isaacgadflee - Tumblr blog

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better or worse?

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Remember when toilet paper shortages were a sign of how terrible socialism is...

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Conservatives: You get your facts from the government! Ridiculous! I don’t trust the government.

Also Conservatives: The NSA keeps us safe from brown people. If you have nothing to hide, then you should have nothing to fear.

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If liberals were as dense as conservatives...

Conservative: You want the government to run healthcare! Don’t you know that the government is incompetent, corrupt and incapable of doing anything right?!

Liberal: So, you hate America and our troops? Well, if you hate it here so much, then why don’t you go live in Russia!

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If lefties were as dishonest as rightwingers:

“You think capitalism is so great? Why don’t you go live in Afghanistan!”

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Gun Violence

Anyone else think it’s weird that black Americans are ten times more likely to be killed by a firearm than white Americans, yet when the media melts down about gun violence it isn’t because of violence afflicting inner cities, but in the suburbs?

Our society has internalized racism. We view violence in black neighborhoods as natural, but also foreign, as if it isn’t impacting real Americans, but the others. The current debate about gun regulation doesn’t focus on the neighborhoods with the most gun violence but those with the least. It feeds into this narrative that what happens in black neighborhoods is too complicated to address or outside of our ability to solve—there’s no appetite to solve the crisis of gun violence in those areas. Even though minority violence is a greater problem, it’s only when whites are impacted that the issue becomes an actual problem.

While it seems obvious to me that if you think your freedom from gun violence outweighs the freedom to own a gun, then the path forward for preserving gun rights is a licensing program and gun registry. I’m reminded of the quote, “if we want things to stay the same, then things have to change.” FDR’s new deal was less an act of benevolence than an act to preserve the capitalist system against a growing American movement for communism. So, too it seems that if gun owners want to maintain the rights they have today, they’re going to need to make concessions before the tides turn against them.

However, what I wanted to reflect on was the fact that we often maintain an ideology that is informed by racial prejudices that we are unable to detect. In learning that a recent investigation found that school shooting’s have actually decreased in the last twenties years, I felt the need to meditate on what I believe. While reading about this study, what stuck out is that school violence rates in the 90’s were mostly related to gang violence. As a supporter of gun regulation, the general narrative that gun violence is a major problem currently, was contradicted by the fact that all crime was higher in the 90s, and to learn that school violence was higher then came as a shock to me. This issue wasn’t new, and the situation has been improving.

Why is it that this feels like a new problem? Could it be media coverage or the increased henious character of the atrocities? It’s possible that these are factors, but inner city gang violence has always been with us, it’s always been henious and a focus of media attention. But, it always felt as if it impacted a second America that I wasn’t apart of, and only when I saw the issue impacting people who shared my white skin did I finally feel like something needed done.

While this wasn’t a concious train of thought that I had worked through in the moments leading up to my favoring gun regulations, after a time of meditation on the topic I can find no better explanation. These biases harbor in us all, but they are so engrained in our thinking that they escape our detection.

It would behoove us all to be more reflective on our motivations, indulging in critical introspection, in order to grow into more thoughtful human beings.

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If Republicans really believed their own rhetoric on guns, they’d be furiously donating money to charities that pass out guns to people in high crime neighborhoods.

Put your money where your mouth is, prove us dumbass, libtard cucks wrong. There’s plenty of people here in Detroit that would love a free gun. If such a thing actually reduced crime, you’d make a believer out of me.

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Conservative: You can’t raise the minimum wage. Employes are paid what they’re worth. If those companies are forced to provide higher wages they’ll have to raise prices, layoff workers, and that’s if they don’t go out of business.

Facetious Liberal: Yeah, like when Amazon was pressured into raising their wages to 15$ and the company lost a bunch of money and laidoff thousands of workers because the public was unwilling to pay the price increases, resulting in a dramatic decline in their stock price.

Conservative: That never happened...

Liberal: I know.

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If liberals were as dense as conservatives...

Liberal: You know markets aren’t free, right? You still have to pay for goods and services!

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Opioid of the Masses

The ruling against Johnson and Johnson blows an enormous hole in this tired, brain-dead talking point, central to the freemarketeer ideology, namely that free markets are self regulating and government regulation does nothing but erect unuseful barriers that inhibit innovation. This idea that companies are benevolent organizations all competing to give customers the best product (service) at the lowest cost and that customers are well-informed, can easily be demonstrated as false by anyone attempting to get a car repair (does anyone trust mechanics to all be doing a good job, at a fair price?). This Johnson and Johnson case goes to show that this company wasn’t trying to make the most bang for its buck by providing the best product, but by lying about it.

If the free market narrative were to be believed, consumers would remember this about Johnson and Johnson and would cease buying their products in retaliation for their malpractice, but does anyone actually believe that in the coming months their super market will have one less baby lotion option? Did any of these people even know that Johnson and Johnson was producing their opioids? I’ve never once known who produces my medication. Moreover, for a billion dollar company, this lawsuit will be a drop in the bucket, and that’s assuming the ruling isn’t overturned in an appeal.

But, are the laissez-faire economists and their mindless followers going to change their stance or admit to the shortcoming in their theory? No. They’ll bend over backwards to find an explanation linking the problem to government intervention in the market because empirical data isn’t really their thing; they’re more into ideas and thought experiments.

If only there had been no rules on what pharmaceutical companies could sell and how they could advertise, this whole tragedy could’ve been avoided... (sarcasm)

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Mental institutions: because locking people up is better than taking their guns?

The idea that we would implement a system preventing these people from getting guns is unthinkable because it would breach their fundamental rights. But, locking them up to preemptively prevent crimes is right in line with American values...

Did I mention that this isn’t a mental health issue and that people with mental health problems are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators?

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Conservatives: If you don’t like America, then leave! Respect our flag; respect our troops; blue lives matter!

Also conservatives: Don’t tread on me! It’s my right to have a gun incase I ever need to lead a revolt against the tyrannical government!

They want deference to American authority and to fly the confederate flag. They get mad about kneeling during the anthem to protest government oppression and fantasize about murdering American police and troops to take back their freedom. They fear sharia law and dream of infusing the government with their religious beliefs. They hate big government and love the swelling prisons and enormous military budget. They say ‘government is the problem,’ and laud police killing unarmed citizens. They hate abortion because of their professed sanctity of life but love the death penalty and fawn over the idea of nuking their enemies. They love America and hate liberalism (frequently calling it a ‘disease’). They call the progressive agenda irresponsible (“think of the debt!”), yet they’ve never seen a tax cut they didn’t like. They’re huge advocates of free markets, but support intellectual property, tort reform, trade wars, closed borders and hate free trade deals.

This is a description of one of the major political parties in America, and I haven’t even gotten to the flaws in the other one. In summation, Americans are dimwits, we’re fucked and the nomination of Biden is four more years of Trump.