BrokeStraightBoys
BSB Owner
Just FYI I don't mind political threads even new ones but obviously some members have abusing this with many threads.
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Politics Discussion
- Thread starter caribou
- Start date
mikeyank
Long time forumite
We have always had political discussions on the Broke Straight Boys forum, however we used to have two forums, one for discussions regarding porn, and the other for subjects not related to porn. It was the non-porn forum where we posted music videos, had birthday threads, discussed entertainment, and all kinds of subjects including politics. I’m not clear on why Mark combined the forums to “everything under the sun”, but all the subjects are kind of jumbled now on one forum. So it has been a tradition since the inception of the forum to discuss politics, by those who wish to participate, but in the past these threads were on the other forum and easier to bypass by the folks not into political discussions here.
I agree Rep. While I/(some of us) did post some political stuff over there I'm fine with taking politics out of the Coffee Shop and into one designated thread. Then for those who say they don't want to see or talk politics in here, they've been put on notice to just ignore the one thread if that keeps them happier. (Instead of having to dodge and roll their eyes at a continuous stream of new ones. haha)
mikeyank
Long time forumite
From Fringe To Congress: QAnon Backers Are On The Ballot In November
While watching the late news last night, I learned that Marjorie Taylor Greene won a Republican run-off for the general election in November to be a Representative for her district in Georgia. They said she is a believer in a conspiracy theory called QAnon. The more I read, I was shocked. Here is an article from NPR describing this whole troubling phenomenon.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/13/9019...s-qanon-backers-are-on-the-ballot-in-november
Marjorie Taylor Greene's path to Congress has been strewn with controversy. Politico dug up her history of disparaging Black people and Muslims. She's unapologetic about the anti-Semitic tropes she has used to describe George Soros.
But it's another kind of extremism that drew the spotlight to Greene's victory Tuesday in the Republican primary runoff in Georgia: She has promoted the conspiracy theory QAnon, or Q.
The baseless QAnon conspiracy sprang from right-wing message boards in 2017. Those who buy into it think President Trump is leading a secret war against Satan-worshiping pedophiles in the deep state. They believe a figure known only as Q is helping – and leaving encrypted messages for "digital soldiers" of the movement to decode.
The watchdog group Media Matters for America counts 19 congressional candidates with links to QAnon who will be on the ballot in November. Many are long shots. But not Greene, whose primary win in a deep red House district means she's all but assured a seat in Congress. Greene has embraced the QAnon conspiracy in a series of social media posts in recent years.
"Now there's the potential to have someone in political office that believes in QAnon," said Aoife Gallagher, a researcher at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue who co-wrote a new report on QAnon. "To me, that is just a slippery slope."
GOP Candidates Open To QAnon Conspiracy Theory Advance In Congressional Races
Greene's far-right stances have made her anathema to many establishment Republicans. Trump, however, tweeted his congratulations, praising Greene as a "future Republican Star."
"The GOP establishment, the media, & the radical left, spent months & millions of dollars attacking me. Tonight the people of Georgia stood up & said that we will not be intimidated or believe those lies," Greene tweeted after her win.
Greene is no longer making videos about Q, but she hasn't disavowed the conspiracy theory, either.
In another tweet Wednesday, Greene dismissed criticism of her statements that Sharia law is "bad" and that Black communities are held back by gangs, as well as her support for a conspiracy theory that Soros, who is Jewish, collaborated with the Nazis. She didn't address QAnon.
Local journalists have tried repeatedly to pin Greene down on Q. They haven't gotten a clear answer; she simply repeats that she's "concerned about a deep state," like "millions" of people around the world. Greene declined an interview request from NPR.
Marc-André Argentino, a researcher in Canada who recently co-wrote a paper on QAnon for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, said Q-linked candidates generally fall into two categories: die-hard believers and those who see the movement as a valuable voting bloc.
"I think Marjorie Taylor Greene started in the bucket where she truly believed in QAnon, but now she's probably drifting more toward the political constituency," Argentino said.
Like others in his field, Argentino is concerned about the meteoric rise of QAnon, especially since the pandemic. On Facebook alone, he said, "You're seeing almost a doubling of groups and eight times the amount of members."
Authorities also worry about QAnon becoming intertwined with other, more violent forms of extremism. Last year, an FBI memo called it a potential domestic terrorism threat. Several Q supporters have been linked to serious crimes; one pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge.
Social media platforms are taking steps to curb the spread of Q. Facebook removed a popular QAnon group with 200,000 members, and Twitter has banned or restricted tens of thousands of accounts. TikTok and YouTube also have taken steps to make it harder to find QAnon content.
Critics call it too little, too late. The conspiracy's spread is outpacing efforts to contain it, finding new audiences overseas and in New Age and anti-vaccination factions. Online support groups are springing up for people who are concerned about a relative's obsession with Q.
"I'm looking at these groups, and I'm seeing friends that I went to school with or colleagues, in QAnon groups," Argentino said. "And for me, they don't meet the profile of what I traditionally think of as a conspiracy theorist."
QAnon is so far-fetched and ridiculous that federal authorities and tech companies didn't take it seriously until recently – despite its rapid spread, said Travis View, co-host of the podcast QAnon Anonymous. The show offers a skeptical, in-depth look inside the world of Q.
View said it's good that tech companies and other gatekeepers are paying closer to attention to QAnon now, even if he considers it "two years too late."
"When things go sort of viral online, even if they're dangerous extremist movements, they might be dismissed as fringe," View said. "But once they start entering the halls of Congress, that makes people sit up and pay attention."
qanon
2020 election
While watching the late news last night, I learned that Marjorie Taylor Greene won a Republican run-off for the general election in November to be a Representative for her district in Georgia. They said she is a believer in a conspiracy theory called QAnon. The more I read, I was shocked. Here is an article from NPR describing this whole troubling phenomenon.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/13/9019...s-qanon-backers-are-on-the-ballot-in-november
Marjorie Taylor Greene's path to Congress has been strewn with controversy. Politico dug up her history of disparaging Black people and Muslims. She's unapologetic about the anti-Semitic tropes she has used to describe George Soros.
But it's another kind of extremism that drew the spotlight to Greene's victory Tuesday in the Republican primary runoff in Georgia: She has promoted the conspiracy theory QAnon, or Q.
The baseless QAnon conspiracy sprang from right-wing message boards in 2017. Those who buy into it think President Trump is leading a secret war against Satan-worshiping pedophiles in the deep state. They believe a figure known only as Q is helping – and leaving encrypted messages for "digital soldiers" of the movement to decode.
The watchdog group Media Matters for America counts 19 congressional candidates with links to QAnon who will be on the ballot in November. Many are long shots. But not Greene, whose primary win in a deep red House district means she's all but assured a seat in Congress. Greene has embraced the QAnon conspiracy in a series of social media posts in recent years.
"Now there's the potential to have someone in political office that believes in QAnon," said Aoife Gallagher, a researcher at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue who co-wrote a new report on QAnon. "To me, that is just a slippery slope."
GOP Candidates Open To QAnon Conspiracy Theory Advance In Congressional Races
Greene's far-right stances have made her anathema to many establishment Republicans. Trump, however, tweeted his congratulations, praising Greene as a "future Republican Star."
"The GOP establishment, the media, & the radical left, spent months & millions of dollars attacking me. Tonight the people of Georgia stood up & said that we will not be intimidated or believe those lies," Greene tweeted after her win.
Greene is no longer making videos about Q, but she hasn't disavowed the conspiracy theory, either.
In another tweet Wednesday, Greene dismissed criticism of her statements that Sharia law is "bad" and that Black communities are held back by gangs, as well as her support for a conspiracy theory that Soros, who is Jewish, collaborated with the Nazis. She didn't address QAnon.
Local journalists have tried repeatedly to pin Greene down on Q. They haven't gotten a clear answer; she simply repeats that she's "concerned about a deep state," like "millions" of people around the world. Greene declined an interview request from NPR.
Marc-André Argentino, a researcher in Canada who recently co-wrote a paper on QAnon for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, said Q-linked candidates generally fall into two categories: die-hard believers and those who see the movement as a valuable voting bloc.
"I think Marjorie Taylor Greene started in the bucket where she truly believed in QAnon, but now she's probably drifting more toward the political constituency," Argentino said.
Like others in his field, Argentino is concerned about the meteoric rise of QAnon, especially since the pandemic. On Facebook alone, he said, "You're seeing almost a doubling of groups and eight times the amount of members."
Authorities also worry about QAnon becoming intertwined with other, more violent forms of extremism. Last year, an FBI memo called it a potential domestic terrorism threat. Several Q supporters have been linked to serious crimes; one pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge.
Social media platforms are taking steps to curb the spread of Q. Facebook removed a popular QAnon group with 200,000 members, and Twitter has banned or restricted tens of thousands of accounts. TikTok and YouTube also have taken steps to make it harder to find QAnon content.
Critics call it too little, too late. The conspiracy's spread is outpacing efforts to contain it, finding new audiences overseas and in New Age and anti-vaccination factions. Online support groups are springing up for people who are concerned about a relative's obsession with Q.
"I'm looking at these groups, and I'm seeing friends that I went to school with or colleagues, in QAnon groups," Argentino said. "And for me, they don't meet the profile of what I traditionally think of as a conspiracy theorist."
QAnon is so far-fetched and ridiculous that federal authorities and tech companies didn't take it seriously until recently – despite its rapid spread, said Travis View, co-host of the podcast QAnon Anonymous. The show offers a skeptical, in-depth look inside the world of Q.
View said it's good that tech companies and other gatekeepers are paying closer to attention to QAnon now, even if he considers it "two years too late."
"When things go sort of viral online, even if they're dangerous extremist movements, they might be dismissed as fringe," View said. "But once they start entering the halls of Congress, that makes people sit up and pay attention."
qanon
2020 election
I have needed to take a break from posting due to this thread and some of the comments that followed. I am glad that I took the time to cool down and not post immediate responses. I'm concerned that it would have been very harsh. Followed by more of what I call Sender's Remorse, etc. We are all going through some very difficult times personally as we cope with the new realities of life during a pandemic. We have freedoms of daily living taken away from us and we miss the human contact and the interaction of face to face conversation. And for some of us that loss of human interaction goes all the way to the level of sexual intimacy and taking an unwanted and coerced vow of celibacy for a seemingly indefinite length of time. Many of us are also worried about jobs, and finances along with friends, family or other loved ones dealing with same.
All this to say that when we say any negative things in person, phone, text, etc., that many times in this Covid era they can be the result of misdirected anger. We're upset. (But not always truly about the issues at hand.) We may not like it that the grocery store is out of our favorite jalapeno-raspberry flavored cookies. And they only have banana-chipotle instead. But a person going full Karen mode and screaming and yelling and knocking stuff off of shelves is angry over far more than cookies. These are difficult times. The political situation and climate is another matter which concerns many of us greatly. And we (or at least many of us) are uptight about what the future holds in that regard as well.
So I'll put forward a few things that came immediately to mind with this thread in particular. And hopefully I will be more restrained and polite with my wording than I would have been if I had posted in the moment on the night this thread was designated as the main politics thread for the whole forum. I had to come down from a boil to a slow simmer to where I now can hopefully speak with only one or two bubbles reaching up from the bottom of the pan. (Remember again that by my own admission some of my negativity at times is triggered more so by the Covid and political situation than by the severity of other minor issues happening online or in my daily life?)
KRU/Caribou is a paying member of the site and forum and is therefore entitled to post whatever he likes within very broad boundaries. I often ignore his threads completely or give them only cursory glances because our personalities and mindsets just don't jibe. Perhaps in real life we would get along famously. Don't know. Caribou usually prefers to start new threads for each new or random thought that comes to him rather than to contribute to existing threads or the ongoing conversations of others. And that is very unlikely to change.
I do find it ironic that some posters get all worked up about their distaste for the general topic of politics in here when nobody is ever forcing them to open or read any particular thread. Especially so if a thread has an obvious political title... I don't see why it would be so offensive to the senses. It's easy enough not to open (or read) threads which are obviously political. If I see a thread which annoys me or whose subject just does not interest me I merely ignore it, don't open it, or I open it only so that I can close/leave it quickly and have it drop from my list of unread threads. Nobody ever forces anyone to either open or read the contents of a thread.
Now if you're saying that maybe it's not so much the subject of politics, (even though you may truly dislike politics in here) but more so the fact that it's annoying to have someone gumming up the works of the thread process by starting constant new threads as if they were in the throes of a Trumpist tweetstorm... Well, I'm with you there. I do get that. It's one thing when someone starts new threads fairly often with the intent of just generating more conversation. It's another if someone might appear to be doing so more out of ego or boredom and wants to see his/her screenname up in lights.
I'm not crazy about the fact that this thread is declared the main political thread of the site. Firstly because the very title is snarky and condescending. Why not something less snarky and more generic, like "The Politics Thread (Please post politics only in here.)"? Anyhoo... Secondly we got to this point of having to declare one thread for politics because the author of this thread was a main instigator for having posted so many political threads in a short length of time. So I'm thinking, Why are we rewarding somebody who almost singlehandedly brought this issue to a head in the first place, to be rewarded with a semi-permanent thread with a rude sounding title?
Since I am interested in politics myself I will post on this thread if it is to be the designated thread for it. I just wanted some time to process. And maybe to vent just a little. lol
All this to say that when we say any negative things in person, phone, text, etc., that many times in this Covid era they can be the result of misdirected anger. We're upset. (But not always truly about the issues at hand.) We may not like it that the grocery store is out of our favorite jalapeno-raspberry flavored cookies. And they only have banana-chipotle instead. But a person going full Karen mode and screaming and yelling and knocking stuff off of shelves is angry over far more than cookies. These are difficult times. The political situation and climate is another matter which concerns many of us greatly. And we (or at least many of us) are uptight about what the future holds in that regard as well.
So I'll put forward a few things that came immediately to mind with this thread in particular. And hopefully I will be more restrained and polite with my wording than I would have been if I had posted in the moment on the night this thread was designated as the main politics thread for the whole forum. I had to come down from a boil to a slow simmer to where I now can hopefully speak with only one or two bubbles reaching up from the bottom of the pan. (Remember again that by my own admission some of my negativity at times is triggered more so by the Covid and political situation than by the severity of other minor issues happening online or in my daily life?)
KRU/Caribou is a paying member of the site and forum and is therefore entitled to post whatever he likes within very broad boundaries. I often ignore his threads completely or give them only cursory glances because our personalities and mindsets just don't jibe. Perhaps in real life we would get along famously. Don't know. Caribou usually prefers to start new threads for each new or random thought that comes to him rather than to contribute to existing threads or the ongoing conversations of others. And that is very unlikely to change.
I do find it ironic that some posters get all worked up about their distaste for the general topic of politics in here when nobody is ever forcing them to open or read any particular thread. Especially so if a thread has an obvious political title... I don't see why it would be so offensive to the senses. It's easy enough not to open (or read) threads which are obviously political. If I see a thread which annoys me or whose subject just does not interest me I merely ignore it, don't open it, or I open it only so that I can close/leave it quickly and have it drop from my list of unread threads. Nobody ever forces anyone to either open or read the contents of a thread.
Now if you're saying that maybe it's not so much the subject of politics, (even though you may truly dislike politics in here) but more so the fact that it's annoying to have someone gumming up the works of the thread process by starting constant new threads as if they were in the throes of a Trumpist tweetstorm... Well, I'm with you there. I do get that. It's one thing when someone starts new threads fairly often with the intent of just generating more conversation. It's another if someone might appear to be doing so more out of ego or boredom and wants to see his/her screenname up in lights.
I'm not crazy about the fact that this thread is declared the main political thread of the site. Firstly because the very title is snarky and condescending. Why not something less snarky and more generic, like "The Politics Thread (Please post politics only in here.)"? Anyhoo... Secondly we got to this point of having to declare one thread for politics because the author of this thread was a main instigator for having posted so many political threads in a short length of time. So I'm thinking, Why are we rewarding somebody who almost singlehandedly brought this issue to a head in the first place, to be rewarded with a semi-permanent thread with a rude sounding title?
Since I am interested in politics myself I will post on this thread if it is to be the designated thread for it. I just wanted some time to process. And maybe to vent just a little. lol
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stowe1
Ye Olde Curmudgeon
mikeyank
Long time forumite
I think we need to keep in mind that Mark said he does not object to new political threads. This post was intended to prevent one member of the forum from abusing the spirit of posting here.
Amen!
Yes. I'm glad that Mark is not totally ruling out tolerating future threads which might delve into politics. I and most of the rest of us do understand why he was upset in the beginning and trying to be pretty firm on limiting political banter to one thread. And I'm quite fine in principle with trying to maintain one thread for general political conversation. It's probably even a good idea. Though short of making it a "sticky" thread that's quickly and easily accessible, future posters (out of convenience) and new members (who don't know any better) will probably just start their own new threads again.
I've said my own piece on the subject (namely about the title of the thread which I hope can be reworked) and I feel better. I'd prefer now to just start contributing to the politics aspect of the thread.
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That Q conspiracy is quite over the top. It's scary when new members of Congress are believers (or at least pretend to be) for political convenience. Greene strikes me as yet another conservative (among many) who doesn't really want to do right by the American people, but instead would rather stoke division and nurse their grievances against society. All with very thinly veiled racism, nativism, homophobia, xenophobia and paranoia. They can't bear the thought that whites will not be in a majority compared to the combination of blacks, hispanics and others in the fairly near future. They're terrified and acting out in very unadult-like ways.
Is anyone else as upset as me about the post office? I can’t even believe the audacity of Trump and his cronies trying to set up the election and keep people from voting or their votes counted. I guys he learned a lot in those long talks with Putin. The republicans just stand by with their thumbs up their ass watching our country being destroyed. It just makes me ill. It also shows how stupid they think we are.
Ok, so I firmly believe kids are off limits when it comes to criticism. I despise Trump, but I don’t want to say anything negative about his son, Barron. So please, no negative comments. But have y’all seen Barron lately? Damn....that boy is TALL. I ended up at 6’1” myself, but I would love to have been this tall when I was 14. How lucky? I hope he ends up being a lot nicer than his dad. There was one video of the family yesterday, and Barron waved at one of the photographers, which I thought was sweet, because he’s so quiet. They say Trump is 6’3”, so I’m guessing Barron is probably 6’6” or taller.
It is pretty outrageous. I'm very glad that Congress is coming back early to take on the issue as well as having the new postmaster general testify publicly.
Yeah. I also try to avoid talk or anything that might be construed as gossip about the minor children of celebrities and public figures. I will say though that I think many in the country have been surprised by his sudden growth spurt at such a still relatively young age of puberty. At this rate he could possibly still grow another 2-5 inches in height.
I was very impressed with the convention this week. With the Covid restrictions and the challenges of trying to maintain a feeling of authenticity and heart while having people talking over Zoom, and giving speeches inside empty rooms... It could have been a disaster. Tonight had some really good high points for me.
The boy talking about his stuttering was really impactful. I was glad Mayor Pete was given a chance to speak again. I hope we'll hear more good things from him again as the campaign season goes on. The portrait that was painted of Joe as family man and the love he has for his whole family and his late son Beau in particular, was very moving.
The boy talking about his stuttering was really impactful. I was glad Mayor Pete was given a chance to speak again. I hope we'll hear more good things from him again as the campaign season goes on. The portrait that was painted of Joe as family man and the love he has for his whole family and his late son Beau in particular, was very moving.
Agreed. Very moving moments tonight. Brayden, the teen, particularly moved me to tears.
