botched gender affirmation surgery that left him with a mangled useless sex organ

I keep hearing this around here. Is there any actual reason to think it's true?

Even if the bit about the surgery is true, it's a very reductive explanation of issues which clearly aren't new in his life. He was brought up by far-right parents and his father apparently showed him no love. He has been poisonously insecure all his life, only now he has the power to inflict his psychological troubles on the world. Ever since he got financially lucky in the 1990s, he has had the money to buy influence and pay people to do what he wants, so he has never become equipped to deal with people as equals and has all kinds of issues and insecurities around power. He discovered early that, while he had trouble making friends, he could make an impression on people by being edgy and controversial, and has never managed to move beyond this into a more mature persona.

I feel like saying "it's all because of his wonky penis" trivializes how profoundly this man's life has messed him up, and how many complex factors are at work in his psyche. It also implicitly insults anyone else who doesn't have "normal" genitalia.

There's ignorance and there's stupidity. Stupidity will stubbornly resist any attempt to correct its ignorance.

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.

Against stupidity we are defenseless.

Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

...

If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

How long did Schumer's brave resistance last? 6 hours? Maybe 12?

The only way Trump's actions make any consistent sense as all is as an attempt to ruin the USA and its allies for the benefit of Vladimir Putin. There's just no other theory that explains all the data points.

It's right next to the spaghetti trees.

I think many people figured it out in 1987 when he went to Moscow and then ran full-page newspaper ads demanding the USA turn on its allies.

When a Young Trump Went to Russia

It'll most likely be avian flu, which is pretty bad. The Trump people are trying to ban MRNA vaccines and cut the vaccine research that might have helped with it.

In response to an emailed series of questions, a spokesperson for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the agency still deems the risk to human health for the general public to be low.

For how much longer can we trust their pronouncements? All the US government departments are under the control of compulsively lying anti-science Nazis.

I think that one is referring to Trump. Musk won't be punished for his Nazi salute, just as Trump isn't punished for raping women.

...crickets...

Sorry, too busy genociding.

If I saw serious attempts anywhere from right-wingers to advocate for their views as an actual political philosophy I'd be more concerned by this. But we need spaces where people actually discuss how to build a better society, and simply because of that concern these spaces lean left. It's rare to find right-wingers who are even seriously interested in that question, except as a pretext to vent their unexamined prejudices and personality issues.

If, on internet forums, you push for everyone to have equal say even when their views are not well considered, everyone's energy gets used up arguing with the most offensive right-wing posters. I think it's a good thing to have spaces where that isn't how it goes. As for centrists, I think there's a place for engaging with them because there's more of a chance that they just haven't examined their views but can be brought to. But I'm not going to miss them if they're so put off by a left-leaning space that they won't participate, and I don't think every left space needs to spend its time arguing with liberals.

Frankly, my view of the right wing these days is that there's no particular need to treat a mishmash of selfishness, greed, lust for power, deceit, gullibility, ignorance, insecurity and hatred as if it's a political philosophy at all. Left versus right isn't a helpful picture. Serious vs unserious would be a better one. If someone has serious arguments for a right-wing position made in good faith, then they're not just wasting people's time. But that's not usually what you see, and I suspect it's because there's a lack of serious arguments to be made for it.

I don't miss the right-wing voices. For the most part they just dominate, disrupt and obstruct serious discussion. That said, it's important we don't forget how unrepresentative our online discussions are of society as a whole, and how little impact merely talking about them here has.

Is Fetterman still left-leaning? I heard he had gone Trumpy.