From gravity to gender, scientific truth stands above human feelings and politics

[Wilson23]

Of course, whether a male-to-female transgender is a woman is NOT a scientific question the way the speed of light is a scientific question -- and the OP intentionally confuses that point.

 

[AlexBailey]

ONLY prayer can do it, but as my late wife used to say, you can pray all you want to win the lottery; you still have to buy the ticket. Prayer works when we live as though what we pray for is already real. Because in God, it is.

As a minister I knew used to say, "I don't always get what I pray for, but I always get what I pray from."

You almost get it. You’re almost smart enough to hear your own words, but not quite.

Can you not see the irony?

You said “Prayer works when we live as though what we pray for is already real.” But you can’t see how someone living by their belief in who they are is just as valid?

When someone has transitioned to the point where no one can clock them and they live as their chosen gender in every social aspect of their lives, what is left to seek? Belief in your god?

(Here is where you point to the evidence that your god is the only true one.)

 

[Wilson23]

Prayer works when we live as though what we pray for is already real.

Prayer works when it can make a tossed coin come up heads significantly more than half the time. If it cannot do that, then everything is the same as if God did not exist.

 

[Wilson23]

McCarthy was right. The fucking Communists were taking over, the people he accused were Communists,

The 1950s Red Scare was a complete waste of time because the thing it feared did not exist. There was the Communist Party USA with its negligible membership, having peaked in political relevance in the 1930s; there was a larger number of intellectuals, artists, and working-class people who were Communist sympathizers to varying degrees but never joined the party; and that was all. There was no underground Communist movement, such as had made revolutions in Europe. McCarthy never did identify a single crypto-Communist. There HAD been Communists in the State Department, but the Truman Administration purged them.

There were Soviet agents in the U.S. of course, but they were only spies looking for information. They were not political commissars trying to stir up Communist revolution in the United States -- the Soviet government never in its existence perceived any possibility of that. It was a puzzle to them -- according to their theories, a country so highly industrialized should at least have a powerful Communist movement.

And they certainly weren't trying to undermine America's moral fiber through sex, drugs, or rock n' roll. Nor through race-mixing, which white popular imagination associated with the first three. Which I guess led to those "RACE-MIXING IS COMMUNISM" signs.

A good source on all this is:
https://www.amazon.com/Didnt-Happen-Here-Socialism-Paperback/dp/0393322548

 

[JohnEngelman]

McCarthy was right. The fucking Communists were taking over, the people he accused were Communists, and the fucking Rosenbergs fucking had it coming when they got electrocuted. Julius got it easy and died on the first shock and his wife had to get shocked three times before she died.

Now we have a fucking Communist running for mayor of New York City.

During the cold war Communist espionage was a legitimate issue. Communist subversion was not. Members of the American Communist Party had every right under the United States Constitution to express their opinions.

Contrary to Joe McCarthy's lies, there were no card carrying members of the American Communist Party in the State Department. If there had been we probably would have avoided the War in Vietnam and the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

I have known members of the American Communist Party.

https://www.cpusa.org/

I have always liked them. The disagreed with me a lot, but they disagreed while being agreeable.

 

[JohnEngelman]

Now we have a fucking Communist running for mayor of New York City.

Zohran Mamdani is not running for Mayor of New York City. He won the election. Moreover, he does not belong to the American Communist Party. He belongs to Democratic Socialists of America, and he ran as a Democrat.​

Democratic Socialists of America evolved from the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. I belonged to the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee during the War in Vietnam. I thought about joining Democratic Socialists of America. I did not because it supports the Palestinians against Israel.

When I belonged to the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee it supported Israel against the Palestinians. My support for Israel is unconditional.

Conservatives should worry about Democratic Socialists of America. Real after tax incomes for most Americans have stagnated or declined since the inflationary recession of 1974, while the rich have gotten richer. Because economic growth is no longer possible for most Americans economic redistribution is likely to become more popular.

 

[Wilson23]

In Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here," in Doremus Jessup's home town in Vermont, there are two mechanics, one a Communist and one a Social Democrat, who are constantly arguing as if the difference between the two is the most important thing in the political universe. When the Corpo dictatorship comes to power, it draws no distinction and sends them both to a prison camp.

Which is pretty much what happened to the Communists and Social Democrats in Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can't_Happen_Here

 

[JohnEngelman]

In Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here," in Doremus Jessup's home town in Vermont, there are two mechanics, one a Communist and one a Social Democrat, who are constantly arguing as if the difference between the two is the most important thing in the political universe. When the Corpo dictatorship comes to power, it draws no distinction and sends them both to a prison camp.

Which is pretty much what happened to the Communists and Social Democrats in Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can't_Happen_Here

During the Cold War there was no possibility of a Communist dictatorship in the United States. The danger was of a nuclear war.

 

[Wilson23]

Zohran Mamdani is not running for Mayor of New York City. He won the election. Moreover, he does not belong to the American Communist Party. He belongs to Democratic Socialists of America, and he ran as a Democrat.​

Democratic Socialists of America evolved from the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. I belonged to the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee during the War in Vietnam. I thought about joining Democratic Socialists of America. I did not because it supports the Palestinians against Israel.

When I belonged to the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee it supported Israel against the Palestinians. My support for Israel is unconditional.

Conservatives should worry about Democratic Socialists of America. Real after tax incomes for most Americans have stagnated or declined since the inflationary recession of 1974, while the rich have gotten richer. Because economic growth is no longer possible for most Americans economic redistribution is likely to become more popular.

Now of course we're not going to live to see a leftist revolution, not unless the RW starts an actual civil war -- the left wouldn't start it, but might win it. Otherwise, the most American leftists, broadly defined, can reasonably hope to achieve in our lifetimes is either:

1. Taking over the Democratic Party, like the Reform Party/Tea Party/MAGA populist-nationalists took over the GOP. Bernie's and AOC's massive rallies demonstrate the very real potential there.

2. Starting a third party to the left of the Democrats that is at least as big a deal here politically as the New Democrats are in Canada -- the NDs never rule, but their existence makes a difference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democratic_Party
There was an attempt to accomplish this recently with the People's Party, but it's already defunct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Party_(United_States,_2017)
So the only organization in the field with that potential is probably the Working Families Party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Families_Party
Which could merge with the Vermont Progressive Party, they have the same politics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Progressive_Party
As for the Socialist Party USA, the Communist Party USA, and various other parties in the Marxist or more-or-leftist tradition, who are generally too small to matter electorally, they can provide moral support and cross-endorse candidates.
And the Greens too, I suppose, though they're a bit different. More decentralist, more emphasis on environmentalism.

 

[JohnEngelman]

McCarthy was right. The fucking Communists were taking over, the people he accused were Communists, and the fucking Rosenbergs fucking had it coming when they got electrocuted. Julius got it easy and died on the first shock and his wife had to get shocked three times before she died.

Now we have a fucking Communist running for mayor of New York City.

If Zohran Mamdani damages the economy for working class and middle class residents of New York City you have nothing to worry about, because he will not be reelected.

If Zohran Mamdani makes New York affordable for most working class and middle class Americans you have plenty to worry about because democratic socialism, which is already popular with most young people and most Democrats, will become even more popular.

 

[JohnEngelman]

McCarthy was right. The fucking Communists were taking over, the people he accused were Communists, and the fucking Rosenbergs fucking had it coming when they got electrocuted. Julius got it easy and died on the first shock and his wife had to get shocked three times before she died.

Now we have a fucking Communist running for mayor of New York City.

After I graduated from college, I took a fascinating seminar on Das Kapital given by a brilliant member of the American Communist party. He was a physicist. In addition to his day job and leading the seminar he was translating a book from Russian to Swedish on behalf of the Soviet government.

I already owned all three volumes of Das Kapital. They had been printed in Moscow by Progress Publishers. In addition I owned an anthology of essays by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This had also been printed in Moscow by Progress Publishers.

I also owned several books printed in the United States that were on the reading list.

My father was an economist. When I shoed Dad the reading list for the seminar he said, "That man knows a lot about economics."

 

[Baztrachian]

My father was an economist.

And a failure at both.

 

[Rightguide]

The facts of science were facts long before there were humans to discover them. And they will continue to be facts long after our species has gone extinct, long after any brains exist to remember us.

Alas, of late, there is one particularly egregious example of human hubris in the face of the eternal and universal verities of science — specifically, the ridiculous claim that we can override science and choose our own sex from a spectrum. The human conceit here is the idea that personal feelings can change reality.

There are not just males and females, so the claim goes. They are but the extremes of a spectrum. Where you place yourself in the spectrum is a matter of personal choice. If you feel you are a woman, you are a woman. Never mind if you have a Y-chromosome, testes, and a penis, no matter if you have breasts and ovaries, your male or female identity is something you get to decide for yourself, as easily as you might choose your political party or favorite football team.


It is to be hoped that, in America, this will soon go the way of McCarthyism. I could imagine future lawsuits against surgeons who, in violation of the first clause of the Hippocratic oath, have cut off the breasts of girls below the age of consent for no better reason than a subsequently regretted claim to have been “assigned” the wrong sex.

How can I be so sure that there are only two sexes? Isn’t it just a matter of opinion? I advocate for what I shall call the universal biological definition (UBD) based on gamete size. Biologists use the UBD because it’s the only definition that applies all the way across the animal and plant kingdoms and all the way through evolutionary history.

Gametes come in two radically different sizes, the phenomenon of anisogamy. Female gametes are very much larger than male gametes, and that is how biologists define female and male.

A feeling of being in a body of the wrong sex seems to be a real psychological condition. Such “dysphorics” can feel genuine distress. When anorexics look in the mirror, they see an emaciated body that they think is too fat. “Gender” dysphorics look in the mirror and see the wrong genitals. Both deserve sympathy and understanding. Nobody is phobic about anorexics. Why should anyone be phobic about gender dysphorics? “Transphobia” is a pernicious fiction.

If your science is so weak that the best you can do is yell that your opponent is a “transphobic bigot,” a “TERF,” or a “full-on MAGA alt-right Trump-supporter,” you’ve already lost the argument.

There is a first principle beneath all the noise: humanity is divided into men and women. From the dawn of order, men and women have stood apart by nature and necessity. It is men who have built kingdoms, forged laws, and wielded power to shape the world’s fortunes. Even the rights granted to women, precious and hard-won, are gifts extended by men of calculation and will, bestowed not out of charity, but to secure order and stability. Yet beware, unchecked feminism, untethered from gratitude or prudence, risks unraveling the very resolve that upholds civilization. For when men grow weary of defending a world that no longer honors their role, the foundation beneath all rights, male strength and sacrifice, may crumble, and with it, all that was granted in goodwill.

 

[ll74]

Lol

 

[OralAllOver]

The facts of science were facts long before there were humans to discover them. And they will continue to be facts long after our species has gone extinct, long after any brains exist to remember us.

Alas, of late, there is one particularly egregious example of human hubris in the face of the eternal and universal verities of science — specifically, the ridiculous claim that we can override science and choose our own sex from a spectrum. The human conceit here is the idea that personal feelings can change reality.

There are not just males and females, so the claim goes. They are but the extremes of a spectrum. Where you place yourself in the spectrum is a matter of personal choice. If you feel you are a woman, you are a woman. Never mind if you have a Y-chromosome, testes, and a penis, no matter if you have breasts and ovaries, your male or female identity is something you get to decide for yourself, as easily as you might choose your political party or favorite football team.


It is to be hoped that, in America, this will soon go the way of McCarthyism. I could imagine future lawsuits against surgeons who, in violation of the first clause of the Hippocratic oath, have cut off the breasts of girls below the age of consent for no better reason than a subsequently regretted claim to have been “assigned” the wrong sex.

How can I be so sure that there are only two sexes? Isn’t it just a matter of opinion? I advocate for what I shall call the universal biological definition (UBD) based on gamete size. Biologists use the UBD because it’s the only definition that applies all the way across the animal and plant kingdoms and all the way through evolutionary history.

Gametes come in two radically different sizes, the phenomenon of anisogamy. Female gametes are very much larger than male gametes, and that is how biologists define female and male.

A feeling of being in a body of the wrong sex seems to be a real psychological condition. Such “dysphorics” can feel genuine distress. When anorexics look in the mirror, they see an emaciated body that they think is too fat. “Gender” dysphorics look in the mirror and see the wrong genitals. Both deserve sympathy and understanding. Nobody is phobic about anorexics. Why should anyone be phobic about gender dysphorics? “Transphobia” is a pernicious fiction.

If your science is so weak that the best you can do is yell that your opponent is a “transphobic bigot,” a “TERF,” or a “full-on MAGA alt-right Trump-supporter,” you’ve already lost the argument.

Dude, then go live in the trees. Modern humans do LOTS (exclusively?) of nature-bending things (disguised ovulation just one). How about flying?

You love "truth" and "facts" so much. How's Trump's running of Venezuela going? How many of his many wives was he faithful to?

And unexpected sexual behaviors NOT RARE in nature

Stop finding excuses for controlling other folks. Maybe control your hypocrisy instead

 

[JohnEngelman]

And a failure at both.

Literotica requires that all forum users must be at least 18 years of age, they must show respect for each other,

When I am insulted, I know that my opponent cannot answer my argument. Insulting my father reaches even lower.

 

[Baztrachian]

Literotica requires that all forum users must be at least 18 years of age, they must show respect for each other,

When I am insulted, I know that my opponent cannot answer my argument. Insulting my father reaches even lower.

Your father professed to be an economist yet he admired communism? Communism is not the product of economics, it is the denial of economics.

Communists exist in a theoretical realm where people can be commanded to produce and then surrender the fruits of their labors to others. In practice communism always fails because it denies human behavior. It tries to remake men as in the idealized notion of the New Soviet Man who selflessly toils with superhuman effort to provide for the Soviet State.

The reality is that communism renders people into slaves. Slaves eventually find ways to avoid doing work that they do not benefit from and as we saw (and see) in communist countries the result is a moribund spirit and a moribund economy.

The damage that communism did to the Russian people is evident today, even thirty-five years after the fall of the USSR. The oligarchy of today is a mirror of the oligarchy that existed under the Red Banner. Russians are some of the least productive people in the industrialized world and the poor quality of their labors is seen in the persistent failures of the Russian military and in the failure of the Russian economy to sustain the Russian military.

As China has in recent years moved back towards communist ideals the quality and output of China's economy has faltered.

"Lying Flat" is now a trend among young Chinese who see no point in laboring to make Party members wealthy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping

This phenomenon has also manifested in the failure of the Chinese domestic EV market, the failure of critical Chinese infrastructure, the failure of Chinese exports in the critical infrastructure market, the failure of China to make inroads in the bleeding edge of technology, and the false reporting of GDP and population data.

Communism fails every time it is tried. Every time. No exception.

I often laugh when leftists cite Cuba as a success but then they denounce the USA for our trade embargo on Cuba. Why does a communist country need access to capital? Isn't communism enough?

Apparently not.

That your father refused to acknowledge the failures of communism and then to impart that denial to you makes him a failure as an economist and a failure as a father. He has handicapped you with an utterly bankrupted worldview.

Don't feel too bad, though. My own father was a big believer in socialism and so was my mother. They imparted this bullshit to my siblings and myself.

Me, I rejected their horseshit the first time I earned a paycheck and saw roughly half of it taken away by government.

Forty-three years later my parents have both died in penury, my sister filed bankruptcy once, and my brother has done it twice. Neither of them speak to me because I didn't bail them out of their financial messes.

They were living the good life and doing so on credit. Meanwhile I was busting my ass, saving my money, making investments, and living within my means.

At no point was I busting my ass and having my wife sacrifice just so I could bail my parents and siblings out of their messes. Fuck 'em.

My wife and I paid off our house and then put three kids through college. Between scholarships and our own finances each of our three kids started their professional lives debt free.

We imparted our values to our kids and none of them are having financial problems. They don't subsidize their lifestyles with credit, they don't accept debt slavery as a lifestyle, they live within their means, and they're putting away for the future.

On the other side of things I support Hillsdale College, Concordia Irvine, Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami, Ukraine House, and etc. - none of which I could afford were I a dedicated and accordingly impoverished socialist.

Sorry you don't like any of that. And if you can't handle my posts then please feel free to employ the "ignore" button that our capitalist hosts here at Literotica have so thoughtfully provided for us.

Good day sir.

 

[Wilson23]

For when men grow weary of defending a world that no longer honors their role,

That's when the Crab People invade!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Is_Gay!

 

[Wilson23]

There is a first principle beneath all the noise: humanity is divided into men and women. From the dawn of order, men and women have stood apart by nature and necessity. It is men who have built kingdoms, forged laws, and wielded power to shape the world’s fortunes. Even the rights granted to women, precious and hard-won, are gifts extended by men of calculation and will, bestowed not out of charity, but to secure order and stability. Yet beware, unchecked feminism, untethered from gratitude or prudence, risks unraveling the very resolve that upholds civilization. For when men grow weary of defending a world that no longer honors their role, the foundation beneath all rights, male strength and sacrifice, may crumble, and with it, all that was granted in goodwill.

You know, I'm sure a lot of guys said exactly those things when the idea of women's suffrage first was broached.

And have we had any reason to regret it?

Maybe I shouldn't have asked that . . .

 

[Wilson23]

Communists exist in a theoretical realm where people can be commanded to produce and then surrender the fruits of their labors to others.

No, that's capitalism, and it's real.

 

[Wilson23]

On the other side of things I support Hillsdale College

Not this one, I hope: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hillsdale_College

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

There is a first principle beneath all the noise: humanity is divided into men and women. From the dawn of order, men and women have stood apart by nature and necessity. It is men who have built kingdoms, forged laws, and wielded power to shape the world’s fortunes. Even the rights granted to women, precious and hard-won, are gifts extended by men of calculation and will, bestowed not out of charity, but to secure order and stability. Yet beware, unchecked feminism, untethered from gratitude or prudence, risks unraveling the very resolve that upholds civilization. For when men grow weary of defending a world that no longer honors their role, the foundation beneath all rights, male strength and sacrifice, may crumble, and with it, all that was granted in goodwill.

Women forced men to grant us equal rights, they didn’t acknowledge us as equals out of benevolent charity, but were dragged to it whining and sniffling.

 

[Wilson23]

The 1950s Red Scare was a complete waste of time because the thing it feared did not exist. There was the Communist Party USA with its negligible membership, having peaked in political relevance in the 1930s; there was a larger number of intellectuals, artists, and working-class people who were Communist sympathizers to varying degrees but never joined the party; and that was all. There was no underground Communist movement, such as had made revolutions in Europe. McCarthy never did identify a single crypto-Communist. There HAD been Communists in the State Department, but the Truman Administration purged them.

Now, we can understand their thinking this way, because in Europe Communist movements, being illegal, always HAD worked underground. But there just weren't enough Comsymps in America to make that kind of movement.

 

[Baztrachian]

Women forced men to grant us equal rights, they didn’t acknowledge us as equals out of benevolent charity, but were dragged to it whining and sniffling.

Forgive me if I do not recall hearing about the armies of women who conquered armies of men. And then forced those terrible men to bend a knee before their female masters?

How is it that such inspiring stories of courage and daring have escaped the annals of history?

And when will you ladies form up and conquer the misogynist Muslims?

 

[Wilson23]

Forgive me if I do not recall hearing about the armies of women who conquered armies of men. And then forced those terrible men to bend a knee before their female masters?

I suspect it went more like "Lysistrata."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysistrata