Inb4 Nintendo fans say they actually like it and how dare you say anything bad about Nintendo. Whoops, too late.

@SOedipus said:

theone sure knows how to make an impression. Way to embarrass us millennials. Gen-Y for me to be exact.

At least I don't have to deal with the taste of boot in my mouth.

Good riddance. Fewer police means safer communities:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvgg47/what-happened-after-chicago-police-cut-down-on-busting-drug-possession-and-prostitution

It means exclusion and the vilification of people who are perceived to be insufficiently loyal to "the state." It has never been executed in the real world without violence. Spanish fascists, the fascist movement least concerned with racial purity, started out by bombing a townfull of their own citizens. Just the fact that you are trying to make American citizens who believe in international cooperation out to be villains who care more about other countries than their fellow citizens shows how inherently hateful and divisive nationalism is. Nationalism does not mean putting your country above other countries, it means putting your own vision of how the country should work above your fellow citizens, violently if necessary. It went to the trash heap of history last century and we'll send it back there again if we need to.

@AFBrat77: It wasn't years ago, it was eleven months ago, and you made a regular habit of going into any thread having anything to do with millennials and calling them entitled and lazy. And now you're attempting to downplay it and gaslighting me in the process. If that was supposed to be an apology it's a pretty terrible apology. If you want to know why I have a problem with you that's it, right there, in a nutshell. You spent all this time slinging crap at people like me, and now when I call you on it you say that "I've changed, it was a joke, I might not have even said it, who knows?" There's a term for that in psychology, it's called a non-apology and it's a favored tactic of people with NPD.

And you're clearly not over this whole generational divide thing. you are clearly attempting to use "micro-generations" as a way to make your own in-group look better. Oh look, the "micro-generation" right before you screwed everything up and they're who we should all really be mad at, and the ones that came after you just don't know how good they have it, bless their hearts. Oh, but your little group had it all, right? You had the worst economic conditions anyone's ever seen, right, but you rolled up your sleeves, pulled yourself up by the bootstraps, and got to work, right? You were vanguards, VANGUARDS, of the PC revolution! No one before or after you had to deal with what you had to deal with, nor did they show as much good ol fashioned gumption, goldarnit! Of course, I mean, it helps when you arbitrarily divide "micro-generations" by rotating divisions of 14, 5, and 15 years.

Nor do you want to actually talk about the challenges actually posed by the boomer generation to younger generations, some of them conscious choices and some of them beyond anyone's control. Sure, you can talk about the good ol days of Ronnie Reagan, but do you want to talk about the actual consequences his policies had for subsequent generations? Do you want to talk about the role deregulation, pushed by boomer politicians elected primarily by boomers, had in a recession that damaged the lifetime earnings of gen xers and millennials? Do you want to talk about NIMBYism, supported primarily by boomers, and the effect it's having on housing prices? Do you want to talk about the fact that we have had three boomer presidents (almost certainly soon to be four), which is unprecedented, and gen x is likely not going to have a president from their age cohort ever? What I like best about that last one is that the world today is so ****ed according to boomers, but they've been in the driver's seat when it comes to politics for around two decades and counting. So nice to know that everything that's wrong with the world is your fault, but if you do anything to actually try and make it better you're going to get called names. Oh, but maybe my favorite, is that because of the economic conditions we've been bequeathed by boomers we're going to have to take care of them in their old age (despite their constantly belittling us), AND social security and medicare are probably going to be enough to cover them, but run out of funds by the time we get to retirement age, isn't that FUN!?! Nope, you just want to reminisce about saint Ronnie and how you had it harder than all the kids these days, which I'd be up for if you hadn't started out by criticizing our character, work ethic, and general outlook on life incessantly and over our objections. You want people to listen to your ramblings about the good ol days? Start by listening to them.

@ad1x2 said:

@theone86 said:

The pig socks are a non-issue. The NFL didn't make a big deal over them and, in fact, they barely got any media coverage at all. In fact, if you want to make an argument that this is simply about kneeling then there's no better example than the pig socks. They were fine, but threaten their patriotism for hire profit model and all of the sudden he's drummed out of the league. Anyway, the NFL could have done what it always does when someone violates its uniform policy and fine him. So much for right wingers having thick skin, BTW. I guess you snowflakes need your safe spaces, too.

Those other players were warned about kneeling and stopped when their livelihoods were threatened. Again, you keep making my argument for me.

If you don't like Kaepernick getting big Nike contracts and hob-knobbing with celebrities then maybe you shouldn't be trying to turn him into a pariah. If he hadn't been on the receiving end of all this right-wing outrage and out of a job then that wouldn't be the case. Typical right winger, you stir up controversy and then get mad when the person at the center of it decides to capitalize on it.

Rich people can be oppressed too. There are plenty of NFL players who voice their opinions and advocate for causes, some of them controversial, who never have to worry about their livelihoods being threatened. The fact that a black man speaking about black issues stands out as the one person who lost his job because of it shows that oppression still exists, and it should worry us all. If your argument is that he's got it made because he actually earns an income and the NFL didn't dismember him then, again, you're making my argument for me. "Sure, you're oppressed, but at least you're not a slave!" Worst argument ever.

Kap is not oppressed, and no amount of virtue signaling or pretending to know how bad it is for black people will change that. If Nike wants to pay him because they believe people that love to virtue signal will buy their shoes in response then that's on them. I find it funny how you're trying to take back snowflake and use it on the right when your post history shows how quickly you will have meltdowns over benign stuff that isn't favorable to the left.

One more thing you seem to ignore when you say that his kneeling threatens their "patriotism for hire profit model" is that neither the NFL nor any other business is obliged to lose money in order to support an employee's desire to protest on their dime. It doesn't matter if it's a few million dollars lost of a few hundred dollars lost. I said in an earlier example that McDonald's doesn't have to let a cashier wear a Black Lives Matter shirt while working on the register, so do you agree or disagree with that conclusion?

Right or wrong, plenty of businesses will make changes that they think will increase their profits because the bottom line of a business is to make money. Look below at the poster for The Force Awakens:

Notice something missing from the Chinese version? Someone must have thought it would make them more money to do that change.

Before you say it, I'm not agreeing with anyone about the idea that racism is why Kap isn't in the NFL like racism (on behalf of the target market, not the publisher) was probably part of the reason the poster was changed. Kap isn't in the NFL for two reasons: he was causing them to lose money and they believed that his stats weren't good enough to make him worth the drama he was bringing.

Hey, you're the one who's throwing a shit fit over a pair of socks. Typical right-wing hypocrisy, you want to go around mocking other people for being offended by something, but as soon as you're offended by something you demand the world stop and validate your feelings. And it's laughable that you think you can't be a snowflake because you're a conservative. Textbook identity politics.

Kap is oppressed. He was fired for expressing a political opinion, and one that uniquely affects people of his own racial background. That's oppression.

Like I said, plenty of other players who are plenty less talented than him have brought plenty more drama and gotten second chances. This is the same league that was going to let Ray Rice back in after brutalizing his wife until the press released the footage of him doing it. Your excuses are weaksauce.

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Bottom line is if Trump hadn't used poor conditions to insult the citizenry and their leadership with rhetoric that's reminiscent of Nazi propaganda then people wouldn't be rightly pissed off at him. If Trump had just remarked on the state of certain areas of the city or suggested some sort of action he was spearheading to help them nobody would be talking about it, but he didn't. He insulted a sitting congressman and said that his opinion didn't matter because he was from a rat-infested cesspool. Stop making excuses for that. You say you're from the party of personal responsibility, but I don't see you taking any right now, zero. I see you trying to shift the conversation way from something horrible Trump said in order to diminish the opinion of people who were rightfully offended by it. It's downright cowardly, frankly.

Oh my god, you need to get some better sources for your information. My head is seriously hurting just reading that.

Populism is a non-partisan concept. It simply refers to people who favor being governed according to the will of the majority. The electoral college, for example, is decidedly non-populist. It's come to have a negative connotation because often populist leaders will claim a popular mandate despite lacking one. Trump is a picture perfect example of this. He claims to speak for the will of the people and to have the power of the people behind him, but he lost the popular vote and has never had majority support in the polls. I'm not trying to start a debate over the merits of the electoral college, I'm just pointing out that he doesn't have the popular mandate he claims to. Most other authoritarians throughout history, both right and left, have done the exact same thing, which has led to populism being associated with leaders who turn into oppressive dictators.

You can't break left and right down into neat little ideologies like collectivism and individualism. There are people who have spent their entire careers trying to do so and still haven't come up with a suitable way of categorizing them. Just defining what collectivist and individualist mean can cause a great deal of confusion. For example, while conservatives tend to be less supportive of a federal government, they tend to have more respect for authority and institutions that they view in a positive light. We don't call conservatives collectivist for banding together to promote a shared religious ideology or consolidating several businesses into a corporation, but why not? It's just as collectivist as organizing a union or advocating for a safety net. I mean, how is nationalism not a collectivist ideology? you are specifically advocating for people to band together into a single group and collectively work for the betterment of that group.

As for so-called "globalists," the business wing of both parties has tended towards smaller federal governments. This is because they see regulation as a drag on profits. However, they still support a strong federal government in areas that support their business, such as copyright enforcement and military spending. They're also largely behind most of the right-wing movements around the world right now. Brexit was funded by wealthy interests who were tired of regulation by the European Union. They don't care about immigration, they just use it as a flashpoint to get people angry at each other while they use the political system to enrich themselves. In fact, they've all but admitted as such themselves. Milton Friedman specifically said governments couldn't be trusted to put the "right" economic policies into place, and so he said the only correct course of action was to undermine popular governments by causing mass confusion and unrest so that those policies could be put into place against popular opinion. He and his acolytes laid out their plans to bring down popular governments and replace them with a new world order. Funny how liberals are accused of that when it was a conservative economist who came up with the term and a conservative president (H.W. Bush) who popularized it. Anyway, the people calling for Britain to stand on its own are the same people who were calling for a global order of their own making a decade ago. No one is against global markets for one simple reason, they work. The business wings are for whatever makes them money, and global markets make them money. So does inflammatory nationalist rhetoric. In short, you're being played.

Which brings us to nationalism. Nationalism is a horrific ideology that has led to mass unrest and millions of deaths, full stop. It doesn't matter if you're not being explicitly racist, nationalist governments would be horrific even without the blatant racism, and they pretty much always devolve into blatant racism. Let's just debunk one thing right off the bat, people who aren't nationalists are not less committed to their country. Everyone born in a country has some attachment to it and cares about seeing it succeed. Nationalists just think they're the only ones who care about their country, and they have to prove it by constantly pitting their country against others in competitions, whether it be economic or warfare. They're obsessed with "winning" and don't see the benefits of international cooperation. And any movement that claims to stand for a country above all other movements has to define what that country is. Usually it's not the people who were here first. Funny how American nationalists don't tend to be Native Americans, huh? It's also usually not people who have an issue with the way the status quo is working. Minorities, political non-conformists, and the mentally ill all tend to be people who aren't included in nationalists' definition of what this country stands for, and they all wind up on the wrong end of oppressive policies sooner or later. Nationalism is an exclusionary vision for a country that can only survive by brutalizing those on the outside of their subjective definition. You don't have to beat your chest about loving your country and pursue policies that punish other countries and their citizens in order to be a good citizen. People who take the time to understand their fellow citizens and work with other nations to everyone's mutual benefit care about their country just as much, if not more.

Wow, I can't believe you started talking about victimhood culture in a discussion about suicide. Lack of class confirmed.

If there are a lot of reasons for a spike in suicide rates and the only reason you cite is the internet then it does imply that you think it is among the, if not the, most important factors, and I honestly don't see it as being that important. Furthermore, I think it's extremely easy for people to go around blaming technology. By its very nature it wasn't there in the past, and it's easily misunderstood by people who didn't grow up with it. Most importantly, though, it gives you a sense of control. Even if you can't do away with it, you can go around lecturing people about how they use it. Confronting, say, systemic inequality is a much more daunting task. Much easier to just cluck your tongue at "kids these days."

Yup, sure, it's both sides. I mean, there's really only one side that decided what the world was missing was a propaganda network that went around spreading modern-day McCarthyism, before that everyone was fine with the usual fair and objective reporting that was already in place until the one side decided to come along and ruing it, but sure, it's a both sides kind of thing.

Maybe most people don't behave the same way they do on the internet as they do in real life, but most can be as little as fifty percent plus one. Furthermore, certain groups and communities can have an outsized number of assholes within them. While most people out of the general population behave fine, these groups have more assholes per capita and people who interact with them can have very different experiences than what you experience on a normal day. Don't just assume that it's someone having a bad day or five bad minutes. You don't know what other people go through, so before you go using your own experiences as a baseline and telling other people they're just imagining things maybe you should stop and think about what life is like for people who aren't in your shoes.

Ok, boomer. Oh, do you not like it when I say that? Ok, boomer, I'll stop saying that. Oh, I forgot, when we ask boomers to stop saying something we don't like they call us snowflakes and tell us to go find a safe space. In fact, I distinctly remember asking you to stop mindlessly ragging on the younger generation in this forum, time and again, and constantly trying to have a reasoned discussion about what millennials are actually experience, and you started in on this micro-generations crap to justify your generational bullying. So no, I don't think I'll stop saying ok, boomer. Find a safe space, snowflake.