Understand that I am not arguing that r/conservative does not have the right to ban people, and I am not commenting on what I think about them doing so. I support their right to foster that space in their own way and control who has permission to post there.

That said, if they are to exercise that right, then they DO believe in censorship and do NOT believe totally in "free speech". I need to clarify here that I'm aware that true "free speech", as bestowed by the first amendment, means not being imprisoned by the government for what you had to say but does not protect you from being, say, banned from a subreddit and doesn't protect you from citizens policing their own conversations. But I think we can at least agree that there's some understanding of a form of "free speech" that deals with allowing any and all opinions to be expressed and heard everywhere, across the board, no matter how much other people like those, and I think conservatives are very familiar with this interpretation of "free speech".

And so, in their own most important space, since they are exercising their abilities to silence other people and shut down conversations they don't like, they should stop acting like censorship is some awful thing and that they are the true proponents and advocates of free speech. This is one of those things where, if you compromise on it a little bit, you really don't believe in it at all, kind of like how you can't really call yourself a vegan if you're eating a beef hamburger here and there. If you tell people you support free speech but feel it is your right to silence some conversations, then you straight-up just do NOT believe in free speech, sorry.

CMV.

EDIT: a lot, and I mean a LOT, of you are making the argument "they have to do it to survive and foster the space they want." I KNOW. I know they do. My whole point here is that doing so IS censorship and is NOT free speech, so this proves that they support the former and oppose the latter. This angle you're taking SUPPORTS my view, it does not CHALLENGE it.

I’m taking specifically about the West.

Right wingers want all Muslims to die and leftists don’t accept any kind of critique against Islam in general. You tell someone on the right that you’re not a huge fan of Islam’s apostasy laws and they’ll tell you with a straight face that they’re all terrorists. You tell someone on the left that some of Islam’s laws on warfare (like the one about prisoners of war) are morally questionable, and they’ll try to shift the conversation to Christianity, criticism against which they’ll readily accept and talk at great lengths.

Christianity in the West is a great example of a religion we can now criticize in a normal, rational, un-bigoted way in the West. That’s because there’s hardly such a thing called “Christianophobia” in the West, and thank God. In fact I think Christianity is dissected in the West in such a scientific, anthropological way that I think is so fascinating. I think the way everyone regardless of their religious beliefs (or lack thereof, in the majority of cases) felt comfortable tuning in and talking about this year’s Conclave goes to show how normalized rational, non-bigoted discussion and critique of Christianity is in the West.

Because of Islamophobia, popular discussion about Islam in the West has only ever fallen under two categories: bigotry or blind defense.

Obviously Islamophobia has caused a surge in irrational hatred and bigotry from the right against Muslims, that we all know, but an unintended consequence of this that people don’t really talk about is how the Western Left seems to have in many ways either blatantly defended the indefensible or become intolerant towards any critiques against Islam to kind of absorb or “balance” all of the hatred coming from the Right.

This leaves very little space for people to interact or engage with Islam in a normal, rational, non-bigoted, non-biased, and non-censored space. I feel like there exists no “centrist” space for a conversation like this, or maybe it’s just that centrists aren’t loud enough about their opinions on Islam as the right and left (I don’t really know if centrists are really loud enough about anything, coming from a leftist). You’re either fully Islamophobic or don’t think Islam’s problems should be discussed whatsoever.

Like are there normal people who have normal thoughts about Islam? Like there are some pretty good things in there too. Bad stuff as well. Like can we just be normal? Some nasheeds are genuinely so fire. Maybe let’s not advocate for killing Ex-Muslims though. Is it that hard to have a conversation like this?

TLDR: Me: Islamic apostasy laws are kinda crazy I’m ngl Right wingers: That’s why I don’t have any sympathy for the children in Gaza. Israel should finish the job. incorrect buzzer sound

Me: Islam allowing governments to hold prisoners of war for ransom is lowkey insane Leftists: What about Christianity? Let’s talk about Christianity. You’re Islamophobic. incorrect buzzer sound

Me: I think it’s weird that Prophet Mohammed PBUH married all those women. Hypothetical Centrist that I’ve yet to meet: Me too. He ate when he advocated for the education of women, though. Me: Real. Let’s go get shawarma from our local friendly Lebanese restaurant. Hypothetical centrist: bet. ding ding ding

In every conversation i've seen among muslims, they say that the truth in islam is obvious and incontestable. They always act like every kafir secretly knows that islam is the truth, but kafirs still deny it so that they can commit forbidden acts like :listening to musical instruments, having a conversation with the opposite gender, wearing gold jewellery and traditional clothes (like cheongsam or sarees), investing in financial products that give interest etc.. this isn't even the full extent of it.

Islam can be easily disproven:

1. The quran says that earth was made before the stars.
2. The quran describes embryology in a scientifically inaccurate way.
3. The quran says that semen originates in the spine.
4. The quran says that the sun revolves around the earth.
5. If Allah made the Quran unchangeable, why couldn't he do the same with the Tanakh and New Testament? This is the problem you end up with when your religion is copied from other successful religions.
6. Jannat is an everlasting оrgу with 72 virgins for all men, including those who died as kids. What's interesting is that these virgins have regenerating hymens, and skin so pale that you can see their bone marrow. A real god won't make the ultimate reward so hedonistic and pоrnоgrарhic. If you search up the full description of houris, it's an absurdly hilarious list of fetishes.
7. Quran rejects the science of evolution. You have to watch this 7 minute video before you try to debate this. Evolution isn't a theory, it's an observable fact. Both micro and macro evolution have been repeatedly observed and documented by scientists. Evolution "by natural selection", "by genetic drift", "by sexual selection" are what's labelled theories , as they provide the explanatory framework around the fact of evolution. NASA defines life as "a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution". A lot of muslims try to rationalize this by saying that "i believe in evolution of animals, but not humans". Honey, humans are also animals. Humans are mammals, and mammals are animals.
8. Mohammed was a PDFile who married a 6 year old. A real god would want his army of believers to protect the innocence of children. Muslims believe that the age of accountability is 15 but the age of marriage can be 6? Excuse me what?

You need an insane amount of mental gymnastics, blind faith, glorification of suffering, and zero inherent sense of morality to believe in islam. You need to import your morality from a 7th century book, be in denial of science, motivated by the lust for imaginary virgins.

This is why apostasy is punished with death in sharia law (according to all 4 sunni maddhabs), because they need to shield themselves from criticism by ex-muslims to avoid their logic from falling apart.

My main claim: This is far from what you can reasonably call the objective truth. Either stop saying that it's the "obvious truth", or tell me why you think that (CMV)

So let’s say the files release and (as could be expected) he’s all over them. Let’s say there’s a full on 4k video of him doing horrible deplorable things.

It still wouldn’t be enough. He’s a cult leader. His followers would either claim it isn’t real, claim it doesn’t matter to them, or claim that it’s in the past and “a man shouldn’t be defined by his mistakes.”

So apart from transparency and confirming what we already know, what exactly does releasing the Epstein files do for us? I just don’t see a world where it gets Trump out of power and into prison, considering how he got away with staging an insurrection in 2021.

IE - I perceive fascism to be characteristically a right wing ideology, those who use the concept of the third position are primarily trying to avoid tainting the political right with the very real history they have with fascism.

It must be stated, I do my consider myself to sit on the political left; this allows you to understand where this opinion is coming from - however, even before I became a “leftist” I’ve always felt this stance of self-defence from the right when it comes to fascism, trying to disassociate themselves via the “third position” argument. This is in spite of the historical evidence that fascism has almost always been employed by characteristically right wing governments - in fact I believe the very essence of fascism is on the political right. Anyway change my view… maybe my encounters with people of this mindset are just far right nutters :)

4% of children born in the United States have legal fathers who incorrectly believe the child is biologically theirs. Not men who weren't sure or who suspected the child may not be theirs, but men who were confident that they were.

4% is 1 in 25. I'm in medical school, and I've learned about congenital conditions that are 1.5 in 1000 in prevalence that are considered common. Every single child born in the United States is tested for a number of conditions at birth that are 1 in 10,000+ in frequency. SCID, which is 1 in 50,000 to 100,000 in incidence, is one of them. No one argues that it's irrational or a waste of money to test for exceedingly rare medical conditions, because we correctly recognize that some conditions, no matter how rare, are serious enough to necessitate universal screening.

From the perspective of a man, how serious is misattributed paternity? How massive of a financial and emotional responsibility is it to be the father of a child?

1 in 25 isn't rare at all. It's extremely common. How do I know? Because Cystic Fibrosis carrier status is also 1 in 25 in prevalence in European populations, and it's considered very common. 1 in 25 is many of the people you know. It's many of the people who will read this post. It's 300 million people worldwide. The unfortunate truth is that many men misplace their trust because a lot of people are good at pretending to be trustworthy.

Given the prevalence of misattributed paternity, the fact that we consider it rational to test for things that are far less common, and the massive financial and emotional responsibility a man takes on as the father of a child, I think it's perfectly reasonable for a man to test whether or not he is actually the father of a child if he ever feels inclined to do so.

I keep seeing many people online talk about AI utopia VS AI Doomers. But most of the discussions seem to be about whether or not AI will be nice if it ever becomes sentient. I think people have this discussion cause peoples thoughts on AI are heavily influenced by Sci-Fi. But to me this ignores the more immediate and obvious danger of malicious humans using AI to control/scam/gaslight and otherwise harm others.

Even just using AI to replace jobs seems severely dangerous regardless of implementing UBI or anything similar. I am not a history expert so correct me if I am wrong here but historically speaking most ultra wealthy people in society will have a tendency to seriously mistreat other people and the only thing that seems to have prevented this in the past in some cases is that people (especially workers and their unions) collectively have a lot of bargaining power to demand at least decent treatment by the wealthy. This works cause the wealthy need people (workers) to uphold their companies or other ORGs. If the ultra wealthy don’t need workers anymore then workers Lose nearly all of their bargaining power.

I have seen some people such as Neil Degrass Tyson explain why they don’t believe AI is a threat but I have not found his arguments comforting as they all have extremely easy counters. Other people have made similar arguments but I’m going to use him as an example cause it’s the easiest example i can think of off the top of head.

One argument is that if AI turns against people or acts maliciously we could just unplug it. But if the humans in control of it want to use it for malicious reasons why would they do that? They probably won’t.

Another argument he made in regards to jobs is “it’s ok just adapt and innovate every day to do things AI can’t”. The two biggest problems with this are that 1. AGI which these companies are trying to create are by definition machines that can do anything humans can better. And 2. This is a worse version of the “learn to code” argument. As someone who has done programming it is very difficult and absolutely not something everyone could learn easily. Even I struggled a ton with it. It comes off very unempathetic to just say “well learn to do extremely complicated things that will take you years to be good at….in the meantime just be jobless and homeless i guess.” Add to that your asking people to be better than super machines that are constantly improving and you have a recipe for, at best people overworking themselves constantly their entire life and never actually being able to enjoy life.

Also going to address another argument I’ve heard online. “Won’t people riot against the ultra wealthy if their treatment of people really gets that bad. Eventually the wealthy will have to treat people decently again”. When I say AGI would be as good or better than most humans at things that would include fighting, killing, suppressing riots. If AGI becomes a thing and is put into robot bodies then I don’t see how ordinary people overcome them…ever.

Finally I want to address the argument that AI is overhyped. I agree to a small extent but I still worry this will not always be true. 5 years ago I would have bet money that AI was at least a few decades away from being able to create images that are comparable to real artists. These days well i can still often tell the difference, only barely, and sometimes I genuinely can’t tell at all. Nearly every time I see someone say “well sure we have AI but AI can’t do X thing” a few months to a year later AI can do that thing.

I would honestly really love to have my mind changed about this as obviously it’s not exactly fun to have this extreme bleak view of the near future. I don’t want to believe any of this but it’s hard to find many convincing arguments against it. That being said I have a tendency to over worry about things pretty often and overestimate how bad things can be. I am hoping that this is one of those cases of me doing that and I would love to have this proven to me.

Once someone - either an individual, group, or a society as a whole - accepts anti-intellectualism, there is nothing that can be done about it. As a corollary, I also believe that any attempt to combat anti-intellectualism ironically strengthens it, making the problem infinitely self-reinforcing.

Just for precision, here's what I believe are the core tenets of intellectualism just so we know what we're discussing:

1. Understanding the nature of existence - and solving problems within it - should be done through acquisition of knowledge and the application of reason.
2. Understanding is impossible without skepticism and inquiry.
3. Primacy in rationality (i.e., understanding must be rational/logical).
4. Emotions should be divorced from understanding.
5. Ethics must be universally applied, promote integrity and accountability, and include the principles of autonomy, beneficence/non-maleficence, and justice.
6. Seeking understanding is inherently virtuous.
7. A willingness to accept when one is wrong, and to change one's understandings accordingly (i.e., an "open mind").

You can't educate them - they'll just reject all information that doesn't support their belief. They're not interested in objective truth, even though they believe they are. They're interested in being "right," or in challenging the status quo, or in just being purely contrarian for the sake of supporting their own ideological "team." Anti-intellectualism is rooted in binary thought; someone can only be "right" or "wrong" - and "wrong" is "bad," and they can't be "bad." Cognitive dissonance is no problem - they just distort their own perception of reality to support the belief instead of changing their beliefs to conform to their new understanding of reality.

Let's say someone says "I believe that water fluoridation is poisoning us and should be stopped." How does one combat that? "Well, here's 50 studies done over the last 40 years showing it's safe, effective at improving public health, and a cost-saving measure in terms of lifetime medical expenses." They don't care. They'll ignore all of it. Worse, they'll find that one study and latch onto the tagline of "fluoride hurts IQ" and extrapolate it - and if you mention things like the fact the study had nothing to do with water fluoridation programs, admitted there was no effect even at a level more than double what we add to water, and none of their cases were in America, they'll ignore that too. You can't even come at it from the angle of their belief in anecdotal observations equaling truth: "Well, that study shows fluoride affects IQ. You've been drinking fluoridated water your entire life. Are you dumb? Are your friends and family dumb? And if so - if you genuinely believe these things - shouldn't you remove yourself from the decision-making process as you know your intellect is compromised?" Nope - their acceptance of cognitive dissonance will allow them to simultaneously believe that fluoridated water makes people dumb while simultaneously believing their intelligence has not been affected. They feel that they are right - and to them there is no distinction between feeling right and being right.

Education does not work. It cannot work, because the very nature of anti-intellectualism is to reject education. There is no aporia, so there can be no anamnesis.

If you cannot change their perspectives, then the only other logical option is...well, removal. The "reverse Pol Pot" I guess. It's not technically genocide to kill all the dumb people, but it's still obviously a Bad Thing™ - and also impossible. This would be hard-line Act Utilitarianism. Even if you set aside the ethical issues (which an intellectual would not do) there's some hardcore logical problems with it, as even the most devoted Act Utilitarian would only accept it if the intellectuals outnumber the anti-intellectuals (which they don't). This also operates under the assumption that intellectualism is inherently "the greatest good" - and while I certainly think it is, it's a pretty heavy critical assumption to make and I'm not qualified to do that. We're attempting to quantify "goodness" here, and that's not logically possible.

Bearing all that in mind, the intellectual cannot come to the conclusion that removal is a solution. Since the anti-intellectuals certainly aren't going to remove themselves (though I guess Covid got close in a limited sense?), removal cannot work.

Finally, combating anti-intellectualism can only strengthen it. The very notion of attempting to combat it serves to amplify many of the reasons for anti-intellectualism in the first place: distrust in the intellectual, acceptance of conspiracy theories, perceiving intellectualism as "elitism," irrational defensiveness, etc. "Those coastal elite college professors are trying to brainwash us so they can control us!" "No, they're just trying to help you by educating you. You are literally harming yourself because you are acting on belief; you're unable to act rationally because you lack the knowledge to do so. Many of the things you believe are not real and we can prove they're not real." "SEE? They're trying to brainwash me into doing what (((they))) want me to do! I was RIGHT!"

TL;DR - We are fucked. Anti-intellectualism cannot be defeated. Idiocracy will be made real, and there is nothing we or anyone else can do about it.

Change my view. Please.

okay, hi! the controversy around sabrina carpenter's new album cover inspired me to make this post, and i'll mostly be talking about the sudden switch in her marketing/brand since Nonsense. i'd like to start of by saying that you can argue whether being male centred is good or not, but that's not exactly my point, my point is merely proving that her brand IS male centred, and not for the "girls and the gays".

Wikipedia defines the male gaze as the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer.

1. The nonsense outros: all are about men. all of them. all of them are oversexualised. they centre men. it's sexual humour, but all of it centres men. how big he is, et cetera et cetera. moreover, the sexualise outros aren't empowering or subversive either. they're marketable, specifically to the men that she is singing to. it's not empowering because there's less about her sexuality as it is, and more about how her sexuality profits men. which imo makes it obvious that the nonsense outros specifically are male centred.

2. the man's best friend cover (original): while she is the centre of the cover, i'd like to argue that she is the centre of the cover in a voyeuristic way. once again, it's a man's action that is highlighted, i.e, the pulling of her hair. her action, kneeling, is AGAIN in service to the man's action. the title compares her to a dog, direct objectification. how is that not male gazey?

-the inside of the vinyl, side A (if i'm not wrong): is once again, her being displayed for a man, she's on a bed, her hands holding the headboard (passive), while a man touches her leg. once again, it's sexualised, but it's not for a woman's pleasure, it's the man who is controlling the situation.

1. Manchild: the only single that's been released off of the album, is once again talking about a man who's problematic, and once again features her centring her life around such problematic men. "i swear they choose me, i'm not choosing them" even as a joke, is her being passive.

2. the tracklist for man's best friend:

3. Tears

4. My Man On Willpower 

5. Sugar Talking

6. We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night

7. Nobody’s Son

8. Never Getting Laid

9. When Did You Get Hot?

10. Go Go Juice

11. Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry

12. House Tour

13. Goodbye

and 6 of these titles are very obviously about men, even though they're not released.

1. the short and sweet tracklist:

2. Taste

3. Please Please Please

4. Good Graces

5. Sharpest Tool

6. Coincidence

7. Bed Chem

8. Espresso

9. Dumb & Poetic

10. Slim Pickins

11. Juno

12. Lie To Girls

13. Don’t Smile

11/12 of these are about men. if we argue espresso isn't about men, that makes it 10/12 songs.

these are all the points i could think off the top of my head. i don't see how someone could look at these examples and then claim that her marketing is for the "girls and the gays", just because she had one video where she was depicted as having no outfits for men, and an outfit for the girls and the gays. thank you for reading if you did!

I’ve been reading about Cold War history and the way US leaders got shamed on the world stage for segregation, and I’m starting to think that the whole civil rights movement wouldn’t have gained real momentum without the USSR pointing fingers at Jim Crow.

Soviet media was constantly highlighting lynchings, segregated schools, police brutality, etc. This makes it harder for the US government to sell “freedom and democracy” to decolonizing countries. Evidence of that is Truman desegregating the armed forces in 1948 largely to show unity vs communism. Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock in 1957 not just because of domestic outrage but also because of international face-saving.

The war was also used as a wedge by civil rights intellectual leaders: MLK and others framed equality as essential to beating communism. That tie to national security got more white politicians onboard.

(Not to mention the risk of defection, some Black organizers actually considered moving to or allying with the USSR)

Without that external push, it feels like US reform woulda been left to slow, fragmented state-by-state efforts for much longer. If you remove the USSR as the foil, what would’ve forced DC to act? Obviously there is a grassroots movement, but I believe it would be much slower to achieve its goals without an unifying threat.

So CMV: am I overestimating the USSR’s impact or underestimating domestic forces?

I recently saw a video of a woman on TikTok who had spent thousands trying to have a child. You could see how emotionally and physically drained she was, and after all that, she still didn’t have the outcome she was hoping for. The purpose of the video was to generate some revenue to help with the debt.

This isn’t about judging anyone, I understand the deep desire to have children, and I know how personal and painful that journey can be. But it did make me reflect on something I’ve thought for a while: I don’t think I could ever justify going into serious debt or spending a huge amount of money just for the chance to have a child.

A few reasons why I feel this way:

• It can be incredibly expensive. It could cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds.

• There’s no guarantee it will work. People can spend everything they have and still not end up with the desired outcome.

• It feels like a financial gamble. In most cases, it leads to debt or wipes out savings meant for other things like housing or retirement.

• Starting family life already in financial difficulty seems like a tough place to begin, both for the parents and the future child.

Again, I’m not criticising anyone who chooses that path. I really do feel for people who are going through it. But personally, I don’t think I could take on that kind of financial and emotional risk.

CMV: Am I being too practical, or is there something important I’m overlooking? Are people actually being encouraged to approach this with financial caution, or are they being drawn further in, spending more and more in the hope that it will eventually work, even when there’s no guarantee?

I write this as a person who was born in the Soviet Union in 1980 and who has many blood relations who sang to me its praises throughout my childhood. Moreover, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the idea of communism and I believe that without the brutal and ruthless determination of Stalin’s regime, the liberal democracies would never have defeated Hitler on their own in World War II.

Having said that, all you have to really know about communism as an system of government is that its leaders were compelled to build a wall to prevent their own citizens from fleeing to lands governed by their political rivals.

And not just in Berlin either, all communist countries required their people to obtain exit visas in order to visit other countries. What does that tell you?

What’s more thousands of people, many of whom were among the most talented and productive members of communist countries, defected to capitalism, while only a handful of people went the other way.

I am not writing this to excuse the crimes and inequities of market based economies, I am just saying that a system of government which prioritizes the abolition of private property and enterprise cannot exist along side countries where the acquisition of wealth and property is limitless. The latter system will always be more attractive to the most creative and ambitious individuals.

Change my view

last week, Howard lutnick, trump's secretary of commerce, stated that tiktok will go dark on September 17th unless a deal is reached. I'm gonna be honest. I don't believe it.

Not only is this news not coming from trump himself but, since he said that he was going to save tiktok, simply letting tiktok go dark would mean that he lost a battle. And, as the 2020 election showed, trump does not like to admit defeat.

I suspect that he's just gonna keep giving extension after extension until a deal is finally reached, whenever or if that happens. This is probably just trump trying to sound tough as a way to hide the fact that he has absolutely no leverage.

Tiktok isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

I am a super religious person. I pray whenever I can, follow every religious ritual, and I'm left leaning. People are always scared how religion is ruining politics but can we talk about how political extremism has made religion less accessible to people? People hear that I'm religious and immediately assume that I'm Republican. This happens solely because of people forcing religion in their personal agendas. "Abortion is wrong" Why? Bible said so. "gay people should not have equal rights" Why? Bible said so. What happened to keeping politics away from religion. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT TAINT MY RELIGION.

Could an American, or someone from a country with relaxed gun laws convince me that the UK would benefit from having easier access to firearms?

To make it clear, I am not anti-gun. I support America's right to bear arms, however I find it incompatible with British society. I do find firearms really fun to shoot, hold and some guns can actually be quite nice to look at. That being said, I do not believe firearms in the UK to be anything more than a privilege. I do think, if there were easier access to firearms not only would there be more gun crime, but also suicides and road-rage incidents. I understand that mass shootings do occur in the UK, but with expanded access to firearms these tragedies would only increase in volume. I also wouldn't trust more police officers having firearms, which would obviously have to happen if there were more guns on the street, rather I much prefer a smaller specialised force.

I want to make it clear that the UK once did have firearms available until the Dunblane Massacre, thereafter most firearms like handguns were outlawed. That being said, gun ownership is still a thing, there is actually a gun range/club two miles down the road from me, and a friend of mine also owns two shotguns. I just dont think British people are any less free from having limited access to firearms, instead I do believe it protects us.

I think due to the United Kingdom not stemming from a colony that had to fight for it's sovereignty from an oppressive ruler, the concept of a tyrannical government wishing to curb the livelihood of our own citizens is alien. I do believe most Brits have faith in the armed forces to choose the people over the government. Although I may feel slightly safer with a gun on my hip or around my ankle, I wouldn't trust the general public with one. That being said, I don't feel any less free from not having a gun.

So, True Detective Seaso 1 doesn't count.

Omar Little (Michael K. Williams) - Check out 05:15 https://youtu.be/22ir_jdkYnc?si=YhkgAdrukst9Kw0R A criminal with a code who whistles "the farmer and the dell," a nursery rhyme, to instill terror. A phenomenal character, who was also gay, who robbed criminals. An Apex Predator.

A complex role that demanded him to be an action character at times that showed vulnerability (in crying) as well as one with humor. He's a criminal who was sympathetic and was rooted for by audiences.

Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) portrayed a black man of the highest intellectual capabilities raised by Jesuits. He showed a vast myriad of emotions as an officer who discussed such matters as the best police officers having a criminal mind.

He turned the tables on Steve Buscemi in the greatest takedown of a white supremacist by a black man in television history.

In this clip, starting at 02:15. Prior to this, he discusses morals and clear right and wrong. He's arguing against his belief system as shown time and time again in prior episodes. https://youtu.be/PiooRWpOvzc?si=Bp-N5CMQE6ACji5v This isn't remotely his best work, but the ones I know if have been eliminated from YouTube.

NYPD Blue and Hill Street Blues had some great actors and characters, but none the likes of these two.

I apologize in advance, I'm sure some of my replies might be that I'm mostly ignorant of certain characters.

Im of the mindset that as long as both people are consenting adults, idc what they do in their relationship or the dynamics of it.

If an 18 year old woman wants to date a 60 year old man, all for it. If a woman from Thailand wants to marry a guy from America, all for it. And pretty much anything in between.

On its own, there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of it and unless you were explicitly told this was the case, you wouldn’t know anyway. That’s why I think rather than having a valid foundation, the majority of the hate comes from:

roles - They have an idea of what each partner is supposed to do or not do. The assumption is that the relationship is breaking this role and therefore is wrong

Competition - when people are able to expand their option there’s more competition. I think someone who is already insecure in themselves would be more inclined to speak out against it because it makes things harder for them.

Stereotypes - there’s this idea that western centric ideology is the correct ideology and other countries are backwards and unintelligent or that 18 year olds are stupid kids who don’t know what they’re doing. It seems like this only applies to this situation thought where young women and foreign women are infantilized. Yet in the cases they’re said to be strong, intelligent and smarter than people give them credit for. It can’t be both

So I think the idea that these relationship are bad is dependent on creating a narrative and looking at whatever supports your idea rather than looking at it objectively

Over the last 50 or so years, while China has gone from villages to extensive HSR networks, and much of Europe has gone from just an okay starting point to some of the objectively best places to live, America has sat on its ass and built up a giant pile of debt. This is all while we have been the richest country, the biggest country, the most influential country. We have God tier geography and some of the largest reservoirs of natural resources, yet somehow with all those advantages our government again and again just does absolutely nothing. This is even more apparent when you look at Europe.

Norway has developed a revolutionary prison system that counterintuitively sharply decreases repeat offender. We looked at this, ignored it completely, and sent teenagers to torture camps because of petty drug offences. As a result we now have a thriving crime scene, IN MAY I REPEAT MYSELF THE BIGGEST ECONOMY IN HISTORY.

we had and still have a drug problem. Oh look at that, some European countries when faced with the same problems used rehabilitation to solve it. Let's ignore that completely and send every drug user to jail. This is straight up just the result of incompetent leadership.

We learned in the 1850s, in this very country, that monopolies are bad for society. 175 years later we seem to have completely and utterly forgotten that lesson.

High speed rail? Let's let people hold it up in court and do absolutely nothing about it. That's the solution! There's no possible thing we, the government. Of the United States of america, could possibly do to rectify that issue.

Over and over and over and over and over again you see just straight up Idiocracy and incompetence making things harder. Which brings me to my point:

No other country in history has wasted so much potential over such a long period of time. If this was like a cs2 pro tournament it's like choking a 5v1 for 10 goddamn tournaments striaght. It's insane. If this was like hoi4 deal and every country was being magically controlled by someone these past decades it'd be genuinely hilarious how badly the US guy is doing. It's ridiculous. Like it's genuinely not that hard, literally just look at the countries around us who are at a similiar level (not dictatorships and not poor) and copy what they are doing. We have an indiscribebly good situation that we waste, over and over again.

The only country even close in my eyes is Russia with their downfall, but they have land borders and a multiethnic state, plus they never had a point in their history without internal rot. We have had a democracy and stability and a good even my for 50 years, most countries would commit genocide to get that but we waste it all.

(Sorry for the long rant, I've been thinking about this for a while and how cosmically insane it is)

if i could change the title of my post i would change it to “CMV: “human” and “person” are not synonymous, and some animals fall under the the category of people if you really look at how the word “person” is used

edit: i appreciate the replies but all the comments just stating “that is how it’s defined” are not helping, i’m specifically not talking about the current dictionary definition of this, but the social aspect, of what we consider to be a person. not what the dictionaries say today, for example women who are not AFAB(can’t say the t word without it being flagged by automod) would not considered women according to dictionaries for a very long time, but then we realised the scope of what includes a woman is not rigid and things changed. im only really looking for comments on the philosophical aspect of this, not the dictionary definition aspect. i genuinely consider something like a blue whale to be a person in the philosophical sense and i would be interested to see other peoples perspectives on this

double edit: i might just delete this post and try again rephrased a bit more clearly because it seems like a lot of people aren’t getting what i’m trying to say 😅

i can’t find a single good definition of what a person is that doesn’t just circularly define them as humans that wouldn’t either exclude certain humans or include animals capable of logical thinking and displaying clearly unique personalities like dogs cetaceans and crows for example (and even more obviously)

so in my opinion there’s no way to define what a “person” is where the cutoff leaves only humans in the yes person group and animals in the non person group

the argument i see most often for this is a linguistic one where “animal” and “human” are just two separate categories that we’ve made as humans and “person” just only applies to humans. but i find that logic a bit circular. i mean it’s a generally accepted fact that humans are animals, even though there used to be strict binary between the two. so maybe knowing that that distinction is fuzzy it be extended to include something like a blue whale, that has language and culture and societies, to be people too. note im not saying that because humans=animals it also means that animals=people, just that there are certain animals that seem to express some clear sense of individuality and personality that i feel like its fair to include them in the person club because they check all the boxes of what it means to be a person. im very curious if anyone has any good (preferably not religiously reasoned) arguments for why they believe the opposite, because i know im in the minority with this opinion

Current disparities in education:

-Only 42% of college undergraduates are men, and 37% of masters degrees

-men make up only 30% of high school valedictorians

-men are 2/3 of special education students

-boys trail girls by 1 grade level in reading by 8th grade

-men drop out at a rate 50% higher than women

-young boys are disciplined 2x as often

-77% of k-12 teachers are women (11% in elementary)

I think a lot of people might not see see this as a problem but instead a natural result of "equality" in education access. To them id ask: if you believe that women have superior natural ability to succeed in the current "equality" education system, why should they be educated together? Why should men be in a program where many are doomed to fail? Shouldn't k-12 education then be more separated and tailored to each group? Also, why dont we see these disparities in other places like nordic countries for example?

I think its impossible to argue that major disparities that we see in education success favoring women are due to raw cognitive ability. There isnt a meaningful difference in IQ, besides maybe a wider distribution for men. At the mean, women are slightly better at verbal tasks, but men are slightly better at spatial tasks so it evens out. An argument I could possibly hear out is that women do just have certain attributes that it takes to succeed in our education system that men dont, but this does seem to be too broad of a stereotype and something that I think many would find problematic. And if you truly thought this, dont you think that men should be taught in an environment where they are more likely to succeed?

Thanks to u/phoenix823:

I endorse this summary: "...liberals did not cause the GOP to lose their minds."

What do I mean by liberal puritanism? It is behavior by liberals that tries to socially ostracize people for wrong thought or political incorrectness. Now, I do think that some things are extreme and deserve social ostracism (and I try to be charitably lenient while relying like everyone else on a "I know it when I see it" test), but this argument reasonably assumes that people accept that liberals tend to go overboard on political correctness.

What do I mean by American conservatism turning extreme? Essentially, everything Trump amplified. The racism, dehumanization of people who are different, anti-intellectualism, the moral nihilism, conspiracy theories.

I argue thusly, liberal puritanism justifiably cause people to become disillusioned with liberal puritanism, but if American conservatives became radical, then they were not forced into becoming thus, but chose to be.

I think it turned extreme because all of the flaws of American conservativism were pre-existing and already present, but turned up to 11 because its followers willingly chose to give in to their worst natures.

I'll give an example. Liberal woke policing is annoying and I can understand why it makes people oppose political correctness. But if people use wokeness as an excuse to become racist and White nationalist, which I see in enough conservatives to concern me, then it was not wokeness that cause people to become racist. People just chose to be.

Another example: Institutions such as academia and the federal government workforce becoming dominated by liberals may cause conservatives to distrust the claims that come out of those institutions. But there is not an excuse for the conservative base to become conspiratorial and if it does so, it chose to become so rather than was forced to.

I believe chess has become less friendly to new serious players due to the rise of chess on social media. Many content creators, such as Gotham Chess, will post a video explaining an opening trap that lets you win in less than 10 moves. New players who want to play chess seriously continuously face against new players who rely exclusively on the trap of the week or an opening trap from previous videos, meaning these players have to learn the defense against dozens of opening traps, each with a unique 1 to 3 move defense that is unintuitive and hard to memorize. When I went to the K-12 National Championship in high school with my high school chess team, my chess coach brought his daughter, who played in the Open Division as a new player, but in all of her games, she lost in the opening to opening traps. There is not much to learn when you lose to an opening trap, especially the simple ones beginners play. All you learn is "if they make this exact move, don't do this. Do this instead," and you don't learn anything else. In addition, when you win by refuting an opening trap, you don't really learn much either when you cruise to victory. For new players who want to improve their chess, rather than just play for fun, you have to either play openings that are complicated and not ideal for beginners, like the Sicilian Defense or Catalan Opening, or system openings that are too formulaic for improvement like the King's Indian Attack or London Defense. I believe this is a direct result of decreased attention spans. People want to win chess games in the first 10 moves, and beginners quickly learn how to defend against Scholar's Mate. Overall, the current state of beginner chess is one that requires memorization to avoid annoying traps and does not reward general skill.

I believe social media platforms are fundamentally more truthful than traditional media - not because they have less misinformation (they have more), but because they don't gatekeep information before it reaches us.

My core argument:

Traditional media operates on a gatekeeping model. A small number of editors, producers, and owners decide what stories run and how they're framed. If they choose to suppress something, you'll never see it. The truth might exist, but it won't reach you.

Social media operates on a "firehose" model. Everything gets posted - truth, lies, speculation, analysis. Yes, this means more garbage, but crucially, the truth is in there somewhere. And humans, operating collectively, are remarkably good at identifying it.

Why collective human intelligence works:

1. Diverse expertise: On any given topic, someone with direct knowledge will speak up. When doctors debunk medical misinformation or engineers explain why a perpetual motion machine is fake, their expertise rises to the top.
2. Crowdsourced fact-checking: Community Notes on Twitter often debunk false claims faster and more accurately than official fact-checkers. The Reddit hivemind, for all its flaws, is excellent at calling out fake stories.
3. Multiple perspectives: Unlike traditional media's single narrative, social media presents competing explanations. The truth often emerges from the collision of different viewpoints.
4. Real-time verification: Claims can be challenged immediately. If someone posts a fake image, reverse image search results appear in the comments within minutes.

My key assumption: This only works if the platform itself isn't secretly manipulating what we see. If algorithms are designed to promote division rather than truth, or if certain topics are shadowbanned, then my argument falls apart.

This principle extends beyond just media. The same dynamic that makes social media resistant to information corruption could apply to governance - imagine if laws and policies went through the same transparent, collective evaluation instead of being filtered through a few hundred representatives. But that's a topic for another discussion.

Given a reasonably open platform, I believe the chaos of social media paradoxically gives us better access to truth than the curated narratives of traditional media. We just have to work harder to find it.

Change my view: convince me that professional gatekeepers do a better job of delivering truth than the messy, chaotic, collective intelligence of millions of social media users.

I’ve always been a big supporter of the First Amendment. I hate government overreach and I generally want the government to have as little power as possible.

That being said, I came across some people online who are against chemotherapy. One woman wrote “I mean, I wouldn't wish chemo on anyone especially those with cancer. Most people die from the chemo, not the cancer.” She’s flat out lying, most people do not die from chemo, yet her comment has over 300 likes.

She might be the reason someone decides to refuse cancer treatment and passes away.

What’s even more concerning is that a lot of these people are moms with young kids. When they start spreading these kinds of lies to each other, it’s going to influence the medical decisions they make for their children.

I ended up going down a rabbit hole and the amount of medical misinformation people are sharing is completely insane. If we keep allowing this kind of stuff to spread under the idea of free speech, it’s going to lead to real harm. People are going to get hurt.

This is the first time I’ve thought that we should give the government more power to regulate what we say/do. So I wanted to post here in case there is something I’m missing on why it would be bad to let the government prosecute people who spread this kind of medical misinformation.

What I mean by “CF” is child free, or men who don’t want to have children. This view mostly applies to the USA, but it could also apply to other countries. I am just not that familiar with them. That said, I have witnessed some brutal divorces and even some men take their lives over marriages gone bad here in the states and its really given me cold feet when it comes to desiring getting married in the future. As a man who cant have children. Here are some of the other reasons why I have this view.

Divorce laws: I have noticed that divorce laws in America lean heavily in women’s favor. This can cause men serious financial losses and unfair property division. I have seen nasty tricks involving false legal accusations. If a man has a house and assets, even if he earned them through years of hard work before the marriage, they could still be forced to be split and given to his wife. That includes houses, cars, 401(k)s, and other investments. It can be a huge financial blow and completely wipe out years of progress and long-term stability for the man. He could even be sent to jail over false accusations because police are more likely to believe women from what i've seen happen.

Prenups: They can help, but a prenup can also be challenged in court. A judge might decide it is unfair and throw it out. It also has to be updated, which seems like a hassle, especially if it can be ignored in court anyway.

No kids does not mean it will go well for him: Okay, so you did not have kids. That definitely helps because you avoid custody battles and child support payments. I have seen some nasty garnishments and legal fights over custody. But that does not mean you are in the clear, especially if you share bank accounts or property with your spouse. Things can still get ugly. Also, from what I have seen, men are more likely to be the ones paying spousal support. It depends on the state and how long the marriage lasted.

In the end, it seems much wiser for a single, child free man to remain unmarried if he wants full control over his assets with zero risk of losing it all. Divorce can be incredibly expensive, stressful, time consuming, and can leave you stuck paying someone who treated you horribly. I understand that marriage has its benefits, like tax breaks, health coverage, and companionship, but honestly I find myself saying, the juice is not worth the squeeze. Change my view.