machine
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Posts posted by machine
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I've finished most of the things I picked up over the past year!
Orange was a mixed bag for me. It felt like all the problems I had with the manga got amplified 10x over in the anime, and because of that, I ultimately couldn't enjoy it that much. I did really like parts of it (especially the first half), and to the script writers' credit, the changes made to accommodate the low episode count actually weren't bad, but that's not enough to make me have a mostly positive opinion of the anime. My biggest nit-pick with the anime adaptation was Hagita though. In the manga he came across much quieter and how loud he was kind of bugged me. It's just a case of different interpretations, but it was still a bit disappointing since I thought he was good comic relief in the manga, but I didn't like how he was in the anime at all.
They also cut out my favorite joke of hisGakuen Handsome was criminally under-watched and hilarious, plz watch itnone of the characters had yaoi hands. 0/10 literal garbage parodySaiki Kusuo no psi-nan was another decent short anime. I didn't dislike it, but it's not one of my favorite short series. It's a suitable time killer though
The 3rd season of Haikyuu, while not bad, was definitely inferior to the first two seasons imo. The pacing and everything was fine, but I'm just not a fan of when an additional season of a sports anime only covers one game and virtually nothing else. And because I used to keep up with the manga, I missed out on the enjoyment of not knowing who the victor would be too. I don't have any outstanding issues with it, and there's not really any reason for fans of the first two seasons to not watch it, but when I think about Haikyuu, s3's just not as memorable as the prior seasons or OVA.
And Yuri on Ice's under a spoiler since, while I didn't write a ton, I think this post would feel too long without one. There's also one or two minor spoilers
It was a lot gayer than I was anticipating. I'd still classify it as queerbait though since, despite the extent of the "teasing", neither Yuri's or Viktor's sexuality, or what exactly their relationship was was never confirmed in the anime. (And as others have pointed out, the kiss was "censored"/not explicitly shown. Maybe it was to avoid falling under the shounen ai/yaoi genre and risk off-putting part of its audience, maybe it was intended to be just a tease to win the fangirls over, or maybe there's some other reason I can't hypothesize because I only have a western perspective at my disposal, but either way, it skirting around that was kind of odd. It makes me wonder why they even included it since they didn't directly show it or even mention it again) Maybe there'll be confirmations at a later date, but for now, regardless of your opinion on how well the undertones (to put it lightly) were presented, the ambiguity is bemusing and arguably disappointing. To give credit where credit is potentially due though, if they do end up being canonically queer and their relationship stays in the background and isn't made a big deal of, I'll be impressed. Considering that the majority of canon LGBT+ anime characters are only in yuri/yaoi/gender bender genre shows/manga, having them present, normalized, and unfetishized (though it's arguably a bit of a stretch on that last one here) in media outside of those genres is always a step in the right direction.
EDIT: When talking about this with my friend who really took a liking to YoI, they linked me a bunch of translated things from one of the creators of YoI that supposedly do confirm that, at least on one end, Viktor and Yuri are supposed to be canonically romantically interested in each other. And while knowing the intention of one of the creators does add quite a bit of clarity and explanation, that doesn't necessarily change my opinion of the anime being queerbait-y though. Even though it was intended not to be, and that's a notable detail that does change some things, the reality is that something prevented the anime from being more than queerbait. Maybe if/when there's a season 2, YoI will lose its queerbait status and actually entirely be what the creator(s) want it to be, and that'd be cool, but until that step is taken, it's still on the queerbait-y side of things to me.
I feel like YoI was primarily aimed at the same audience that enjoyed Free from a few summers ago, and, to be blunt, I'm not a part of that demographic. YoI lived up to my expectations, but because I, personally, don't necessarily enjoy the type of show I was expecting it to be, I can't say I enjoyed the experience completely. Shows like YoI and Free are definitely some people's cup of tea, but despite it not necessarily being my thing, it wasn't unenjoyable for the most part. Or maybe put more concisely, YoI caters to its intended audience very well and, depending on your personal tastes, can also succeed in appealing to those outside that demographic, so even though I didn't like it as much as some people, I can appreciate it having something about it that prevents it from being completely niche, if that makes sense. I'm mixed on it overall. It took a few episodes to grow on me, and after I warmed up to it, I did enjoy it quite a bit, but there were still a handful of things about it that just bothered me, and by the end of it, those things had added up.
Hopefully with YoI being so popular, it'll have a similar effect to what Yowamushi Pedal had and sort of cause a sudden influx in sports anime of that specific sport. As said previously, when the anime was first announced, I was a bit surprised they didn't go with a mostly female cast since figure skating, generally, has a lot more women than men, and I'd just be more interested in seeing a figure skating anime that showed the side I'm more familiar with. And being that the animated skating parts were generally lower quality than the rest of the show, I'd be especially interested in seeing a higher budget figure skating anime too, regardless of whether its a YoI sequel or a different series with a new cast of characters.
The gold blades on Viktor's skates, Yuri's and JJ's skate guards being mixed colors, and having Yurio's coach(?) make him take up ballet were nice touches of realism though. The attention to detail in little things like that were probably my favorite thing about the entire anime.
On 1/14/2017 at 7:15 PM, Akazora said:I remembering seeing that back when it was first announced and got some NTR vibes from the summary, which is why I've avoided it. I'm surprised its rating on MAL is as high as it is, but then again I've found myself disagreeing a lot of the time with MAL scores. Since you're watching it, let me know if it's worth checking out.
I'd more readily describe it as just a consensually unhealthy relationship rather than NTR. Due to prioritizing other things, I've actually only seen the first episode, and while it certainly made an impact, 1st ep's aren't always the best representations of their respective series. Solely going off first impressions though, I'm surprised by how high its MAL rating is too. I'll get back to you when the anime's done airing though
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So I watched some things recently... Under a spoiler because it got a bit lengthy
First was Gundam F91. F91 is a bit infamous because it was originally planned to be an ~50ep tv anime, but at some point in production, it got cut down to a 2hr movie. As a result, the animation quality and art style are great, but the pacing and story telling aren't really anything to be praised. The first 20mins are amazing, and can probably even be considered one of the best parts of UC, but it's all downhill from there. F91 takes place in what is considered late UC, and the antagonists aren't Zeon or Zeon offshoots, but rather a new group called the Crossbone Vanguard. Due to time constraints they (and many other things) are not introduced/explained well, but you can sort of fill in the blanks on your own. Overall I wasn't a huge fan of the mech designs, but to the designer(s)'s credit, the
CV suits don't look like Zeon knockoffs and do look like they are their own separate thing, and I can appreciate that. And for what it's worth, the two main characters were likable, but the supporting cast and main villain were kind of forgettable.
TL;DR - Was alright, but ultimately disappointing since it had the potential to be a really great full length series.
Then I watched an hour long movie from 1989 called Five Star Stories because the mech designs from this series look amazing.(I mean look at these thingsIf I had to describe the movie in only one word, it'd be "introductory". Despite being the only animated FSS thing, it didn't really feel stand alone. It felt like it was only made for existing fans of the manga, and people who are interested in the franchise, but don't want to commit to reading the manga right away. While this is arguably a very big negative, because I do intend to read the manga, I can't say I was horribly bothered by it, but it not making an effort to be more appealing to 'outsiders' does make it feel really dry at times. Another sort of weird thing about it is that the movie is that it hardly contained any mechs. Sure, there were some in the background (and occasionally, foreground), but the only fight scene, and climax of the movie, came at the 50min mark, so I almost want to say that categorizing the FSS movie as mecha is a bit misleading since there's very few mecha elements outside of that 5min fight. Considering I watched this for the mechs, I was pretty disappointed in this aspect, especially since the mech that's in the fight isn't one I particularly like :')gold giant robots are tacky as hell and nothing will ever convince me otherwise
Tl;DR - ehhhh. I'll hold off on full judgement of this series until I've read some of the manga (which, despite starting the in 80s, is still publishing).and off topic, but this movie had the prettiest male protag I've ever seen
Another thing I watched solely for the mech designs was the first season of Rinne no Lagrange. I started it in late November, but I didn't finish it until a few days ago because I reallllly wasn't feeling it. The mech designs and opening were the only things I actually liked about it in the end. The characters weren't particularly likable or memorable, the plot wasn't necessarily interesting, and the otaku pandering/cheap fanservice was the nail in the coffin for me. There's a 2nd season, but I won't be making time to watch it
Tl;DR - quality robot designs =/= quality animu </3
There was also Sekai no Monshou which I'm technically still working through since I'm watching the 2nd season currently. I liked the first two arcs, they weren't especially great, but they weren't awful either, but the last, and longest, arc was terrible. It started off ok, but the longer it went on, the more I disliked it. SnM's concept and execution, while a bit cliche, isn't what I have a problem with for the most part, it's the characters. Jinto's very dull; he reminds me of Banagher from Gundam Unicorn a bit too, and that's not meant to be a compliment. Lafiel, while more interesting than her male counterpart, is just sort of average, I guess? She is somewhat memorable, but imo there wasn't anything super likable about her. I'm sure they get more characterization later on since, in total, there's like three 1-cour seasons, an OVA, and a prequel movie too iirc, but I can't comment on those yet. One thing I can comment on though, and is an aspect I found pretty disappointing, is the lack of focus on Jinto learning about Abh culture and Abh language since he's a human and not an Abh like Lafiel. To make a comparison: In Suisei no Gargantia, there's a bit of a similar situation wherein the male lead is thrust into unfamiliar surroundings and has to learn about the culture he's now living in. I thought it was really neat that they included the language barrier and cultural differences in SnG and had that play a factor in character interactions. But in SnM, despite Jinto at one point mentioning that he wasn't entirely fluent in Abh language yet and that he had little-to-no interaction with any Abhs before the start of the anime, this never caused any problems. Granted, in the last arc, when Jinto and Lafiel go somewhere populated by humans, they do temporarily worry about Lafiel standing out too much, but this ultimately didn't affect much of anything.
TL;DR - just a dry, slow moving series imo, but it also manages to be somewhat intriguing. I'll stick with it in hopes of it growing on me since its high points were pretty good and the summary of the 3rd season interests me
And the last one was Omoide Poroporo... I really wanted to like this one. The synopsis made it sound like it'd be more of a coming of age story than it actually was, and the coming of age prospect was the only reason I was interested in it. With that being said, I did enjoy most of the flashbacks to when the protagonist was a child. I really liked the way they were presented, the setting of the mid-1960s was very pleasant, and some of the interactions were downright heartwarming. Parts of it slightly reminded me of my 5th grade experience too which was cool. ....But the scenes set in her adult life were just plain boring for the most part. They dragged on and on, and most of the conversations just felt awkward. Not to mention, and truth be told I didn't try to find anything better, but the subs I had for this were unusually bad, (awkward phrasing, weird timing, and a few misspellings) and since OP was fairly dialogue-heavy, this was rather unfortunate. To end on a positive note though, the facial expressions were fantastic. You could tell a lot of attention went into them, and they added a lot to the atmosphere of each scene.
TL;DR - I didn't find much enjoyment in 70% of the movie, but the 30% I did like was really gr8 :c -
it's amazing that this video isn't age-gatedFun fact: The members of this band are all anonymous, but the singer is suspected to be a 40yr old Finnish man
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NASA and the NOAA released pictures from their recently launched weather satellite today! Launched this past November, the GOES-16 (GOES being the abbreviation of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite), previously known as the GOES-R, is the first of four weather satellites that will be launched in the coming years with the aim of improving weather forecasting. It orbits ~22,000 miles above Earth's equator, is 5x faster and has 4x the resolution of other weather satellites, can take a full disk image of the Earth every 15minutes, an image of the continental US every 5minutes, and can take images of smaller, specific areas of interests (ex: hurricanes) every 30seconds. It can also take those pictures in 16 different 'filters', for lack of a better layman's term. Like the images don't have to be just plain pictures, they can show certain parts of the atmosphere (ex: clouds, volcanic ash, smoke). Considering prior weather satellites only have 5, this is another huge improvement. GOES-16 also has a lightning mapper that can track both cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning!
Here's some of the aforementioned pictures though. They're pretty neat to say the least:
source 1 2 and here's its wikipedia page in case you're curious
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did MK actually leave this time...?
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OMM: "Stardew Valley dev considering ps vita port"
please please please please please please please please
On 1/14/2017 at 9:05 PM, Akazora said:I'm surprised you found it so easy, especially considering you seemed to have just finished 6th gen. Most people considered XY and ORAS to be the easiest game in the series, and that SM did a lot to ramp up the difficulty. No one thought it was Dark Souls level of hard, naturally, but a lot was done to make it significantly more difficult to find yourself sweeping through the whole thing. I'm assuming you kept Exp. Share on and used Pokemon Refresh, but I'm curious what your team was, and what level they were by the time you versed the Elite Four.
Also, that's a weird way of spelling "Lana" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)And yes, you fill out the rest of the pages by completing the Pokedex, reaching certain milestones in the Battle Tree, and upgrading your Pokefinder. You can find the details here. Aside from that, there's the Ultra Beast sidequest, the Eevee sidequest, collecting all 100 Zygarde pieces, obtaining all 100 TMs, locating the rest of the Z-Crystals, catching the Tapus, and backtracking to previously inaccessible places using some of the later-game Poke Rides like Machamp and Sharpedo. Oh, and sometimes going back to places you've already been to results in special NPCs, dialogue, and cutscenes, some of which you may have accidentally discovered during the main story (the restaurant "dates", the Hau'oli City NPC, the trail captain battles, etc).
Ohh, interesting, Aggron is actually one of my favorite Pokemon (his regular form specifically, not his Mega).
I'm assuming you just prefer Aron to its evolutions because it's smol?
u must be confused because everyone knows Kahili is best girl after IlimaI technically haven't completed the 6th gen yet, I'm a little before the 8th gym in ORAS actually. While it's also not exactly challenging, I can't compare difficulty levels between the games very easily since I played the two fairly differently. I beat Sun/Moon in 10/11 days and I put effort into having my team be more diverse by utilizing types I usually don't have on my team, but in ORAS my team had/has a lot of overlapping types, and despite getting it on release day, I'm still not done with it.
And my team was garchomp, honchkrow, rowlet, solgaleo, sandslash, and drifblim. In addition to that being much more well-rounded than I'm used to, excluding solgaleo, they were all between lvl 60 - 67. My friend told me that her team was in the high 50s when she beat the Elite 4, so I was aiming for low 60s just to be safe. I did keep the exp share on since I tend to end up underleveled in RPGs due to my dislike of grinding, and I used refresh fairly frequently since I wanted to get rare candies from the cafes. I didn't think using those would overshoot me by so much though
What exactly did they do to make it more difficult than gen 6?
Thanks for the link btw I'll have to look into the NPC stuff and eevee sidequest
I have a question about the Tapu battles though: if you accidentally KO one, can you try to catch it again later?That's part, if not most, of the reason why aron's my favorite out of the three haha Aron's also the evolution you encounter first in the games, and for whatever reason, a lot of my favorite pokemon are just the evolutions you have the opportunity to catch first, so there's also that.
That is an interesting coincidence though. Is there a specific reason you prefer regular aggron over mega aggron?
On 1/15/2017 at 11:34 PM, Kenzi said:not exactly, bit I'd say there is some resemblance
my parents ended up sending him back because taking care of him was too much work
it might've been for the better since he never got the attention he deserved during the daytime since no one was home
the poor guy just kept meowing and pawing at the door until someone opened it for him :c
That's too bad, but pretty understandable since cats can be pretty clingy ): He's a nice looking cat, hopefully someone else will adopt him soon.
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Most certainly am not double posting because it's a Saturday night and the feeling is right, and I just wanna get down get deeper and down, get down get deeper and down....I've been listening to a concerning amount of Spice Girls this past week -
OMM 1: I... I beat it. I beat Pokemon Sun, my rowlet stayed a rowlet the entire time, I was finally able to add magearna to my team, and I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Calling it "easy" is a bit of an understatement though. While I can't say I was really bothered by just how low the difficulty was, it still would've been nice to not unintentionally steamroll my way through everything. (I don't like grinding in turn based rpgs, so I appreciated them making it harder to end up under-leveled, but it would've great if the game had been a bit more challenging) And Ilima's best
girlboy, no contestOnly 6 of the 15 pages in my passport are filled though, so I'm getting the feeling that I missed quite a few things, yeah?
OMM 2: tfw u hear what sounds like a German word u know in an anime and shortly after find out the Japanese word you heard actually is a loanword from German
On 1/2/2017 at 1:12 AM, Kenzi said:before my parents adopted the guy, its name had been “Pickles” for about three weeks
we haven’t made a firm decision yet, so its name seems to alternate between “Pickles” and some Chinese variant of “Kitty Cat” lol
and it’s about a year old, haha
Does it happen to have any resemblance to Pickles from Neko Atsume?On 1/8/2017 at 9:11 PM, Akazora said:I'm curious though @machine, why do you like Magearna so much? There are a lot of Pokemon I've taken a liking to over the years, but I've never had the urge to create a full party of any single Pokemon to run through a game with.
It's a little automaton with eyelashes, a cog around its head that resembles a maid's headpiece along with a large, bulbous skirt and two decorative bunny ear-like things that are probably only there for aesthetic purposes, and its arm opens up like a flower whenever it attacks ....what's not to like?To actually answer your question though, my favorite pokemon, aron, isn't available in Sun/Moon, and magearna looks kinda similar to aron. My first Pokemon game was Black and White 2, so I've had at least one aron in all of my games, and magearna was going to be my 'substitute aron' in Sun/Moon, so to speak. I like magearna's steel/fairy type combination a lot more than aron's steel/rock combo though, and playing with a magearna-only team for any length of time sounded like it'd be an interesting challenge. I wasn't hoping to go through the whole game with only them, but I did want to see if I could make it through an island or two with only magearna's. I was also planning on catching all the ones I came across in game, so finding out you can only have one kinda ruined my plans
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^ Maybe Kuzu no Honkai will also be of interest to you...?
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I'm hoping to spend the next couple weeks clearing out my currently watching list with everything I've picked up over the past year since there's only 5 things on the winter lineup that seem interesting to me. In order of hype: Yowamushi Pedal s3, ACCA, elDLIVE, Kuzu no Honkai, and Youjo Senki. There's also IBO and 3-gatsu no Lion from last season that I intend to stick with once I get caught up.
I'm not expecting elDLIVE and Youjo Senki to be very good for various reasons. I was really into KHR for a while (I watched the whole anime in like 4 weeks....), so I'm interested in seeing just how many similarities there'll be between KHR and elDLIVE since they're by the same author, but the bits and pieces of the manga I read didn't really impress me. With Youjo Senki, idk man.. I thought the cover art for the novels was really cool whenever I first came across them, and I ended up reading a very small portion of the first novel, but nothing about it really grabbed my attention.
Yowamushi Pedal, excluding all the secondhand embarrassment it's given me, has been a pretty enjoyable series, and being that my two favorite characters hardly got any screentime in the 2nd season, I'm really looking forward to whatever season 3 will be like.So hyped to hime hime suki suki daisuki again tbh
And I don't really know what to expect from ACCA and Kuzu no Honkai. Unlike the other three where I have at least one thing to base a loose expectation off of, aside from a short summary and promotional image, I don't know anything about the remaining two. Hopefully they'll be at least somewhat decent though. -
Please watch this if you haven't already seen it. It's the funniest thing I've seen all week
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Definitely wasn't waiting until it was a Friday evening to post this.... -
^ don't really want to get involved in the happy holidays vs merry xmas debacle, but "...I think it's geared more towards the gretee disliking the occasion than the other party not celebrating it." bothered me a bit and if it means anything: Similarly, I'm also a former Catholic, but I started saying happy holidays after realizing that I didn't like that saying merry xmas to someone assumes/implies that the other party is a Christian/celebrates xmas for mainly religious reasons, and after being a closeted "nonbeliever" in a Catholic school for several years, I'd just prefer to abstain from perpetuating that assumption. Unless it's the day of, I, as someone more on the atheistic side of things (I apologize if anyone finds this alarming or uncomfortable.), feel weird being that specific too. It's not intended to be a metaphorical middle finger to those who do happily partake in the non-consumerism part of the season, it's just easier and acknowledges that there's other holidays going on around the same time. Plus, it could be argued an empty, insincere "merry xmas" is more disrespectful than a genuine "happy holidays"
tl;dr - not offended in any way nor do I have a pronounced dislike for xmas, I'm, personally, just glad there's an alternative, catch-all term available for those who want one
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OMM: it's 2017 and you know what that means! --Crank That by Soulja Boy is officially almost 10yrs old!
And I hope everyone's been enjoying their winter break!
On 12/26/2016 at 11:39 PM, Kid the Phantom Thief said:Whaaatt up guys xD Merry Christmas and soon a happy New Year! sorry about disappearing for so long
(if anyone even cares haha), school's been rough.How is everyone? (:
I was wondering if you'd disappeared for a reason; welcome back! Hopefully the latter half of the school year will treat you better!
On 12/29/2016 at 6:04 PM, Kenzi said:OMM: my parents got a cat while I was gone .-.
If you don't mind me asking, what's its name?
Do they know how old it is?
On 12/22/2016 at 2:24 AM, Akazora said:SpoilerOh boy, I got Pokemon Moon on release date, and I loved it!! I blasted through the game in a week, and I still play it relatively religiously to this day. If you’re on the fence and have enough money to get it, please do! It’s absolutely fantastic, and this is coming from a lifelong fan of the series who’s played virtually every Pokemon game, or at least one from each generation. For the first time in my life, I can proudly say I have a favorite Pokemon game, and that would, hands down, be Moon. The game looks gorgeous, the music is brilliant, the characters are actually endearing and lovable, the game is genuinely funny, and it’s a treat for both new fans, veterans, young children, and adults alike. The new Pokemon are great, and it strikes a perfect balance between easy and difficult. I haven’t had this much fun playing a Pokemon game in years, I seriously felt like I was a kid again, it was magical. To be honest, the only complaint I have is that the game was too good for the 3DS to handle. No matter which system you use, even the New 3DS XL, there will be framerate issues during Totem Battles and any battle with more than three Pokemon on the field at once. But don’t let that deter you! Everything else about the game I loved. This was the best game of 2016 for me, and one of the best games I’ve played in my life. I liked it so much, I've even started watching the Sun and Moon anime, and in all my years of being a Pokemon fan I have never watched the anime. That's how much I've fallen in love with the music and the characters and the region and the Pokemon. The game is a solid 9.5/10 (I only took off 0.5 for the framerate issues, and because I don’t believe in 10/10s anyway, but given the option I would have given this a 10/10). Please consider getting this game as a last-second Christmas gift for yourself if you haven’t already, you won’t regret it!
I see you found $135 lying around, please consider spending some of that to get yourself a copy of Sun or Moon, whichever you’d prefer.EDIT: And if you're the type of person to be swayed by hype trailers, here's a good one for ya!
Ehh.. I'm still not entirely sold, but with that being said, I revisited ORAS recently (I lost interest a few weeks after it came out when I lost my first ever shiny because I forgot to save before quitting), and have been enjoying it more than I thought I would. Your paragraph, and playing ORAS again, does make me want to play the next main installment in the franchise, but I'm still hung up on a few small things. I don't particularly like either legendary or any of the starters' full evolutionary lines, I was hoping to catch a bunch of magearna's and have a whole team of 'em and I'm still somewhat disappointed that you can't do that, and, for whatever reason, I don't like the walk/run cycle used for the player's character.
and as cool as Kukui may be, he's no Prof Sycamore
I'm probably going to get it soon though since, for a while, I planned on buying it at launch, and when launch day came and went, it felt kinda weird not having it. They also brought back character customization with Sun/Moon, and being that that was one of my favorite parts of XY, I really want to play another Pokemon game with that feature. I also can't get Origin to work for some reason, so Sims 4 isn't an option at the moment and it'd be nice to get at least one video game before the holiday season's officially come and gone :')Also: Why did so many people choose Moon? Literally everyone I know who bought the game chose Moon, and considering I was going to go with Sun, I can't help but feel like I might've missed something somehow. . . .. .
*insert obligatory "what starter did everyone choose?" question here*
I'm gonna go with rowlet and never evolve him so he stays smol 5everOn 12/22/2016 at 2:24 AM, Akazora said:
To address what you said at the end first, I’ll just begin by saying I totally understand where you’re coming from. While I’m perfectly fine with, and in fact enjoy engaging in, political discussions, I know that a lot of others aren’t. As such I’ll do my best not to have this discussion spiral out of control. I’ll just address the specific points you mentioned, as well as try and give a sort of “closing statement” to wrap things up. If I do happen to say something that you’ve like to address at a future time, you’re free to do so. But I won’t be expecting you to, so don’t feel pressured if you’re fine with having the conversation ending.
I feel that the whole issue of Supreme Court Justices has more to do with political conservatism as opposed to social conservatism. More recently in the 60 Minutes interview, Trump said that he was fine with the same-sex marriage decision, but that he would appoint Justices that would overturn Roe v Wade (this was after he was elected, just to note). Okay, to preface what I’m about to say, I want to make it clear that I’m going to be playing a bit of devil’s advocate here. While I’m all for same-sex marriage, I’m not exactly attuned to the issue of abortion, though on the surface I want to say that I support it. However, I don’t feel that I’m educated enough on the topic to really feel strongly either way.
That being said, here’s my point of view on the issue of the Justices as a whole. I know that often times it’s hard to remove the social issue from the political issue, but I feel that in order to understand the reasoning behind this, that’s exactly what needs to be done. Trump is a conservative in that he supports states’ rights. The Supreme Court, in both the Roe v Wade and Obergefell v Hodges cases, essentially took away the rights of the states to decide on the issue of same-sex marriage and abortion. It’s no secret that these two issues are pretty controversial, abortion more so than same-sex marriage. Some states tend to lean pro-life, others pro-choice. Roe v Wade makes abortion legal regardless of how each state individually feels about the topic. Even if the majority of Americans are pro-choice, it wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say it’s representative of the opinion of the country as a whole, right?
For example, say you have a spreadsheet of all the Americans in the country as well as their opinion on certain issues: immigration, taxes, same-sex marriage, abortion, climate change, education, etc. Let’s say you also have the option of filtering out the opinions on certain levels: by person, by township, by county, by state, and of course by country. If you have the highest filter on, the one for country, the opinions are boiled down to a simple majority based on the entire population of the United States. It’s simple and easy to look at, but it doesn’t represent the complexity of the situation nor does it do a very good job of showing how Americans really think. Now, if you filter it out by state, you can see how the majority of people by state think about each topic. That’s certainly more accurate, though it requires looking through more numbers. Filtering it out by county gives an even more accurate picture, as does filtering it out by township. Of course, the most representative statistics are those on a per capita basis, but that results in a clunky mess of over 325 million individually cases to look at.
I think you’re seeing what I’m trying to get at here. Republicans, or just politically conservative people in general, are proponents of states’ rights, because they are going by the logic that having different laws for different states results in a higher percentage of people in support of, or at least content with, the law. They are against the federal government passing sweeping, nationwide legislation, because they feel it’s less representative of how the populace feels as a whole.
To illustrate, imagine a country with a population of 40. There are 4 states, with 10 people in each state. Surveys show that 21 support a new federal law, while 19 oppose it. This means that 19 people are unhappy, assuming the law passes based on majority opinion. Now, say that this was instead a state-based law, with a different decision implemented depending on the state. In State A, 3 people are for the law, and 7 are against. In State B, 8 people are for the law, and 2 are against. In State C, 9 people are for the law, and 1 is against. In State D, 1 person is for the law, and 9 people are against it. In states where the majority of citizens support the law (B,C), the law is passed, while the law is not passed in states where the majority of citizens are against the law (A,D). This results in 7 unhappy people, in the other words, the ones who were against the law in a state where it passed and those who were for the law in a state where it was not passed. While the total number of people who support the law remains the same, 21 to 19, instead of there being 19 discontent citizens in the country there are only 7.
This simple example shows how letting states choose their course will ultimately lead to a higher number of satisfied people. I won’t go into the details, because I’m sure you’ll be able to imagine how the numbers would work themselves, but there would be a bigger satisfaction difference in issues where individual states lean heavily certain ways (a large mix of 9-1 states, for both sides of the issue), as well as very close national numbers (letting states choose on a 21-19 issue will result in more people satisfied than would have been satisfied otherwise, but letting states choose on a 48-2 issue probably won’t make much of a difference at all).
Okay, now to finally bring it back to the issue at hand. When conservatives say they want to overturn Roe v Wade and Obergefell v Hodges, they don’t mean that they want to make it illegal for same-sex marriage or for abortions to occur anywhere in country. All they want to do is remove the nationwide stipulation, and instead let the states decide. This also explains Trump’s increased resignation to the fact that the Supreme Court “settled” the issue of same-sex marriage, a relatively recent court decision, but still fights for Roe v Wade to be re-examined. As I demonstrated in the above model, the more one-sided the issue is at a nationwide level, the less of a difference letting the states decide will make. Because same-sex marriage is something that more and more Americans are in favor of (see the link from my previous response), even just the act of bringing it back to the states would actually do more to disrupt the balance of society than it would to help it. Roe v Wade on the other hand, because it’s still such a highly contested issue (again, see my previous response), is something that Trump is still keeping on the table because letting the states decide will result in a large enough net increase in satisfied people.
Again, all that was just to provide the conservative perspective to the issue. I don’t necessarily agree with it or disagree with it. I also don’t want to get into the specifics of actually debating abortion, because that would just be opening a whole new can of worms. But I do hope that this lengthy explanation gives you a glimpse of how conservatives think, and how their political stances relate to social issues.
However, to continue on the topic of the LGBT+ issue, I want to take a moment to look at the bigger picture. I understand that to have Republicans in power can be frightening to members of the LGBT+ community, especially since conservatives aren’t usually known for their support of these issues.
But let me pose you this: what is the LGBT+ community fighting for? Now, I’m fairly certain that they’re fighting for, in the broadest sense, the equal treatment of LGBT+ members by the world. They want to eliminate discrimination and foster an environment of acceptance. A lofty, but certainly admirable goal. Now, in order to create this ideal world where everyone accepts the LGBT+ as equals, what needs to happen? Well, the answer in this case is actually in the question itself: everyone needs to be on board with this. And everyone includes Republicans.
And therein lies the hypocrisy of the LGBT+ community that I cannot ignore. I support them in the sense that I’m in favor of their end goal. But the way they’ve been treating this election, and more specifically the election of Donald Trump, baffles me. Trump’s election should have been monumental for the LGBT+ community. He a Republican who has openly accepted gays, lesbians, and everyone else as equals. His entire campaign has been about protecting the interest of America and her citizens, regardless of race, gender, age, or sexual orientation. The bells should have been ringing across the land to celebrate this victory, and yet all I see are depression and despair.
One might point to the fact that Republicans, including the ones that Trump is appointing to his cabinet, are still largely anti-LGBT. First of all, that doesn’t take into consideration those that are simply being politically conservative. As I explained above, wanting to overrule Obergefell v Hodges does not automatically mean anti-LGBT+. It could very well be someone who fights for states’ rights regardless of the issue. Secondly, and this is my main belief, Republicans need to be given a chance. Liberals, or more specifically, progressives have become so entrenched in their beliefs that they refuse to give conservatives even an inch. And I feel that’s a terribly short-sighted way of attempting to resolve a conflict. If they’re waiting for a time when both the Republican candidate and his or her cabinet are chock-full of pro-LGBT+ people, they’re not going to get it, at least not if they continue to play identity politics like this.
For example, the treatment of blacks in America has come a long way from when the country was first started. In the modern day, the vast majority of people do not consciously discriminate against people of color (I’d much rather not get into the issue of subconscious discrimination, as that’s a cognitive issue for another time). I imagine that the LGBT+ community would love to be seen in a similar light. I understand that the current situation of blacks is not perfect, but it’s significantly better than the less than 60% approval that same-sex marriage receives (even less, I imagine, for the LGBT+ community in general). And America reached this point, not by only electing Democrats, but also by electing Republicans. The effort to eliminate racial discrimination was a bipartisan effort, and it would not have succeeded otherwise. If only the party that “supported” black rights was elected each and every time, that would not have been a success. That would have been silencing half the population into submission. That’s not how you bring about change, nor is it how you bring about change through democratic means. You change things by talking about issues across the aisle, regardless of which party happens to be in power.
Also, I’m not sure how unpopular or popular of an opinion this is, but I’m going to come out and say it: LGBT+ rights aren’t the biggest issue the country is facing right now, and it is wholly irresponsible to vote a certain way, simply because of that single issue. If issues regarding the environment, education, infrastructure, jobs, and the economy are not addressed and fixed, then it matters not how the LGBT+ community is treated because the company will have already devolved into a corrupt skeleton of what it used to be.
That being said, people should vote for the candidate that the country needs. If that person happens to be a Republican, then so be it. If they happen to be a Democrat, then so it is. You can still advocate for LGBT+ rights, regardless of which side is in power. But to see Trump being denounced as anti-LGBT+ based on his cabinet picks makes me feel that progressives are still having trouble separating, or perhaps outright refusing to differentiate, political conservatism and social conservatism. And in doing so, they’re selfishly blotting out the bigger picture for the sake of maintain their status as victims, refusing to recognize what is arguably one of the biggest landmarks in LGBT+ history, which might have ultimately done more to hurt the movement than to help it. Just imagine the positivity that would have resulted if progressives recognized that Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate (and to-be President) to openly support the LGBT+ community. Think of the publicity and buzz that would have been generated if the mainstream media made a bigger deal out of the LGBTQ portion of Trump’s speech at the RNC, his subsequent Tweet, and his holding up an LGBT flag at a rally, instead of trying to pretend these events didn’t happen or, whenever they did report on it, try to spin it in a negative light. But it seems that playing the victim and actively limiting progress is justified in the name of maintaining the false narrative that Trump is literally Hitler, all Republicans are homophobes and should not be supported, and that the candidate with a (D) next to their name is the one and only choice.
Now, I say all that, but I want to clarify that I do not direct this toward you specifically, so I don’t want you to take any offense by this. I have merely presented my point of view on the whole issue regarding Trump and the LGBT+ community, as well as expressed my grievances on progressives as a whole, in regard to the LGBT+ issue specifically. Anyway, that just about concludes my thoughts on the LGBT+ issue. I know I didn’t directly address every single point you brought up, but I carefully went over what you wrote and I believe that everything I’ve typed up at the very least indirectly provides rebuttals to concerns you might have.
Moving on, I want to tackle the bigger picture of Trump’s apparent lack of experience, more specifically his lack of political experience. I find a lot wrong with people using this as an argument against Trump’s ability to hold the office of president. If I apply to a local restaurant to work as a waiter, should I be denied the job because I don’t have any experience waiting on people? Of course not. If I have demonstrated interpersonal skills, leadership capabilities, the ability to deal with change, a good work ethic, a fantastic smile, and everything else that makes a good waiter, then my lack of direct waiting experience should not immediately disqualify me from being a waiter. Trump’s successful presidential campaign, against all the odds, and his organization’s global reach are proof of his capabilities as a charismatic person able to get things done himself when needed, as well as delegate work to people most qualified for the job. While not perfect, he’s made the correct decision more times than not, and to be honest there aren’t many people I’d trust more to be my president. He may not know all the lingo and terminology used in the political world, but he’s been learning and he will continue to learn, and he’ll surround himself with an advising team that will help him make the best decisions.
Furthermore, the Founding Fathers didn’t create this country to be run by monarchy. The entire idea of a democracy, or a representative democracy or republic if you want to be technical, is so that the people have a say in who leads the country. There is no divine leader who has a God-given claim to the throne. And yet if we as a nation continue to be of the opinion that “only politicians should be allowed to hold political office” we start to enter dangerous waters. There’s a reason that the only requirements to be president are that you’re a natural born citizen, you’re at least 35 years old, and you’ve lived in the United States for 14 years. Nothing in the Constitution mentions a required amount of political experience. And that’s because once you start requiring political experience, you create an oligarchy disguised as a government of the people. Elections occur, but soon they become ceremonial and in-name only. After all, your only choice is politician A or politician B, so what’s the difference? It’s clear that the Democratic and Republican parties have gained so much influence and traction that even “independents” are under their thumb. Bernie Sander’s disgraceful selling-out after he lost the nomination, and his failure to revoke or even refuse an endorsement of Hillary Clinton, even in light of evidence showing the Democratic Party rigged the election against him, is proof of this. Clinton only received the wrath of Republicans, not Democrats. Trump was snubbed by a sizable portion of both parties. I think that’s quite telling of the situation at hand. This uniparty that currently rules America, one run by Bushes and Clintons alike, knows that they only hold power because people don’t care enough to look for alternatives, and whenever an alternative with enough power does come along with momentum to potentially injure the wizard behind the curtain, they do their very best to take them down. Sanders was one of those alternatives, and the uniparty successfully silenced him. Trump was another one of those alternatives, and thankfully he wasn’t having any of that. The uniparty did all kinds of things to poison the well, but to stay on topic and not ramble off on too big of a tangent, one of those things was to claim that Trump didn’t have the experience to be President. After all, they have power to control politicians of any party (again, Sanders) but they don’t have nearly as much control over a rogue silver bullet like Trump. It may seem logical to reject the person “without experience”, but once you see the ulterior motive behind this talking point and realize not only the threat that Trump poses to the establishment but also that he has plenty of applicable experience, the veil falls away.
Also, to briefly touch upon a more specific concern of yours, I don’t see anything wrong with Trump not saying he won’t use nuclear weapons during his presidency. It would be foolish to say otherwise. Of course he doesn’t plan on using them, nor does he want to. No one wants to use a weapon to hurt others (okay, at least the vast majority of people don’t, crazies do exist after all). Gun owners have guns not because they want to blow the brains out of the Jones’ next door, but because they don’t want their dying thoughts to be “If only I had a weapon…” I know you’re anxious about conflict, but the truth of the matter is, every single option needs to be on the table, especially when it comes to self-defense. Our military exists as a defense mechanism, not an offense mechanism, least you forget. Thankfully, the days of conquest and manifest destiny are over, if that’s of any comfort.
Alright, I don’t have any quoted evidence to prove Hillary intended to start a war with Russia, but I think at this point in the news cycle it’s pretty obvious that all signs point to yes. I’ll also try to keep this as brief as possible, because it’s a bit of a tangential topic that deserves its own separate post. Currently, the Democratic Party with the help of mainstream media is pushing the false narrative that Russia influenced/hacked/rigged the election in favor of Trump, resulting in a Clinton loss. I don’t think I need to link you to these allegations, you’ve likely see them all over the place.
To clear away some of the uncertainly, so that you know exactly what I’m arguing against, I’m going to substantiate some of these claims. For starters, what exactly is the left accusing the Russians of doing? After all, there is a big difference between influencing, hacking, and rigging the election. At first, immediately following the loss of Hillary, those on the left claimed the Russians were doing all three of these things, somehow. But that can be attributed to the heated state of the nation at the time. Those still pushing this narrative, even after the electors have cast their final votes, have all come to an agreement on this: the Russians hacked members of the DNC and released that information via Wikileaks, which unfairly swayed public opinion in Trump’s favor, resulting in Hillary losing the election. So to make things clear, there are no more serious claims of Russians rigging the election. This would be accusing them of somehow accessing the machines and ballots on the night of the election, and through some means taking votes away from Clinton and giving votes to Trump. The notion is as crazy as it seems of paper, and there is absolutely no evidence of direct tampering from Russia.
Now that we know exactly where the left stands on this issue, we can begin to analyze just how much water this accusation holds. First of all, the Russians. What exactly is meant by the Russians? A random lone wolf hacker living in St. Petersburg accessing information is quite different from a hacker living in Moscow being instructed by Putin and funded by the Kremlin, after all. The former is something the Russian government has no responsibility for, while the latter is something that indicates malicious intent from a foreign power. The CIA has come out and conjectured that Moscow may or may not be behind the DNC hacks. They have zero evidence to back this up. Read any mainstream media outlet trying to peddle Russian government interference as an established fact, and you’ll find that they all cite the CIA and other “intelligence agencies”. Only problem being, no individuals in these agencies are willing to come out and say, point blank, the Russian government was behind this without a doubt. It’s easy to hind behind the skirt of a big, fancy name like the CIA after all. Mere conjecture, as opposed to evidence, is being treated as fact. No documents, with parts redacted or otherwise, have been publicly released providing the American people with any evidence. Whatever investigation is occurring is about as transparent as Obama’s administration, which is to say, not very transparent at all.
Now, to play along with the Democrats on this, let’s say that Russia was behind this deluge of information. What does that change? The information exposing the DNC and the Clinton campaign originated from two main sources: Wikileaks and Project Veritas. Project Veritas, while known for having a bit of a questionable past, provided video evidence proving intent of higher ups to rig the election against Sanders and stage violence at Trump rallies, among other things. It’s hard to deny video evidence, especially since those caught in the videos were removed from their positions immediately. And no matter how you look at it, unless there is evidence to prove Project Veritas was funded by the Kremlin (there isn’t), this was a wholly domestic operation. So whatever influence those videos may have had on the election cannot be attributed to Russia. The bigger fish out there is Wikileaks. But what they released was merely tens of thousands of John Podesta’s e-mails (Podesta being Hillary’s campaign chairman). The e-mails substantiated the Project Veritas videos, exposed the campaign of collusion with the media, called into question the integrity of the Clinton Foundation, revealed Podesta’s participation in spirit cooking, and spring-boarded the grassroots investigation into Pizzagate. The thing is, nothing Wikileaks published was false. Every e-mail was real, and Wikileaks continues to maintain their perfect record of providing 100% genuine information. The fact that the Democrats have yet to come out and denounce any of the e-mails as falsified, is proof of this. The fact of the matter is, regardless of who was behind providing Wikileaks with Podesta’s e-mails (Wikileaks claims it was a DNC whistleblower with legal access to the e-mails while the Democrats, of course, claim it was the Russian government), these e-mails are proof of the DNC’s immoral and underhanded tactics in trying to subvert democracy and sneak their preferred candidate into the White House. The messenger in this case is irrelevant; the American people deserved to vote, armed with as much information as possible, and if Russians were the ones who gave us that information then thank you Russia. And as a quick rebuttal to anyone who might try and claim that a foreign power influencing a democratic election in another country is immoral in itself, a recording of Hillary Clinton revealed her proposal to rig the 2006 Palestinian election and Obama himself recently urged Britain to remain a part of the EU. If these aren’t clear examples of a foreign governmental power attempting to influence democratic elections in another country, I don’t know what is.
Okay, so I spent all that time providing a, hopefully, sound argument against these inane claims of Russian interference, but I still haven’t addressed the main issue. What does this have anything to do with starting a war with Russia? Well, since even before she lost, Hillary was pushing this narrative in a shoddy attempt to explain away all the new information Wikileaks was putting out. These claims have only seemed to magnify in the wake of Trump’s victory because it’s a convenient excuse the Democrats can use to explain how they lost an election they gave themselves a 98.1% chance of winning. Now, imagine what would have happened under a Clinton administration. If she had won, there would be nothing stopping her from fanning the flames of war. The Podesta e-mails revealed she’s an “ends justify the means” type of person, and so even without the CIA releasing undeniable proof that the Russians attempted to influence the election, she would have found a way to tip the scales in her favor. After all, she had already spent so much effort vilifying the Russians, all she would need at that point was some fabricated proof of hacking (which she would treat “like any other attack”), a violation of that no-fly zone she proposed over Aleppo, and before you knew it I’d be off fighting a war in Russia, and know just how badly wars in Russia end up going.
But you might be wondering, what are the benefits of war? For the average American person, there really isn’t much. For the government and bigwigs running society, there’s quite a lot. First of all, it stimulates the economy, and in more ways than one. Demand for military supplies boosts the manufacturing industries. This allows those struggling to find jobs, who are the ones complaining about the economy the most, to finally be employed. Furthermore, if there is a shortage of necessary resources, like food and water and energy, the government can attribute it to the war efforts. If those resources are going to the boys abroad, resulting in higher prices at home, then it would be "unpatriotic" to complain. Also, war requires people, and more specifically, war tends to require able bodied men. Those men leaving will open up job opportunities for the people staying at home (less people living in America means more jobs and resources per capita domestically). Also, less men means less babies, or at least, temporarily less babies as there is always a baby boom when the war ends and men return to their women. Less babies not only means more available resources but also means a lesser current need for education. The money that would have otherwise been invested in the education system can be used for something else. All in all, the sitting President at the time can take credit for these nominal reductions in unemployment, increases in prosperity after being “controlled” for wartime, and so on. Also, central banks around the world make insane profits from wartime, regardless of who they fund (they often times fund both sides of the war). I don’t want to get too off topic, but the way the Federal Reserve and central banks in other countries operate is fascinating (and not in a good way). If you want to gain a new perspective on history and war, then I highly recommend you watch this documentary called The Money Masters. It’s three and a half hours long, but it’s worth every eye-opening minute. Even if you ignore everything else I type here, please at least give the documentary a watch through. By the end of it, you’ll realize why it’s not too far-fetched that Hillary had every intention of starting a war with Russia had she taken office. Oh yes, and it’s not like wars haven’t been fought for fabricated reasons in the past as well. Most recently the Bush administration claimed Saddam Hussein had ties to Al-Qaeda (he didn’t) and that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction (they weren’t). Based on the government’s word and word alone, we went to war with Iraq, and you can see just how swimmingly that went. Other suspicious “tragedies” have been used in the past to shift public opinion in favor of war, such as with the USS Maine’s sinking contributing to the Spanish-American War and the Lusitania’s sinking contributing to America’s involvement in WWI.
Anyway, I believe that’s probably enough of that. To address that other part of my claim, the one about Trump not wanting to engage in any nation-building or bait other countries into armed conflicts, I don’t exactly have any proof for, admittedly. But to back up my reasoning for this, I believe a lot of what Trump has been running on supports this, in one way or another. His message has always been about putting America first. He wants to bring back jobs, reform the education system, drain the political swamp, rid America of illegal immigrants, rebuild infrastructure, renegotiate trade deals, bring power back to the states, and take out ISIS. Aside from the issue of ISIS, which is something any incoming President would have to deal with, since you can’t exactly ignore a direct threat of terror that has attacked virtually every major western country in some way or another, every other point of interest is something that can’t be accomplished without staying out of war. In order to rebuild America, we need all hands on deck. While you can fudge around with the numbers and somehow make things look good, even with a sizable portion of the population fighting a costly war, no permanent change is going to occur.
And that’s what Trump stands for as an anti-establishment candidate. Not only is he not beholden to special interest groups, he’s actually more likely to actually take strides toward making permanent, real change. The trick behind being a politician is that you have to promise big, and not deliver on most of what you promise. After all, if you do, especially as President, then there won’t be anything left for you to accomplish later. There won’t be any need for your reelection, and there won’t be any need for the people to vote for your successor. Trump doesn’t require the fame or glory. He had those things long before running for President. Most other Presidents ran with the intent of maintaining the smokescreen of false promises. The Democrats have promised to improve the lives of inner-city blacks for decades, and yet nothing has changed (if Black Lives Matter is to be believed, they’re apparently even more oppressed by white cops than ever before). Trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is insanity, and I think that’s the sentiment Trump tapped into.
To bring it back to the issue of war, Trump has no need to go to war unless America is directly attacked. While politicians may sing the song of peace or beat the drums of war whenever it’s convenient and “strategic” for them to, in order to maintain their never-ending charade of doing what’s best for the people when in reality all they’re thinking about is their own power and how they can pay back the people and organizations that made them so powerful in the first place. I know that may not be the cut-and-dry definitive guarantee of Trump not wanting to go to war that you were hoping for, but in life there are very few guarantees. Hopefully after that brief explanation on how I interpret this whole situation, you can rest at least a bit easier.
Okay, I know I keep on saying that I’m going to keep this short, and I’m so sorry I continue to break that promise. I have a terrible tendency to ramble, both in my writing and when I talk, and it’s a habit I’m trying to break. To address your final point about Trump being petty and unprofessional, in short, I don’t entirely agree with you. It may seem distasteful at times, but often there’s more than just childish rage behind his words. His nicknames for people were great for branding his opponents. It may not have been very nice, nor may it have been particularly professional, but you can’t deny how universal those nicknames have become. From a business perspective, it was brilliant marketing.
As for his interrupting during the debates, I don’t exactly see what’s so bad about how he did it. It may have seemed dismissive and rude, but there wasn’t much he could have gotten done if he hadn’t interrupted the way he did. If you think back to McCain and Romney, both of them had spines of wet noodles. There was this stereotype (and a stereotype that still persists amongst the most liberal of Americans) that all Republicans were old white men that were loud, sexist, racist, backwards, uneducated, Christian, science-deniers. After the wildly unpopular Dubya, Republicans were trying their best to fight this stereotype and so both McCain and Romney had to do their best to appear kind, gentle, and well-mannered. Raise their voice, get upset or angry even one time, and *bam* suddenly the stereotype is true all Republicans really must be loud and obnoxious and crazy and totally unfit for the White House! They were tiptoeing around issues so as to not step on a landmine. The liberal media and the Democrats took this opportunity to further their agenda and attempt to shut out any Republican from ever holding the office of President again, and to be honest it would have worked if Trump didn’t run (think of the disastrous group of Republicans that ran for President alongside Trump; no matter how unpopular Hillary was she would have demolished all of them on election night). Every Democrat’s wet dream is Republican opponents who refuse to stand up for themselves. It makes it easier to take the highroad and run on a pedestal of superior morality, all the while controlling the narrative. If Trump hadn’t interrupted the way he did, especially during the second debate, a ton of issues would not have been brought to the national stage (namely the Podesta e-mails and Project Veritas). Sometimes his rambling and going off topic can seem a bit silly, but when you take into consideration how the media is often trying their best to undermine his entire campaign, often resorting to implicit name-calling, very similar to the kind you’re so disapproving of, you start to notice rhyme and reason to his madness.
(Also, completely off-topic, but Chris Wallace's handling of the third debate was amazing. That was a well moderated and nearly perfectly balanced debate, and a far cry from the shame that was the second debate. Props to Chris Wallace, even as a mainstream media reporter he has integrity.)
Anyway, speaking of his “madness,” a lot of it is downright brilliant. To take that Hamilton example, it may have seemed like he was childishly lashing out against criticism, especially considering how well Pence took it. But all that did was make liberals seem like fools when they jumped the gun and criticized Trump for getting his feelings hurts and demanding the theater be a “safe place,” not realizing that criticizing Trump’s calling for a such a “place” directly contradicts their own support for “safe spaces” on college campuses. Likewise, his pushing of the “election is rigged” narrative prior to the election got people to look into the situation and discover Project Veritas, even if they hadn’t heard of it previously, and resulted in knee-jerk reactions from Democrats like Obama and Hillary and the mainstream media that the election couldn’t be rigged. Funnily enough, their own positions on the matter completely backfired when they were the ones on the losing side. And when he recently criticized the prices of F-35s and Air Force One on Twitter, he knew he was going to receive criticism. Not because of the issue at hand, but because he knows he has haters that while call him out for absolutely anything and everything. And when his concerns and complaints are justified, those haters end up once again looking like fools. To be honest, that people aren’t seeing how much Trump has been trolling on social media is what gets me. He knows what triggers his critics, and he plays them like a fiddle every time. He’s just playing the fool, and it’s amazing that people aren’t seeing this. You can still maintain that what he’s doing is unprofessional. But honestly, I’d much rather have a President who, despite his age, is just a regular American who gets a kick out of social media and trolling on the Internet than a phony woman who tries too hard to be relevant and cool and thinks pandering to “oppressed” groups is how elections are won.
Oh my gosh, finally, I’m done writing that all up! To conclude, I just want to say that saying I’m “calling you out on your shit” is a bit harsh. That’s assuming what you’re saying is wrong and that what I’m saying is right, and I’d much rather not run with that assumption. This is a conversation, and one that’s not limited to just this discussion thread on this quiet little forum. There might be a boat load of things I say that are just ludicrous, and I’m sure I’m wrong on more than one account. Every day I’m exposed to new information and I change my beliefs and my position on issues accordingly. What I think today could be drastically different a year from now. I love engaging in these types of discussions because it gives me an opportunity to alter my point of view and it exposes me to new ideas, so I’m very grateful you took the time to respond to me and to read this post in its entirety. It was exhausting, but also a lot of fun writing this up. I hope that you’ve also found this conversation beneficial in some way. I know you said that you don’t have the energy or interest to continue this dialogue for much longer, and considering the size of this response I suppose I just killed off any last bits of motivation you may have had. So while I won’t be expecting a direct response from you, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to reply, feel free to if you want. I’m fine either way.SpoilerThank you. Because my parents are on sort of opposing sides of the political spectrum (the one's a fairly middle of the road moderate that leans slightly left socially, and the other's staunchly conservative
it's gotten very ugly, very quickly on one or two occasions), I've been grouped into more than my fair share of political 'discussions' (or whatever you want to call people making their stance loudly known while simultaneously subtly criticizing, if not outright insulting, the other(s)) this past election cycle, and I'm just burnt out by this point.Though there probably is one or two things I did want to say, I don't want to take an additional month to figure out how to accurately articulate those things, especially since they're not exactly important. If you have any specific questions or things you wanted me to expand on now or in the future, that's fine, but I'd prefer to not get swept up in a huge, seemingly neverending political back-and-forth for at least a couple more weeks haha
I admire your enthusiasm and optimism when it comes to politics though. It'll be pretty impressive if that trait sticks with you, especially since so many people around our age now are already a bit stuck in their ways (myself partially included in this).
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No idea. I'm not a movie person, and the only time I go see movies in theaters is when someone else wants to go, but doesn't want to go alone.
What do you plan on doing in 2017?
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Hello! It's nice to formally greet you! c:
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OMM:
ohhh man...I have a tendency to not put my xmas/birthday stuff away and just let it pile up on my dresser, but I finally decided to go through it the other day, and I ended up finding $135 that I'd forgotten I had and never put away
It was a nice surprise at first, but now I'm worried that I've misplaced more money that can't exactly be considered 'pocket change'
I have enough to buy Sims 4 now though which is gr8 -
It's been a year; time for an update post nobody asked for:
I also just got this laptop and really want to show off how nice and new it currently looks
Here's the source
and no I don't play Overwatch. I just like the contrast of the mech with nature -
I got way back into Skyrim recently, and excluding the minor motion sickness, it's been really enjoyable. I actually started the main quest, so now dragons randomly show up when I decide to trek from city-to-city instead of fast travel. I also got better at stealing, so I'm not broke all the time anymore. I found out you can marry whoever you want too, so I married Brelyna and aside from her being hung up on that trip to Saarthal you go on when you join the Mage's College in Winterhold, it's been gr8. (I really like her voice actress, so it's disappointing she doesn't have a larger variety of voiced lines, but maybe I just haven't unlocked all of them yet since I'm not done with all the Mage College quests) I haven't explored most of the western and northern half of the map (haven't been to Dawnstar, Markarth, and Morthal yet), but I went to Solitude to join the Bard's College, and it's hands down my favorite city architecturally speaking. I wish there were more wood elf NPCs though. Since I'm playing as a wood elf, it's always cool to run into other bosmer, and maybe their scarcity is what makes finding one somewhat rewarding, but I still wish there were more of them.
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On 11/9/2016 at 4:33 PM, Akazora said:I say this with all due respect and don't mean this as any offense to you, but what makes you think Trump might overturn marriage equality? The Supreme Court already made a ruling on that in 2015, and no newly appointed justices, not matter how socially conservative, would dare try and overturn the decision on zero basis and risk causing a nationwide revolt as,
for the past few years, the majority of Americans support gay marriage with the gap ever widening, a steady trend when compared to the volatile public opinion on other issues, such as abortion. Trump may personally believe marriage should be between a man and a woman, but he also believes gays should receive equal protection under the law as married people, even going so far as to show interest in an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, to also include sexual orientation. If anything, Hillary is the one who has merely pandered to the LGBTQ+ community this entire election by claiming to support them, even though one of the Podesta e-mails reveals an exchange from October of 2015 of members of her campaign staff trying to figure out ways to "position her as a champion of LGBT issues," with all of them pitching ideas for statements that "Hillary" could publicly make, with none of the words or ideas actually originating from the woman herself. One of them even admits that "she's [Hillary's] not going to want to say she was wrong about that [the Defense of Marriage Act, which originally defined marriage, by law, to be between a man and a woman before being ruled unconstitutional], given she and her husband believe it [DOMA] and have repeated it many times (emphasis added)." Note the staffer member said "believe" and not "believed." As such, any worries you may have of this "manchild" overturning marriage equality is something I assume you would also have had if Clinton was the one who had won, since they both think marriage should be between a man and a woman, only difference being one of them openly admits it while the other covers it up with a fabricated public stance.
Isn't it great that the candidate who falsely accused Russia for trying to influence the election by releasing e-mails proving the DNC and Clinton campaign were the ones influencing the election, who also supported enacting a no-fly zone over Aleppo which would have had a high chance of escalating into armed conflicted with Syria and Russia, was the one who lost the election? Clinton tried to drum up a third Red Scare against a now democratic Russia with intentions of actually starting a war with them once she took office. Trump on the other hand seeks to strengthen America domestically by rebuilding infrastructure and combating government corruption, and not attempt any fruitless nation-building invasions or bait other countries into launching cyber or military attacks against the United States. So as with the issue of marriage equality, if you are going to freak out over the possibility of a war under the Trump administration some time in the next four years, I'd assume you would have been equally as, if not more so, concerned about the future if Clinton had won, correct?Considering the nature of this, just to get it out at the start: I didn't vote. (It wasn't out of protest, I just couldn't get registered.) But with that being said, and to avoid any assumptions, if I had voted, it probably would've been for a 3rd party candidate anyway. I'm aware it could be argued that I've lost my right to complain about the election results since I didn't participate, but regardless of what happened, I would ultimately still be unhappy with the long-term outcome.
"Might" was strong word to use there, I apologize about that, but the possibility is there. Trump earlier this year said he would "strongly consider" appointing SC justices that could overturn marriage equality. ["WALLACE: But -- but just to button this up very quickly, sir, are you saying that if you become president, you might try to appoint justices to overrule the decision on same-sex marriage? TRUMP: I would strongly consider that, yes."]
As for "...no newly appointed judges, no matter how socially conservative, would dare try and overturn the decision on zero basis and risk causing a nationwide revolt..." I'm not so sure about that. It's not as though Obergefell v Hodges was a landslide victory, it was only 5-4. While LGBT+ acceptance is on the rise as a whole, some of the people who have power/will be gaining power in our government aren't necessarily representative of that increasing number of Americans who are in support of marriage equality. If SCOTUS does end up conservative leaning in the next 4 (or 8) years, I'll be more surprised if there aren't any attempts, or even serious considerations of looking into getting it overturned. (Though on second thought, if it does end up conservative leaning, there is a chance Roe v Wade could completely overtake the conversation of controversial Supreme Court rulings that could be reviewed. That happening wouldn't put me at ease though since that would cause mass unrest as well, and if unrest isn't a deterrent to them, what would stop them from going after other controversial rulings?)
Perhaps this is an unpopular viewpoint, and while I agree that pandering to a certain demographic of voters isn't a good thing, I care less about their personal stances, and more about their potential actions. I won't argue that it's two-faced to have different stances on an issue depending on who you're talking to, and that trying to pull the wool over voters' eyes isn't ever not shameful, but, if there is anything resembling a silver lining in this case, at least pretending to care about LGBT+ issues would make it less likely for progress to be reversed/halted.
Saying Trump didn't feign/exaggerate support for the LGBT+ community isn't accurate. While it's true it's not an issue his campaign has been built around, he has said that he would be an ally to LGBTs, as evidenced by this part of his speech at the RNC this past summer [“As your president I will do everything in my power to protect LGBTQ citizens.”], and by this tweet ["Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs."]. Despite these promises though, a lot (if not all) of his cabinet picks thus far have histories of being anti-LGBT+/holding anti-LGBT+ sentiments. (I, personally, find this to be coincidental, but it's still worth noting) I don't mean to imply that people's opinions and political beliefs can't change over time, but, in all honesty, how likely is it that any of them will have a change of a heart on it? While it's certainly becoming more acceptable for Republican politicians to speak out in support of same-sex marriage, it's still a fairly uncommon occurrence since the GOP likes to tout itself as the party of "family values", and to many, but not all, conservatives, "family values" and queerness are mutually exclusive. Republicans running for elected official positions probably don't want to lose those "restore family values" votes come election season, even if they personally disagree with them. I'd like to give his cabinet picks the benefit of the doubt, but the instances of them appearing anti-LGBT aren't from 15+ years, most of them are recent and likely reflective of their current (public) viewpoints.
So to answer your question: no, not really. There's not an equal amount of worry to be had when the one's flat out said he would consider appointing judges to possibly overturn Obergefell v Hodges, and the other has, albeit only in recent years, had a positive public opinion on marriage equality. Don't get me wrong, neither of them exactly have flattering records on LGBT matters and that bothers me, this is still picking between two less than desirable choices, but the risk does not appear to be the same.
To answer the last sentence of your paragraph first: not entirely, but more or less, yeah. Not sure how discernable it is through text, but in case it hasn't been noticeable: I'm a fairly anxious person in general. The inevitability of conflict, and the possibility that the country I reside in could become involved/more involved in it, has always, and will always stress me out more than it probably should. It's unlikely any future president will put me more at ease with this since the US prides itself on being a military power, but a president with little-to-no history in politics and foreign policy certainly doesn't help. If Clinton did have anything going for her from my perspective, it's that she, to me at least, seems a lot less potentially reckless. It's not exactly difficult to seem like the less reckless option though when Trump is seemingly uninformed on some terms regarding nuclear weaponry, and has been unwilling to say that he will not make use of the US's nuclear arsenal during his presidency.
I'd really prefer to avoid going off in this direction entirely, but I'd appreciate it if you could link me some sources on where you got "...with intentions of actually starting a war with them once she took office." and "....and not attempt any fruitless nation-building invasions or bait other countries into launching cyber or military attacks against the United States." from. I've never come across anything suggesting anything like that, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it; thanks.
And to clarify, the "manchild" part is in reference to his petty tendencies (the recent Hamilton thing is a great example considering how well Pence responded to it), name-calling ("Lying Ted", "Little Marco", "Crooked Hillary", "Pocahontas"), and how he interrupted during the 1st and 3rd presidential debates (It's how he interrupted that bothered me, not the fact that he did so.)(And I left the 2nd debate out because I accidentally slept through it, and can't find the motivation to sit down and watch it in full). Not to mention his "There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever." remark from last year which reeks of immaturity.
That behavior, at best, is unprofessional, and I expect more of our politicians and presidential hopefuls :/ (And in case you wondering, yes, I found Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comment inappropriate and in bad taste as well.)
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Look dude, I'll be blunt, I'd rather not continue this much further. In addition to just having a distaste for politics in general, I'm too apathetic half the time to care about politics more than a minimal amount. By all means, continue to call me out on my shit if it sounds off to you, but here's just a heads up that most of the time, I don't have the energy to be an active participant of political discussions.
Thank you for starting this though, it got me to look into some stuff I normally wouldn't have. I apologize if I misunderstood any your points or come off overly defensive as well. I'm maybe halfway done with my response to your post in the Memes and Troll Faces thread. I'll finish and post it when I can.--------------
OMM 1: Persona 5's NA release date got pushed back to April 4th, but it's been out in Japan since September
OMM 2: tfw gunpla kits have recently started including bilingual instructions, but you're too broke rn to get into a new hobby
Also, did anyone here get Pokemon Sun/Moon? If so, how are you liking it?
And is anyone else salty about magearna not being a catchable pokemon? :c -
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Time for some "I found out..." 'not necessarily fun' fun facts:
-While up to 1 in 7 new mothers experience postpartum depression, up to 1 in 4 new fathers also experience postnatal depression (or around that many at least. I also saw 1 in 3 and 1 in 10) ~
-As of 2014, nearly half a million US households don't have complete indoor plumbing ~
-If a well-liked wolf leaves its pack, the howls of the wolves remaining in the pack have sometimes been interpreted to mean "I miss you" ~
-An estimated 6 million animals are dissected in US high schools annually. The most commonly dissected animals are frogs, cats, and fetal pigs. ~
-At any given time, there are somewhere between 25 - 50 active serial killers in the US ~
-There is a correlation between low-birth-weight, birth complications and left-handedness ~
-During the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the sisters at the Sisters of Charity Orphanage used clothesline to tether 6 - 8 children to themselves in attempt to keep the children together as much as possible as the dormitory they were sheltering in deteriorated and eventually collapsed ~
-The deadliest recorded earthquake was the 1556 earthquake in Shaanxi, China. Around 830,000 people were killed or injured ~
-Though there are ideas on what to do should the problem arise, NASA has no official protocol on what to do if one of their astronauts dies in space ~
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I learned that if you're anxious enough, you can pull all nighters with ease.
I don't recommend this
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o cool we elected the manchild who might overturn marriage equality :/it's over; I can sleep (I've been up maybe 23 hours now)
To be honest, I've been preparing for this since July/August, so I'm not that shocked, but I'm still getting over the Indian's lost, so I'm more touchy about this than I should be (I already got out the majority of my complaining on twitter though)
if we find ourselves in a war in the next 4 years im gonna fckign scream tho
6 hours ago, machine said:On a lighter note though, the holidays are coming up, and that's always nice
Taking this back. I was already considering trying to get out of xmas family activities, but now I'm 100% going for it. Last year was unapologetic and emboldened racism, I'm not finding out what this year's gonna be like.
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Animal Crossing New Leaf
Finally hit 500 hours played today, my friend who I haven't talked to in a long time came online while I was playing and we got to talk for a bit, and I convinced the villager (Bruce) visiting my campsite to move in. Was overall a good day Animal Crossing-wise
Memes and Troll Faces
in Chatroom
Posted · Report reply
I apologize if my tone sounds impatient at all. I ended up losing everything I wrote here and had to rewrite it from scratch :')
Quite honestly, I don't really have much to say in response to the majority of your post. I felt it went a bit off topic from what we originally started with, and I don't know how likely it is that any engagement I could have with you would end up being a worthwhile use of either of our time. You're welcome to continue going in that direction--I don't mean to dissuade you from doing so, but I'd prefer to stay as succinct as possible as I don't have any intention to argue with you. However, if you do continue, I urge you to keep the idiom "two wrongs don't make a right." in mind...
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"That clearly shows consent on the woman's part." But it doesn't. "A person's silence should not be considered consent. A person who does not respond to attempts to engage in sexual activity, even if they do not verbally say no or resist physically, is clearly not agreeing to sexual activity." To give an example: If a woman standing in a crowded subway car is groped by the man behind her, her not making a scene by swatting his hand away or cussing him out does not mean she consented to him touching her. How the woman responds to being touched neither legitimizes nor delegitimizes the validity of the man's actions. She was still grabbed by a stranger without her permission, and according to the Department of Justice, that is considered sexual assault. "Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape."
We have no way of knowing how whoever he was talking about reacted, or if he had/has enough extrospective in those scenarios to pick up on the fact that his actions might've been making women around him uncomfortable, but consent isn't something that should assumed. The woman/women not making their disapproval of his actions loudly known because they might've felt intimidated, were trying to make a good first impression, or etc doesn't mean they were consenting to any sexual contact. Coercion =/= Consent
Where he encountered the woman/women doesn't change anything though. His advances wouldn't be any less unsolicited if the location or women's occupation were any different. It's not as though when women are looking at job descriptions, jobs in the entertainment industry or in male dominated fields come with "May face sexual harassment or sexual assault in the workplace" disclaimers. Adults responsible enough to hold jobs should have the necessary amount of self control to not make their coworkers, or anyone really, uncomfortable by doing or saying unsolicited sexual things in professional settings. This expectation shouldn't be setting the bar too high. His actions shouldn't be excused because his workplace wasn't/isn't your stereotypical, cubicled office space.
The conversation being sexual in nature isn't the issue people have with what he said. As you've said, it's not unusual for people to talk about sex and other things that are considered vulgar, but what was said isn't entirely in the same category about someone giving a detailed summary on how their hookup with a hot girl from Tinder went, or a group of friends talking about porn/kinks. The vulgarity, while maybe surprising, pales in comparison to the implication that Trump seemingly doesn't care if the person he's hitting on is comfortable with what he's doing.
While he did release a formal apology, him mentioning Bill Clinton towards the end was unnecessary, and, in my opinion, undermines a lot of what he just said. What Bill Clinton has done/allegedly done is unrelated and an entirely different matter. Bill Clinton's actions don't lessen the brunt of Trump's actions in anyway, or vice versa, and acting like they have any effect on each other completely misses the point on why people were so put off by his explicit comments. He started off fine, and the apology would've been satisfactory had he not turned it into a non-apology by trying to dismissively compare the two at the end. Two things can be bad at the same time while varying in severity; comparing them accomplishes nothing.
There is a near constant disapproval of the prevalence of sexism and misogyny in hip hop though. Though the criticism is expressed through more of a slow trickle instead of a short lived, dam burst-like increase in articles; opinion pieces; or what have you, that doesn't mean it's not there or that people are generally ok with it.. You're trying to compare an apple to an orange. While there's certainly some semblance between the two, they're ultimately too different to warrant reacting to in similar ways. You would agree that a music artist is overall much less impactful than a politician or leader of some kind, right? And a lot of talk around the first 50 Shades of Gray movie was around whether or not the book's main characters were in an abusive relationship, so it's not the best example either (Though you could make a case with the 2nd movie since, as far as I know at least, the content was similar to the 1st movie's, but its recent release didn't generate much, if any, public concern.). Sexually charged perfume, clothing, and occasionally even food ads are perhaps a more fitting example though since those generate little-to-no backlash despite being incredibly unnecessary, but that's another conversation entirely.
To backtrack slightly: I dunno man. I don't know how tall you are, but I've always been easily pushed around and picked up, so "...I don't even wait." and "And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything." hardly come across as anything other than potentially threatening to me. There's not exactly any comfort to be found in an influential figure spreading that sort of talk, especially since his confidence in those statements could imply he's not been held accountable for similar things before. (Like from when he was on Howard Stern in 2005: ["I'll tell you the funniest is that I'll go backstage before a show and everyone's getting dressed. No men are anywhere, and I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it.... 'Is everyone OK'? You know, they're standing there with no clothes. 'Is everybody OK?' And you see these incredible looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that."])
While not entirely in the same category, worry that his words/actions will affect regular people's lives isn't an unsubstantiated as some may want to believe. In addition to the widely covered recent rise in anti-semitism, following the 2016 election process and Trump's electoral college win, schools started reporting that there had been an uptick in bullying towards minorities and LGBT students. So the effect his rhetoric has had/will have on people's actions will be something we need to keep an eye on over the course of Trump's presidency.
And for what it's worth, it's hard to find a more biased source than the infamous /r/The_Donald. You're not going to convince anyone by linking to that. The direct equivalent is me citing /r/EnoughTrumpSpam for something, and somehow expecting you, and anyone else, to not sit back upon seeing the url and think "Wait a second.. Anything posted on this very upfront anti-Trump subreddit might be promoting a specific viewpoint."
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now please enjoy this Floral Shoppe x Smash Mouth remix