Thought for the Day

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Originally Posted by Nick Danger

Flighty, it seems to be a foreign concept to you that businesses cheat and lie.

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No, and that's an argument for regulation, not against.

If you want to know what things are like in a world without regulation I suggest you read this book on early 20th century USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle Or just go to any third-world country away from the tourist areas.

It seems your story does check out this time. https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/ar.../#.YDyEOU7itRZ

I realise public pressure does work sometimes. It's more likely to work when the impact is very noticeable (eg a foul smell) and the problem can be fixed without too much trouble. It also helps if the people affected are middle-class and reasonably well-educated, because those people are better at getting heard. It's less likely to work on things like climate change where the impacts are longer-term and there is no quick fix.

I think the noisy minority trying to impose their will on that issue might be people like you.
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/...re-on-climate/

Greta Thunberg is Swedish, not German, btw

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Originally Posted by Nick Danger

Some people post pictures of their dicks on here, Bronco. I stop short of that. Here's some more for you - one of these kids is me:

Attachment 1303898

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You were in a Puerto Rican boy band?
https://www.latintimes.com/subete-mi...tin-boy-425660
That seems a bit hard to believe.

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Originally Posted by Nick Danger

Give you a perfect example - my own father. My father is a racist. He only knows one word for black people and it's the one you think it is. He's also got slurs for every other ethnicity from the Irish to the Puerto Ricans to the Japanese. He's old, obviously. And to be fair, he grew up in an Italian neighborhood of New York City which was strictly divided along racial lines. Not a single person I've ever met from that neighborhood is a bit different from my father.

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Wow. Good find. Seriously.

What the fuck Nick? Obviously it's not you but why say it is? Maybe you can spin an anecdote about how Democrats have raised taxes on boy bands and are the reason Justin Timberlake left n sync.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

Wow. Good find. Seriously.

What the fuck Nick? Obviously it's not you but why say it is? Maybe you can spin an anecdote about how Democrats have raised taxes on boy bands and are the reason Justin Timberlake left n sync.

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Originally Posted by filghy2

You were in a Puerto Rican boy band?
https://www.latintimes.com/subete-mi...tin-boy-425660
That seems a bit hard to believe.

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Okay, I'm gonna 'fess up because it looks like I'm caught out anyway - I wasn't in Menudo.

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Originally Posted by Nick Danger

Okay, I'm gonna 'fess up because it looks like I'm caught out anyway - I wasn't in Menudo.

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Hey we're all trying to relive our glory days. I never shared this with anyone here but I won a few tennis tournaments as a youth. Here's me as a blond Swede taking home my local usta championship. They really went all out with the trophies back then.

Attachment 1304033

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Originally Posted by Nick Danger

Okay, I'm gonna 'fess up because it looks like I'm caught out anyway - I wasn't in Menudo.

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My thought for the day is that yes it's a little embarrassing you were caught making stuff up. I personally think it's worse to say the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax than to pretend to be a boy band member though I understand how embarrassment works. I find some of what you say entertaining though the political content is often highly delusional.

I also liked the fact that you could be kind of affable. This section could use some of that though without letting the personal narratives get too outlandish (or the views too abhorrent). The somewhat sterile and unfriendly one-upsmanship of political conversations gets a bit old though I'm not sure what the answer is. Not fiction but a bit of color and some good will goes a long way. Have we seen the last of you?

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Originally Posted by broncofan

My thought for the day is that yes it's a little embarrassing you were caught making stuff up. I personally think it's worse to say the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax than to pretend to be a boy band member though I understand how embarrassment works. I find some of what you say entertaining though the political content is often highly delusional.

I also liked the fact that you could be kind of affable. This section could use some of that though without letting the personal narratives get too outlandish (or the views too abhorrent). The somewhat sterile and unfriendly one-upsmanship of political conversations gets a bit old though I'm not sure what the answer is. Not fiction but a bit of color and some good will goes a long way. Have we seen the last of you?

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Swap 'Sandy Hook' for Auschwitz and ask yourself if you would be so lenient with someone telling you the Holocaust never happened. Then ask yourself why it is that an as yet unknow number of armed Law Enforcement Officers in the US are simultaenously members of the III Percenters and so proud to be so they have the Militia emblem sewn onto their uniforms -but are not fired for their dual membership of the Police and what ought to be a Domestic Terrorist group.

Then ask what percentage of Black Americans have been harassed, arrested and charged, injured or murdered by Law Enforcement Officers who are also III Percenters, or Proud Boys, or Oathkeepers or the KKK -are they not the equivalent of the Brown Shirts in the Weimar Republic but not as well organized? How many III Percenters and Oathkeepers are there in the Judiciary, Local Government? Are the USA's Black Amercian Citizens today the equivalent of Germany's Jews in the 1930s? From that perspective, there is nothing entertaining about anyone who through their sophisticated language of hate, targets their fellow citizens for abuse, and regards mass murder as a hoax.

Trump may have betrayed his most violent supporters, though at least one person on his staff may have been liaising with them on January 6th, but these Militias are not going away, and it is only a matter of time before they start killing people, individually or in groups. What will you do when their supporters tell you it is 'fake news' and it wasn't them but the 'deep state', or 'antifa' or Jews with Lasers Beamed in from Outer Space? Nothing entertaining here, but a lot to be worried about.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Swap 'Sandy Hook' for Auschwitz and ask yourself if you would be so lenient with someone telling you the Holocaust never happened. Then ask yourself why it is that an as yet unknow number of armed Law Enforcement Officers in the US are simultaenously members of the III Percenters and so proud to be so they have the Militia emblem sewn onto their uniforms -but are not fired for their dual membership of the Police and what ought to be a Domestic Terrorist group.

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Would I have described someone who is a Holocaust denier as entertaining but possessing loathsome views? Maybe I wouldn't have out of feelings of hurt but I would probably know it's possible and makes them dangerous.

Redvex said a number of things about Jews I didn't like and even posted a video of a Jewish caricature being shot and I still enjoyed debating her. I know it's not a good thing but often the presence of people saying things you know others believe provides an opportunity for debate. It would be better if nobody believed these things.

I agree I didn't have to compliment him as his affability is how he's able to peddle this stuff and he could be entertaining without being abhorrent.

I fully acknowledge the stuff he said is beyond the pale but after watching so many people vote for Trump I figured I have to deal with people whose views I find repugnant and sadly it is more interesting to have adversaries.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Nothing entertaining here, but a lot to be worried about.

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To be clear I found the anecdotes about swimming in the Mississippi and losing his id entertaining, not the mental health jibes, the racism, or the Sandy Hook truther-ism. If he's done posting it's because he's embarrassed about fabricating biographical facts, not because his views embarrass him.

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Originally Posted by broncofan

To be clear I found the anecdotes about swimming in the Mississippi and losing his id entertaining, not the mental health jibes, the racism, or the Sandy Hook truther-ism. If he's done posting it's because he's embarrassed about fabricating biographical facts, not because his views embarrass him.

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Nick's past pattern of behaviour seems to involve short periods of intense posting followed by long periods of silence. I suspect he starts because he needs a distraction and then gets bored with it eventually. I would be surprised if he's stopped out of embarrassment at getting caught out because he doesn't seem easily embarrassable. Perhaps he was just looking for a pretext to quit.

I agree that his contributions have been entertaining, despite the many dubious elements (some of which may be deliberate trolling). Discussions can get a bit sterile when people agree on most things, so it's good to have somebody different to spice things up. His approach is far preferable to someone like Mr Fanti, who just repeats the same things and never engages with anyone else's responses.

I don't think he is personally a racist, though he is certainly inclined to minimise the role of racism on his own side and to believe stereotypes that confirm his political narrative about individual responsibility. I think he is a Republican supporter for the reasons he says, though this involves being wilfully blind to many things.

It's hard to know how to deal with people like Nick. When people are firmly committed to believing certain things due to political motivations it is extremely difficult to shift them with any kind of evidence. I don't think it's constructive, however, to refuse to engage with people because some of their views are abhorrent. There's no doubt that Nick's views are far from being an outlier in today's Republican Party, so if we can't engage with him we can't engage with too many people on the other side.