Imagine being told every minute of every day that you don’t matter. That as a woman, your only purpose is to glorify men, support men, breed more men. That it’s the greatest and highest calling of women to surrender your life and your choices to men.

That women are stupid and sinners because of Eve’s actions, and will be forever. So you can never be allowed any kind of authority, because like Eve you’ll just do something foolish or abuse it.

Now imagine everyone and everything around you shows and supports this worldview. All the time.

That’s where it comes from. When something is all you’ve ever known, then it’s normal. And, even if you consciously don’t believe it, it still worms its way inside of you.

It’s definitely more of a ‘The Rapture is coming! The Rapture is coming!’ Type of nonsense.

I mean, they’re kinda right though? Even Bernie thinks so.

Oh, they still have all four branches. It’s just Oregon got a bit more Blue.

To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

-Charles Haddon Spurgeon

It’s a lot easier to blame things than to fix them.

They already had that out in Court. Fox successfully argued they’re an entertainment channel not a news channel and so the judge said what they were doing was fine.

If you want to find out what a man is to the bottom, give him power. Any man can stand adversity — only a great man can stand prosperity.

-Robert G. Ingersoll

Interesting. So chives and Society Garlic would be okay for them then?

Also, I’m curious what their take would be on digging up a garlic bulb and taking most of the pieces for cooking, but then planting the rest back out as individual plants.

Oh, they have a plan for that too. Making them all wear shock collars and holding their families hostage.

True, but remember they don’t think that way, because it messes up their fantasy.

Have you heard the nonsense the owner of Reddit spouts constantly? About how he was so good at hoarding that he’ll have a private army and slaves and people will come crawling on their knees to serve him for a little food and he’ll be a king? These losers all think like that, and facts like tools break and bullets run out and you have to cast more and get the supplies to do so just ruins their dreams of being an unstoppable tyrant.

I’d say yes… except he does it to smart and digital watches too.

My snake likes to wrap around and ‘strangle’ watches. Not bracelets, just watches.

Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?

In fifty years’, thirty years’, ten years’ time the world will be very nearly back on its old course. History always has a great weight of inertia.

-Sir Terry Pratchett

The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want?

And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.

The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine.

I don’t want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don’t want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you.

-Penn Jillette

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Some animals can figure it. At the nursery I used to work at, the new nursery cat decided to take a nap in a customer’s truck, and woke up in the nearby town (still several miles away).

She started to walk back, got part of the way, realized she didn’t know the rest of the way, and waited at an intersection. Then, when a local family stopped to put up some signs for a town festival, she accosted them and wouldn’t let them leave until they took her with them.

They recognized her and brought her back to the nursery.

See, this disingenuous argument works better when you just generalize it, because when you get into specifics it looks very different. Example:

Step 1: label the people that hold the belief that ‘trans people are subhuman trash that need to be excised from society by violence if necessary’ as intolerant

Step 2: skip diplomacy because they refuse to engage in actual conversation

Step 3: use force on them because they are actually attacking trans people.

Although really even parts 2 & 3 are disingenuous, because there are plenty of examples of people trying to engage the intolerant in debate, far beyond what would really be reasonable even. And you’ll also notice that force is rarely, if ever, used against those intolerant folks either, even as they use force, even deadly force.

Hell, even the law won’t do more than slap their wrists in many cases. I use trans people as an example because until recently, ‘I went on a date with this lady and then found out she was trans, and I was so shocked I killed her’ was an actual legitimate legal defense and several people used it. If we’re being pedantic, that defense is still perfectly acceptable at the national level, as several bills banning it have been introduced, but none have been passed.

I’m sure people said that about passenger pigeons too at one point.

Huh, your slur got removed. Didn’t realize World did that, thought it was just ml or something.