesale, in my opinion. its fine to take a critical stance towards bias in the western media, but i think

i think my perspective on your civil war example is that it provided a political opening for abolitionists to push their agenda and make a step forward. it seems like you're saying that the ending of institutionalized slavery in the south was meaningless (with respect to the "universal rights" point) because it didn't also end child labor and prostitution (which i agree are effectively types of slavery). i dunno if that's what you mean to express (it's hard to see your actual point through the froth), so correct me if i'm wrong. i don't think that the fight against coerced labor was in any way concluded there, because it's obviously still alive today and i think that the idea that no one should be the victim of coerced labor is a powerful motivating force. i guess that here your response is that the extent to which any effort to improve the conditions of people suffering is determined by the discourse of the day etc and that especially today that such a discourse is very effectively influenced by specific groups, and then im supposed to understand that this means that any talk of "rights" is automatically complicit with the exploitation of the victims of the people who use "rights" to justify the dumb shit that they do. i dont accept this, because at some level i don't see how any given emancipatory struggle (e.g. for the child sex slaves) doesn't at some level imply some idea that they shouldn't be in that situation, which i don't see any reason not to call a "right".

i guess from my perspective, the people in power are certainly going to do their best to achieve their own ends but its possible to make improvements by taking advantage of these powers whenever its possible. i have no illusions that this is better than putting together a Real Authentic Revolution and throwing the bums out, seizing the means of production and instituting real, lasting protections for those who need them (unironically). until then, though, i still dont see the problem of talking about rights. even lenin had to rely on the germans wanting to get russia out of the war.

#71
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#72
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roseweird posted:

shorter swampman: i live much too comfortably to have time to listen to anyone except the most absolutely abject human beings in existence because white guilt like mine requires ideological drugs of a higher grade than what passes for moral salve among you liberal swine



same thing w/you and suiciding all men

swampman is mostly right and you're a new york jew transgender liberal arts major. this is why i hate posting

#73
sup b*tch
Post rating: ~
hmm c_man i didn't read your entire post but the way i would put it would be that universal rights aren't a real thing because simply showing up and existing doesn't actually entitle you to anything, and that any privileges you may believe yourself to have are in actuality just the product of whatever prevailing social order happens to have power over you at a given time.
#74
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innsmouthful posted:

hmm c_man i didn't read your entire post but the way i would put it would be that universal rights aren't a real thing because simply showing up and existing doesn't actually entitle you to anything, and that any privileges you may believe yourself to have are in actuality just the product of whatever prevailing social order happens to have power over you at a given time.



i definitely agree that the actual conditions people live in are products of whatever social order happens to have power over them (and, why not, so are the ideas available to you to orient whatever struggle you participate in). but my perspective here (paraphrasing my too-long post) is that when you approach some situation like swampman's example of child sex slaves in southeast asia and have the perspective that it's something that they shouldn't have to deal with, you're working with something that looks very much like a "right" whether or not the us govt uses "women's rights" as a support for whatever bullshit. swampman himself points out that power will support itself in whatever way is convenient, generally, but my response is that this can, and has been, usefully taken advantage of in the past, and while no surrogate for actual total structural change, can continue to alleviate the stresses on the people alive right now.

#75
sup b*tch
Post rating: ~

c_man posted:

when you approach some situation like swampman's example of child sex slaves in southeast asia and have the perspective that it's something that they shouldn't have to deal with, you're working with something that looks very much like a "right" whether or not the us govt uses "women's rights" as a support for whatever bullshit.



see this here is the thing. the perspective that people shouldn't have to deal with "bad" things or conditions isn't universal because the definition of what constitutes a "bad" thing is entirely arbitrary. we speak of universal education, freedom of speech, freedom from child labor, etc. as if there's some universal rightness to having them, but what makes having these "rights" more desirable than not having them? what makes them more correct, or somehow something universal that should be striven for? why should we strive for general welfare, really? and what does general welfare even mean? this may sound like a troll but it's really not, i promise.

#76
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c_man posted:

how about not being born into slavery? that's a good one imo



well at least we both believe in cultural discrimination

#77
Poronto
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if the union had no problem with preserving slavery why was the missouri compromise repealed
#78
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human rights? listen buddy, i'm a little more concerned with human wrongs
#79
political car tune
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what i dont get is the argument sounds like an attempt to engage the sunk cost fallacy. "well social rights that didnt exist prior to language and higher thinking clearly aren't universal as not everyone enjoys them, so i think its time to cut our losses. it's hypocritical otherwise" - that's almost as if insisting on future right is unnatural because they have not always been. but humans (or nature) has always reset the clock before. Things get too orderd/decadent/figured out and then it all get's wiped out, either by pestilence/plague/famine/giant sinkhole in the desert, or by 200 men with boats ransacking 3 of the 4 ancient Mediterranean powers in 1200 BC. People are shit and have always been shit but there are some who believe that we don't have to be. We cannot change things in one day, and that while making a right universal would be terrific if done instantaneously, sadly this is not the case. People have tried, and there is always resistance.

Anyway pretty soon the singularity will hit, which coupled with 3d printing will present a final solution to the human crisis (removal of humans as they present environmental threat)
#80
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +
i don't give a fuck about white guilt, roseweird, and i am not dropping, like, heavy, hardcore shit in this thread. if you remain unwilling to change your beliefs when they are explicitly pointed out to come from and support imperialism, without making any argument to the contrary, then you are an imperialist. you can try to tear me down but that is a distraction and nobody cares.

c_man: what makes sex slavery bad? is it that the sex slaves are having their rights violated? to me, it's more about their holes being violated. Well, the cops nabbed me off the street, beat every tooth out of my head, and forced me to give up my friends for imprisonment, you know what the worst part is? they were violating our rights the whole time!

funny, but there are people who go through this process in the USA, except in between steps they are afforded due process and visits with an attorney. the outcome is the same so who is the language of "rights" there to serve?