The Big Picture: In Defense of Nostalgia

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Lex Hornman

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Jul 26, 2011
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Draconalis said:
Lex Hornman said:
I really find it odd that every time an political opinion is given in The United States of America it's always Republican or Democrat. We have So many damn political movements it's just freaky I think we have 7 and that for a country with just 17 million people.
But how many of those movements make it to president?
Well none... They fight for seats in parlement. the party with the majority of seats is tasked with creating a government by allying with another party until they have enough seats to hold a majority of parlement. Of course they can choose not to have a majority of total seats makes governing a country just harder.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_monarchy it's explained here if you're really interested.
 

CM156_v1legacy

Revelation 9:6
Mar 23, 2011
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Jay Fakename said:
CM156 said:
Sorry, but legal pot just doesn't cut it

Think about the costs that come along with that as well. If we legalize and tax it, we have to pay a government agency to regulate THC levels. And then we have to pay in order to enforce that.

*Insert a Cracked Article here*

In other words, it would just about pay for itself. Not another issue.
"Regulate THC levels?" It is impossible to overdose on pot. Medical Marijuana is already an established thing. It would be very simple.

Quick note, though, getting off topic. It's hard to take an argument seriously when you post the article where you acquired said opinion. Yes, Cracked articles are funny but they are comedy. Yes, there are some good points made but in the end you still haven't answered MY question.

Why do they Gays have to pay their way? We (straight people) certainly didn't. We have the right to marry as much as we want as long as our wallets can stand it.

I think these arguments come rooted in the idea that Gays are creatures of whimsy and won't respect the institution as we do. Either way gays would not be the problem in the Marriage budget problem. People getting married over and over again because they make short sighted decisions is. Maybe instead of regulating WHO can marry we could regulate the number of times they can.

Now I'm not saying straight people are 100% to blame for marriage's current status but we are the only ones who CAN.
Fair point, and I respect that you were one of the few people who actually proposed a solution.

As I said, this isn't my argument, and I'm only playing devil's advocate. The point is that when you want something changed, you have to adress how said change will fit in and be paid for. That's all I ask for.
 

ace_of_something

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Sep 19, 2008
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MovieBob said:
Are the rose tinted glasses always so bad?
I don't know if anyone has claimed the awesome points yet.

That is Turner D. Century a marvel villain who, if i recall, can hypnotize people into thinking it's the 1900's. He was killed by Scourge if I recall.
 

Agayek

Ravenous Gormandizer
Oct 23, 2008
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Clonekiller said:
Here's an interesting thought. The homosexual movement has been offered a marriage equivalent alternative on many occasions, mainly in the interest of compromise. (Compromise: when two groups got some of, but not all, of what they want in order to reach an agreement) Oddly enough, the homosexual community has been the greatest voice of opposition to this proposal. Why?

As a theoretical answer, I would say it is because marriage is mainly a religious thing. If a state-recognized union was all they were after, the compromise option should have been easily accepted by the homosexual movement. However, if said homosexual movement were to be awarded the right to "marriage", that would mean that their right to marriage would be protected as a civil right. As a result, if any religious group were to reject the sanctioning of a marriage based on sexuality, that Church/Temple/Mosque would fore fit its tax exempt status. And since Churches and Mosques only gain income based on the generosity of the congregation, said religious building would either have to majorly scale back, charge admission, or close altogether. (Religious buildings are freaking expensive to maintain)

And thus, now we have a new question. Should a religious group be able to object to a sexual orientation because they believe it's wrong, or do we say "religious groups shouldn't have that right" and award the homosexuals marriage rights. In a nutshell, do we give homosexuals what they want & take away some of the rights of the religious groups, or do we ignore the rights of the homosexual. (Since the homosexuals don't want a compromise, that's not really an option at this point.) Suddenly, this whole argument got a lot more complicated.
That's a good point, but the problem is that marriage is not a primarily religious act. There's a number of privileges and rights married couples have which, to my understanding, the attempted same-sex compromises failed to include. I'll be the first to admit my understanding of the compromises may be lacking, as it doesn't affect me and I haven't looked into it, but I have gathered a few things from having politically minded friends and general exposure to the news.

That said, I'm against the very idea of tax-exempt religion in the first place, so I'm not terribly worried about it.
 

fnartilter

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Apr 13, 2010
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Someone may have mentioned this already:

There was a remade He-Man cartoon in 2003 (?) 2005 (?) something like that, all the episodes are on youtube. I watched a bunch, and it was pretty entertaining. Until you get bored of the formula that is. They even included the whole "Moral At The End Of The Episode" schtick. That was funny.
 

CM156_v1legacy

Revelation 9:6
Mar 23, 2011
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Callate said:
CM156 said:
Actually, I've heard a secular argument:

Money. If we allow more people to get married, that means more people will get devorced, which takes up the courts time and money. And that also means that if they file together, they pay less in taxes. So we are left with a net loss.

Which means we either cut spending, raise taxes, or both.

The former is not popular with those on the left, and the second is not popular to the right.

Again, I don't necessarily agree with it. It just is fully non-God based.
With the recognition that the argument isn't necessarily "yours", it has to be pointed out that weddings add enormous amounts of money to the economy, married couples are more likely to purchase and hold onto houses, and married couples are more likely to have children (a whole industry on its own.)
I'd like to thank you for hitting the nail on the head on this one

And I'ld also like to say you've won my respect for actually adressing the argument, and posting a retort. Rather than compare me to a slave owner or a racist.
 

Varya

Elvish Ambassador
Nov 23, 2009
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Aurini said:
Varya said:
Maybe if you looked at a country that actually applied Left-wing politics for about 50 years, like, oh say Sweden, you'd see that we are a country with high equality, very few cases of corrupt politicians and our liberal views on the nuclear family means most people don't give a fuck if you have two daddies, and that people don't feel peer-pressure to stay in an abusive relationship.
I'm not saying we have a perfect country, but it seems to me that in the US you take the view that if the current government don't make peace on earth within it's first year, every little thing that goes wrong, from earthquakes to individual deaths, are blamed on the President. This goes for both parties btw. Maybe if you actually had some form of law that required politicians to back up their claims, so that they couldn't get away with making statistics up their asses or deny proven science, you'd have some facts based on actual, unbiased studies. Problem is of course that a studies performed by educated people is considered bias by 50% of the population that thinks that actually being educated makes you bias to "the science religion" and that proof are easily disputed with "common sense"

I wen't on a bit of a rant there but your comment really rubbed me the wrong way.
Here's the thing; the socialist Nordic countries work *despite* socialism, not because of it. With small, culturally homogeneaic peoples, there's a strong pressure not to abuse the system. Furthermore, it's easy to find the bureaucrat who makes the decisions, and explain to them why a new postal box (or whatever) would be a smart decision.

It's the same reason socialism works in families, and in the army, but not in larger life.

In the US socialism is used as a tool to turn groups against eachother; robbing from Peter to pay Paul, convincing people to identify with their victim group, and demand concessions from society at large, regardless of the harm this does to society, or to themselves.

Also, I never blamed this on the President; granted, he's an incompetent buffoon, but having Ron Paul in that office wouldn't change things (though it might 'discredit' Libertarinism after he failed to make any changes). Politicians aren't the problem - they're present to give you the illusion of control over a civil service, eductional system, and MSM propaganda machine which are deeply entrenched and unreachable.

Consider this: the most insanely right-wing pundit of the present era (Rush Limbaugh, or whomever you want to choose) would - in 1950 - have been considered a moderate, at the very least, or more likely a left-leaning hippie.

The devil was the first whig, and he's been winning for 500 years; things are getting worse, and the nuclear family is dissolving, the economy is turning to serfdom, and ugliness is called beauty. We're in Rome's bread and circus days - just look at modern art such as Piss Christ for the evidence of that. Women have become whores and the modern men are pathetic.

H.L. Menken saw where this was going a century back; liberals are the poison, and conservatives aren't the answer. I'll stand by him on that bit of Reactionary ground.
Trust me, I'm not all "Yay Obama!". Frankly I'm not following US politics closely enough to say if he's really a good or a bad president, but I certainly don't agree with everything I've heard about him. However, I'd vote for him in a second if I were a US citizen, because you know, lesser of two evils. And that is why I always get a bad feeling when really trying to figure american politics out. There is only one choice, because otherwise I'd have a president who denied evolution, didn't believe that carbon dioxide was poison or, as stated above, thought that the fact that a scientist did it somehow proves it's wrong. Even a vote on a nobody, but with the right idea is basically a vote on what I would call, religious fanatics.
And I don't believe for a second that socialism only work in small countries.
I have a theory on why the right-extremists like Bush are leaning more left than 50 years ago:
They'd be called morons for trying to bring the nation back to the injustices of the past. USA are so proud that they beat the crap out of the Nazis that they forget that they weren't "fighting for justice" They fought because the Nazis were getting to big. Before the war, Hitler wasn't even thought of as that radical, everybody was "nationalistic". The japanese had been denied their request to be viewed as an "equal race" by the white nations only a few years before. Racism was everywhere, Hitler was hated because he started a war! The USA had pictures of Japanese people portrayed as monkeys, because that was how they saw it. The right is less extreme now because everyone knows that you don't want that world back.
And don't bring Satan in to this, man fucked up all by himself.
 

Coldster

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Oct 29, 2010
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I think I'm going to be the only person here to say that I think Call of Duty actually offers more originality than the Mario Bros 3D Land. Sure they both offer something not totally new (i.e. gameplay, graphics, etc) but I feel that since Call of Duty games are made by two different developers (Infinity Ward and Treyarch) and that only should almost automatically make it more original even if it is the same basic layout just in different settings (WWII, modern day, the Cold War, etc). Just sayin (please don't start a f***ing flame war because of this post either because I'm not even going to bother with anyone who drops flame bait as a response).
 

Andronicus

Terror Australis
Mar 25, 2009
1,846
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As much as I agree with MovieBob, I've never been a big fan of the "there's worse things out there to worry about (invariably involving African children), so stop complaining" argument. It's valid enough to shut the lid on an argument, and easy enough to turn to when you're too lazy to produce a better argument to return with. Yes, maybe there are bigger issues out there, in the grand scheme of things, and yeah, people get way, way too worked up over minor comic book and movie disputes. But "PEOPLE IN THE WORLD ARE SUFFERING AND ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT IS COMICS!?!" is not a particularly smart or intelligent retort, even if it is 100% true.
 

CM156_v1legacy

Revelation 9:6
Mar 23, 2011
3,997
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Jay Fakename said:
CM156 said:
Jay Fakename said:
CM156 said:
Sorry, but legal pot just doesn't cut it

Think about the costs that come along with that as well. If we legalize and tax it, we have to pay a government agency to regulate THC levels. And then we have to pay in order to enforce that.

*Insert a Cracked Article here*

In other words, it would just about pay for itself. Not another issue.
"Regulate THC levels?" It is impossible to overdose on pot. Medical Marijuana is already an established thing. It would be very simple.

Quick note, though, getting off topic. It's hard to take an argument seriously when you post the article where you acquired said opinion. Yes, Cracked articles are funny but they are comedy. Yes, there are some good points made but in the end you still haven't answered MY question.

Why do they Gays have to pay their way? We (straight people) certainly didn't. We have the right to marry as much as we want as long as our wallets can stand it.

I think these arguments come rooted in the idea that Gays are creatures of whimsy and won't respect the institution as we do. Either way gays would not be the problem in the Marriage budget problem. People getting married over and over again because they make short sighted decisions is. Maybe instead of regulating WHO can marry we could regulate the number of times they can.

Now I'm not saying straight people are 100% to blame for marriage's current status but we are the only ones who CAN.
Fair point, and I respect that you were one of the few people who actually proposed a solution.

As I said, this isn't my argument, and I'm only playing devil's advocate. The point is that when you want something changed, you have to adress how said change will fit in and be paid for. That's all I ask for.
Then as far a a "budget solution" We do it Free-to-play style. You can get a max of X marriages in X years. If you want more you have to pay for "extra marriage tokens". I wouldn't know how the figures would work out but I think it's better than giving a whole group of people the stick for another group of peoples mistakes.
Thank you for adressing my argument and retorting it. :)

And I will admit, that has potential. However, what do you do about cases where the marriage ends because of the fault of one spouse and not the other? How do you juged that? (Not related to the whole over-arching debate, just wondering)
 

CrazyGirl17

I am a banana!
Sep 11, 2009
5,141
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Well said, Bob. People tend to ***** about reboots and the like (and yet first-persons shooters and sports-based video games are basically the same damn thing over and over again), because they claim "it's not like they remember".

Meanwhile, in the "Real World" people cling to "traditions" because they just can't handle that society is changing.

...Honestly, it's people like that who make me want to keep watching cartoons.
 

Varya

Elvish Ambassador
Nov 23, 2009
457
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cymonsgames said:
Varya said:
In fact, I was refraining from calling you all sorts of names....
Well thank you for pointing out how big you were. I'm sure we all appreciate it.
It's important because any couple should have the same rights as any other couple. Anything other is discrimination.
I apologize for where this has gone. I'm gonna throw Varya here a bone so there'll be no more assumptions about what I haven't said. You asked for it so don't TL:DR this.

Would it surprise you if I said that I agree with you? I still think your expression of the idea is a bit rough but I agree that there are rights that any couple should have. Like property rights or visitation rights. All sorts of rights that are defaulted to marriage in our modern society I feel should be identified, separated from the idea of marriage, and any couple should be able to sue or apply for. This I'm in support of.

But you're calling marriage a right and, this may be a bit semantic, but it's not. It's an institution, a social union, a legal contractual agreement. Now there is arguably a right to be married but why fight for the right to take a legal obligation when all you really want is the right to visit a loved one in the hospital or the right to a portion of the property of someone who you've cohabited with for years in case of death?

Do some research on the history of marriage. Find out what anthropologists have discovered. Find out what marriage is, where it came from, why it exists. Then stop trying to give same sex couples something that doesn't apply to them and start fighting for the rights that they should have.
Here's the deal, I have a vague knowledge of history, but I'm not gonna go and read up on it just to debunk a faulty argument.
I'm calling marriage a right to Everyone or No-one! If there is a noble history of straight marriages, then if those couples came back to life, they sure could keep being married even if no one else can. But that does not affect the now.
Here's my view of it. People have always been discriminating gays, because it's been viewed as wrong. So no, historically, gays didn't marry. Historically, they were killed. (yes I know, ancient Greeks, blah blah, but it was still considered less than straight)
Historically, you can't say "this is marriage". Cultures all around the world have independently came up with basically the same idea, and yes, it was straight marriages back then, but in addition to what I said above about gays being killed, it was also the fact that only straight people could get children.
Thing is, history does not give privilege, or should not. In that case, we might as well kill gays again, but "for tradition" not for hate.
You can't say marriage doesn't apply to gays, if they marry for the same reason other people, in this day and age, are marrying.
Today, marriage, at least to most individual couples, is about love. And if a couple can marry because of love, any couple should.
It's really a no brainier. Privilege should not be handed down traditionally, today, all love is equal and therefore should be equal to the law.
 

Realitycrash

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Dec 12, 2010
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I only have one thing to add, and it's to the Gay Marriage-Debate.
I'm going to quote Al Bundy here;
Eh, why shouldn't they be allowed to marry? I say let them marry. Let them be as miserable as the rest of us.
 

CM156_v1legacy

Revelation 9:6
Mar 23, 2011
3,997
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Jay Fakename said:
CM156 said:
Thank you for adressing my argument and retorting it. :)

And I will admit, that has potential. However, what do you do about cases where the marriage ends because of the fault of one spouse and not the other? How do you juged that? (Not related to the whole over-arching debate, just wondering)
Maybe your X amount will only be taken away if it is provable that you were more responsible than the other.

E.G: A woman leaves her baby at home, alone, to go smoke pot with friends. She loses hers but not the husband.

Both of the people are just a mismatch or there is some neutral reason, they BOTH lose it.

Since Divorce mediation is already a thing it would be fairly easy to integrate.
Mmm, and that also appeals to the part of me that wants to preserve the sanctity of marriage, as it would punish irresponsible people so that I don't have to pay.

Very well, dear reader. You've won the argument!

 

Yankeedoodles

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Sep 10, 2010
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Lex Hornman said:
I really find it odd that every time an political opinion is given in The United States of America it's always Republican or Democrat. We have So many damn political movements it's just freaky I think we have 7 and that for a country with just 17 million people.
Well the Republicans and Democrats aren't 'movements' they're 'parties'. The difference being that movements are organizations promoting ideas and ideals while parties are organizations promoting people for political office. That the Democratic and Republican parties seem to be promoting agendas is really only a mean to the end of getting their candidates elected.

As to why there are only two parties in US politics... well, that's a bit more complicated and still not completely understood. The best explanation I've come across is the 'monopoly on the opposition' theory. You see, in many modern democracies the powers of government are typically concentrated into one organization called a parliament (which is roughly equivalent to Congress). When an election occurs the various parties group together to form a coalition which then chooses a Prime Minister (a position really more equivalent to the Speaker of the House but in practice is roughly equivalent to a US president). In the US on the other hand the people elect both the members of parliament (Congress) and the Prime Minister (President). Because the whole country is voting for the office of the President the presidential candidates don't have the luxury of appealing to only a single constituency like they would in a parliamentary republic but instead must appeal to the entire country. Which means that in order to appeal to the most people possible the parties adopt as many movements as possible. That's why there isn't a viable third party. Because every time a party forms with a cause which resonates with voters one of the two major parties adopts that cause and undermines that party's foundation. The Green Party supports broad environmental protection but you'd be 'throwing you vote away' to vote for Ralph Nader (usually their candidate) because the Democrats also supports environmental policy. The same would go for the Republicans and the Tea Party if the Tea Party ever fielded a candidate. So why is virtually every elected official either a Democrat or a Republican? Because the Democrats and Republicans control vast resources to help other candidates get elected which helps to create a monopoly on political power.

Not sure if that was clear: in short we only have two parties because we have a political office (President) elected by the entire country.