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Let us compare the controversial 'Gender ()_ueer' and '1984'.
Which create a more emotional impact, Gender ()_ueer's illustration of an adult man and a young boy seemingly engaged in oral sex, or 1984's ideological/political exploration into totalitarianism?
I am not a parent, and yet, I can understand why any parent would focus first on the former and less on the latter. When you start 'touching' on children, even allegorically, people will go to the extreme to protect their children from what they perceives, rightly or wrongly, to be a threat. The initial response on 1984 should have been a lesson. Partly about controversial subjects and partly about the target audience. Gender ()_ueer has a more targeted audience. 1984 has a broader audience. I also understand that in order to have controversial subjects be adequately explored, authors must be not only intellectually and emotionally provocative but disseminate their works as wide as possible, and be readied to take the consequences.
I am NOT for banning books but I will not blame parents for reacting the ways they are. A restricted section is a reasonable compromise once emotions calmed but we have to allow parents to vent, so to speak, their concerns.
Then all you have to do is speculate what are the odds that Heather Kaye, the woman in the Guardian article who wishes the US is more like China, is a Republican.
Am talking about why does the Left have a much more benign view about marijuana in any form including smoking but demonizes tobacco. What is the SCIENTIFIC basis for this inconsistency?
Tobacco causes cancer. Bad. Hallucinogens that essentially ruins your body in different ways. Good. The Left turned their noses on the odor of a Cuban cigar, but tolerate the drug induced zombies that p|ss and sh|t in the streets.
Tolerance is not promotion. But you have to be consistent.
I don’t think smoking cigarettes is a left issue anymore. Both Rs and Ds passed smoking bans here. It’s no different than pot is in NJ, you can smoke at home but not in most public places. But it was Rs during Trump administration that made it so I can’t order my zero nicotine vapes online anymore.
I work in health care and have worked with countless rehab patients sick from lifetime tobacco or alcohol use, never had a patient in rehab due to pot. I don’t personally think it ruins your body in any way, unless you mean lungs from smoking it over a lifetime. Pot doesn’t make people “zombies”, it actually makes you hyper aware if anything.
As for the books, adults should be able to read Gender ***** at their library and it should be no one else’s business. Parents are running around in a panic only because the people getting rich off that panic are filling their heads with nonsense.
I don’t think smoking cigarettes is a left issue anymore. Both Rs and Ds passed smoking bans here. It’s no different than pot is in NJ, you can smoke at home but not in most public places. But it was Rs during Trump administration that made it so I can’t order my zero nicotine vapes online anymore.
I work in health care and have worked with countless rehab patients sick from lifetime tobacco or alcohol use, never had a patient in rehab due to pot. I don’t personally think it ruins your body in any way, unless you mean lungs from smoking it over a lifetime. Pot doesn’t make people “zombies”, it actually makes you hyper aware if anything.
As for the books, adults should be able to read Gender ***** at their library and it should be no one else’s business. Parents are running around in a panic only because the people getting rich off that panic are filling their heads with nonsense.
You avoided the issues I raised, but that is fine. Discussions/debates online are not meant to be for participants but to the uncounted silent readers out there.
At least in China their social credit score keeps degenerate, lowlife behavior out for the most part. You don't have to be left wing to want some standards and be pro-mass transit.
I stopped reading at the first paragraph where it said Trump’s efforts to personally direct the storming of the Capitol, murder his opponents, and establish himself as dictator.
If that was his plan, it would have happened. ...
Your response seems to be off-topic, but since you stated this, I have to comment.
Actually, what saved us as a nation is that Trump was as much a bungler at sedition as he has been in all of his other efforts in life. The guy has been the biggest loser for decades. All of his businesses have been failures, his presidency was a failure, his re-election campaign was and will be a failure. He is the epitome of a failure, other than and gas-lighting nearly half the country into thinking he is some sort of demigod.
The CCP has done a very good job of moving China from a low income country to a middle income country. It’s probably the greatest global anti-poverty program in history.
But now they’ve hit the hard point- no country has successfully moved from middle income to upper income without a democratic system of government and true free market economy. (The Scandinavians are essentially free market with generous social services structures and a handful of nationalized sectors like Norway with oil)
The Chinese government doesn’t want to give up power and move more fully to that model. They’re trying to keep going by having partially free markets and an effective b-channel so concerns of citizens can be addressed without CCP leadership losing face and it seeming like there is disharmony in the ranks. It was kind of working for a while- the country could say that yes, most people were better off now than they were five years ago, but cracks have been forming in the system that were not getting adequately addressed and the answer has been to try to whip up nationalism and the notion of Chinese superiority rather than make radical changes to the system. And while I’m not in the camp that think covid was an intentional creation, I do think the CCP has been more than glad to use it as an excuse to lock the borders and try to indoctrinate the masses further about the superiority of well-meaning totalitarianism and limit those pesky outside influences that said people should have more of the ability to determine their own fate.
They’re also losing their manufacturing edge- companies that need low labor costs are looking more and more to Vietnam, Bangladesh and the like while companies on the higher end were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with mandatory sharing of IP with Chinese ‘joint venture’ companies even before it became a big political issue.
So now the Great Firewall will continue to get tighter and tighter to keep the propaganda going to try keep the current leadership in power and they’re floundering to try to figure out what to do to keep soft power that had been fading because other countries and companies realized that the price of engagement with China came with way too many strings attached.
So they’re trying to pivot into a military big player and their propaganda services have successfully drummed up nationalism to get the masses to go along with that. And are starting to realize that it’s negatively impacting their bottom line in the manufacturing and services realm and that it’s making it harder for the country to maintain that ‘be obedient and you will have a better life than your parents’ promise that’s worked for a good 40-50 years and I’m not sure wha they do next.
Ad I’m not sure they’re got a really good plan either .
Exactly, we're in a Thucydides trap but instead of a kinetic war, it's an economic and technological war, for now.
It will be a kinetic one if the US pushes China against the wall on Taiwan.....that's a fact. China does not want to ruin taiwan (which in any kinetic war situation between China and the US, is a forgone conclusion as far as the total destruction of taiwan), but if the US keeps pushing taiwan to declare independence (abolish the ROC Constitution, or outright declare a new Rep of Taiwan), or if the US stations troops and ships on taiwan, or if taiwan develops nukes or if taiwan descends into social and political chaos, or even if the prospect of a "peaceful unification" solution is nowhere in sight....all these are clear conditions for China to launch a full scale kinetic recovery of taiwan island as per China's Anti-Secession law. So if the US wants a Kinetic war with China, go right ahead and cross that red line. The PLA has been hoping for this for a long time.
American leftists are delusional. In China, they have de facto forced labor. But here in the US, people are quiet quitting and many are even actually quitting.
In China, they make certain people (non-Han Chinese) do the bad jobs. Is that why leftists love open borders? So they’ll be able to treat the Guatemalans just like the Chinese treat the Uyghurs?
That’s why I find leftists to be hypocrites. They talk a good game about utopia, but at the same time, they need people to slave at miserable jobs so they have an iPhone and an E-vehicle.
Everything you've stated is outright false so you should stop consuming whatever media that it is you listen to.
It's as if you're projecting the sins of the US onto China.
Forced labor? The non-Chinese do the bad jobs? No, that's the US where the illegals to do the hard labor, picking fruits in the fields in CA and back of the restaurant busboy type work. Or actual forced labor in the US for-profit prison system.
More than 90% of China is Han Chinese so you think only 10% of the labor in China is hard labor? Sorry, you're wrong.The Chinese do whatever it takes to make a buck to survive.
Now they've invented a new narrative that China is committing genocide against them and the same terrorist organization they bombed is now conveniently delisted. https://www.dw.com/en/us-removes-sep...ist/a-55527586
I think it is a faulty premise that both parties fit China's profile. China is a very complex issue. Businesses hate to work with China but have to for the investors. Look at how movie companies had to alter their movies to be played in the Middle Kingdom. Disney in particular with Shanghai changed a good portion of the Magic Kingdom Park for Shanghai Disneyland. Hong Kong had moderate changes and in fact a few rides namely their Pirates was later moved over to Shanghai.
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