This man is an asshole:
I judge that he is an asshole because he is a liar, a hypocrite, a terrorist, a mass-murderer, and a power-mad sociopath who puts his personal wealth and power ahead of the well being of his fellow humans. He is not an asshole because his skin is black. I am 100% sure of that last sentence’s veracity because this man is not an asshole:
I judge that he is not an asshole because the caption of this photo is as follows: “A black policeman protects a KKK member, as protesters were closing in on them at a rally in Austin, Texas, 1983.” If you need me to explain why that makes him not an asshole, then you do not have the mental capacity for this conversation and I suggest that you tune in Fox News immediately and have no further truck with my fancy “critical thinking.”
Here’s the thing about generalizations (yes, I am about to generalize about generalizations); as soon as you find a single counter-example for your generalization, it immediately becomes invalid. Period. To me, that assertion seems self-evident, but if you need the entire forcefully reasoned argument, read The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
I judge that our Admin (whose writing and whose generosity I admire, and who I consider a friend), and those of you around here that appear to believe that asshole-ness is somehow causally tied to a person’s race, ethnicity, or religion, are severely fucked up in the head about this issue.
The tendency to identify with a “team,” to believe your “team” is superior, and to disparage other perceived “teams” (whether ethnic, national, religious, or whatever) and demonize the individuals you place in those “teams” is something that I have never been able to understand. How do you tie your fucking shoes in the morning if you cannot see that this world is full of nuance and every individual is an individual who must be judged on their individual character?
Wake the fuck up.
Dividing the world into “teams” is the basis of every form of collectivism. It’s the fundamental premise of statists of all stripes and one of the prime causes of everything that is severely wrong with America today. It is the root ideological pathology that the sick sociopolitical left (fucktard liberals) has in common with the sick sociopolitical right (fucktard neocons). It is one of the things that Hilary Clinton has in common with Mitch McConnel, and apparently with a lot of you all around here.
One of America’s major problems is what Admin calls the “Free Shit Army” — those who believe and live their lives on the belief that it is somehow right or even “ok” to be supported by the work of others. The political root of this problem, inevitable in any representative democracy where the cultural center of gravity is below a certain threshold of human maturity (certainly the case in America today), is outside the scope of what I am writing about here. Let’s just take it as given.
By my definition, the people in the Free Shit Army are assholes. They are assholes because they believe that life, or other people, somehow owe(s) them something for their mere existence. Or even worse, they don’t believe anyone owes them anything, but they see a stupid welfare system that they can game and they are knowingly taking advantage of it. Some of those people are men. Some are women. Some are black. Some are white. Some are jews. Some are christians. Some are hispanic. Etc. If you have access to even the dimmest glow of logic and rationality, it is patently obvious that none of them are assholes because of the color of their skin, their gender, or their religious beliefs. All of them are assholes because they believe that the work of others should support them. That’s what the Free Shit Army has in common and it is a fucked up character trait that crosses gender, race, and religious belief.
On the other end of the class spectrum from the Free Shit Army you also see assholedom crossing all lines of ethnicity, gender, and religion.
Black assholes.
White assholes.
Women assholes.
Christian assholes.
Jewish (or as some of you like to say, “joooish”) assholes.
If you’d like to make some kind of statistical argument about asshole-ness being tied to race, gender, and religion, then I think you can take a quick tally of US Congressional representatives and determine that christian white men must all be assholes.
Wake. The fuck. Up.
Every asshole is an asshole because they individually are an asshole. Period. I may well be an asshole — I’ll leave that for others to judge. But I — one of two “jooos” who are directly responsible for the fact that The Burning Platform exists today — am not an asshole because Lloyd Blankfein is an asshole.
I despair for the future of the human world. Until more of us are able to man up and willing to do the hard work of discriminating and responding to the world in all its shades of grey rather than hiding in the mental laziness of “black and white” and snuggling in the immature emotional comfort of bovine herding, we’re well and truly fucked.
The man who single-handedly saved The Burning Platform has spoken.
I suggest you don’t challenge him to a fight.
This is the man who single-handedly saved the Burning Platform ?
–
WOW ! I cannot express my degree of admiration, respect and thanks for his role in this.
–
I read truth here, almost daily — truth that stands in stark contrast to the (almost) infinite lies of TPTB.
–
Admin ? To you and The-Man-With-No-Name, my deepest thanks for all that you have done for me.
–
Sincerely
–
SnowieGeorgie
–
–
There is no race when it comes to assholes…they all look like chocolate starfish.
What prompted this and who pissed off who?
@Man with no name.
You’re and asshole.
It’s an universal law– intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education.
Solzhenitsyn
“And he knew not his hole from an ass on the ground”
– Firesign Theatre
Excellent – thank you for this and thank you for saving TBP.
RE: IndenturedServant
This was, presumably, started when someone decided that the things discussed on this site were not stuff they wanted floating around.
So – I’m guessing – using their standard playbook, they had their paid shill or shills, post racist stuff here on an ongoing basis – in the comments. This is then used to classify the site as an ‘extremist site,’ and it is added to the block lists used by schools, government agencies, etc..
Traffic drops off, ad revenue dries up . . . . then after a while, they offer money to you – to rescue the site – but, there are always a few conditions regarding site content . . .
Just Guessing
I’m guessing you’re a conspiracy theorist. TBP doesn’t moderate comments. TBP doesn’t have ad revenue to dry up. It’s miniscule and has always been miniscule.
The man with no name has written an article disagreeing with my 30 Blocks of Squalor perspective. Nothing more and nothing less. He houses TBP on his private server and I pay him to do so. I appreciate his viewpoint. I respectfully disagree with him. I believe there are consequences to all actions. I believe personal responsibility for your life and education is essential for society to function.
TBP allows all points of view. I don’t give a flying fuck about who blocks my site or who gets pissed off by the comments. There are no paid shills posting racist stuff. The comments are the personal opinions of those posting them.
Your idiotic assumptions are entirely false.
Admin – the author of this says you are severely fucked up in the head. You going to take that from him?
Top rant TMWNN, just the title and first three words got me hooked. Admin will have to up his game to contend with that.
can’t really find fault with what you have to say, it rymes with my attitude of judge everybody by their merits. I do however find the generalizations and predudices on TBP amusing as it i not something i come across in my world.
one note, the last five pics are of free shit army members, they’re the top dogs of it.
llpoh
I believe you are included in his list too.
Please regale him with your IQ of black people theories.
He does hate injuns and his favorite football team is the Redskins.
Humans were, are, and always will be tribal. The author of this expects us to wake up. What a buffoon. It will never happen. Never. When you put brown hens with white hens, what happens? One set picks on the other. It is natural – it is in the make-up of what they are. Same goes for humans.
The essence of tribal is this – the worst of ours is better than the best of yours. It is really that simple.
There will thus always be the propensity to judge groups. It is natural, and it will never end.
Admin – but he did not name me – he named you! And you know who he is.
If he thinks Redskins is an appropriate name for a team, then he himself is a flaming asshole.
Llpoh
You’re so easy to piss off. I don’t know whether he even likes football.
He disagrees with my viewpoint on the 30 Blocks of Squalor. Lots of people disagree with my viewpoint. RE hates the 30 Blocks posts.
I find that people who have strong views on the culprits for our societal collapse tend to not open their minds to a broader list of culprits. RE and The Man With No Name believe the blame should be placed on the politicians and bankers who run the show. I agree they are most to blame, but I still believe every person has a personal responsibility to become educated, get a job, do their civic duty, accept their family responsibilities, and treat others with respect. The people who live on the 30 Blocks of Squalor do not meet the standards I believe they should. I will continue to detail what I see. I can’t help it that everyone who lives on the 30 Blocks of Squalor is black.
Are “stereotypes” the same as “generalizations”?
If so, I want you to know that I worked real REAL hard over many dozens of years forming them! And I ain’t giving them up just because of this article.
BTW – the difference between me and the assholes shown above is I know I am an asshole. Assholes who are not self-aware are very dangerous indeed.
Other blogs that elicit only polite, respectful, reasoned comments are kind of boring if you ask me. I appreciate Admin’s commitment to the first amendment.
Man with no name – I am one of the guys who fights anti-Semitism around here. I love Jews! And I never see them sucking up free shit, and blaming their misfortune on others. What’s not to like? If they would only vote Libertarian they would be a perfect group!
Too fucking funny!
I read this as a critique of Billy’s latest 30 minutes of racial hate -i.e., TPTB attempting to misdirect any intellectual discussion into an abyss of racial bigotry.
I adore the acronym FSA – it captures what 3-5 generations of welfare created. And I believe cultural insensitivity is a legitimate prerogative when the culture in question is dragging down the overall group.
Admin – you have a particular talent for pissing me off, that is certain. I am not pissed off at all.
I disagree with the man, tho, but respect his opinion. He is taking “the high road”. Unfortunately, that road runs contrary to reality, so it goes nowhere.
I am a realist – when I see the thirty blocks, I make judgements based on what I see. Statistics and all that come into play. It is no coincidence that ten percent of the population sucks up forty percent of the welfare money, and I am not buying the line that it is all whitey’s fault.
The Jews were damn near exterminated a few decades ago, but you do not see them huddled in the Thirty Blocks.
I see what I see – blacks need to lift themselves out of their ghettos and get moving. No more excuses. And no more free shit.
If people are going to play on the internet they need to grow thicker skin. Why get all butthurt over any of it?
I thought the discussion on the 30 blocks thread was fantastic. Probably the best one concerning race in all of TBP history. I think Billy finally found the time and words to get his point across and true opinions on the matter out in the open. I’m actually glad we had the discussion. Now I don’t see him as just another inbred racist hick. There are niggers in this country and then there are black people or negros or African Americans or whatever the hell they prefer to be called. I tend to call them people or friends if I know them.
I still feel like I missed something. Who the hell is Just Guessing and Bappy? More fucking alter egos from the bb/chen brain trust crowd?
Not that Billy gives a shit what I think, nor should he.
What does the man with no name want anyway? Does he want someone to paint him an altered sense of reality so he can avoid getting his wittle feewings hurt?
I guess I need to peak at the 30 blocks thread to see what I missed.
“Since every year, make, and model of automobile has some percentage of lemons; then clearly all automobiles are equally reliable, well-engineered, and well-suited to various demands placed on them under a variety of conditions.”
“But I — one of two “jooos” who are directly responsible for the fact that The Burning Platform exists today — am not an asshole because Lloyd Blankfein is an asshole.”
No, you’re an asshole because you condemn those who don’t share your fucking opinion.
There is nothing written anywhere that we have to like – or even tolerate – anyone for any reason whatsoever… nor do we have to justify our feelings to anyone at all, nor or our opinions any less valid than yours because we don’t agree with you.
You’re no better than any other sanctimonious, hypocritical jerkoff that gets flamed around here…
Stucky, keep it up, stereotypes are the source of all comedy.
IS i aint nobodys alterego you dumb ass septic
“There is nothing written anywhere that we have to like – or even tolerate – anyone for any reason whatsoever… nor do we have to justify our feelings to anyone at all,” I strongly agree with this, racism is a right, as is sexism, antisemitism, ageism and any other ism out there or yet to come. Its either we live with it, or, Newspeak.
” nor or our opinions any less valid than yours because we don’t agree with you.” This is not so strong, for example; an opinion that the Earth is flat would be considerably less valid than than the opinion that it is spherical. the man with no names point that we should elevate values above the lesser more base differentiations is spot on. Liberty is the core value that permeates TBP, and she is awfully trampled on these days out there.
In the picture of the black policeman and the KKK member, Im with the black policeman, Liberty needs champions.
Much thanks to both Admin and man with no name for answering the call.
My apologies Fappy!
If this “joo” is a zionist and supports Israel then he is indeed an asshole.
Yep,I am sure it is a great idea to abuse the guy who holds the plug to the site in his hands. Perhaps we might consider we do owe him at least a small debt of gratitude. No matter what else we may think.
Thank you Mr Man, you did us a service.
I will add TMWNN to the list of folks (IronBalls, Billah’s Wife, El Coyote, Maggie) who protest in their own way Billy’s shitting on TBP. There it is, here I was willing to wear the Douche badge rather than give in to Billy’s worldview. Being considered a douche by Billy is an honor. I am not obsessed with him but reading his shit everyday and wanting to throw up in my mouth is tiresome. I could not write any better comment than TMWNN has done here. Everything that Billy writes somehow fits him like snakeskin, the fucker projects like a xenon spotlight. I can continue to point out his contradictions but I see now they are so obvious to many others that I really do look like a douche to continue to point out that he has a toilet paper tail. This is not to say Billy is a bad person but he is sick with the racism and his comments are spiritual poison and his willingness to attack others who come her to conduct meaningful conversation is as destructive as a DDOS attack on the site. Billy, read this article again slowly, it appears you ARE a racist and a statist and the King of Denial.
Lost as to why a person with a server holds this site in his hands.
Not very computer savvy, but aren’t there others available?
Most appreciative of no post censoring, and freedom of expression. Nothing at all like it for learning, understanding, and appreciating others.
The thirty blocks thread was fascinating reading, and a perfect example of this.
Olga, I missed you in the protest group.
IndenturedServant says: I still feel like I missed something. Who the hell is Just Guessing and Bappy? More fucking alter egos from the bb/chen brain trust crowd?
You have fallen for Billy’s big lie that anyone who dares to contradict him is a sock puppet invention of mine. Your another one who needs to wake the fuck up.
In reference to blaming the banksters and politicians, they are the enablers, they are Satan’s fucking demons offering temptation.
The residents of the 30 blocks of squalor and countless others across the country are the dumb bastard Judas goats taking their 30 pieces of bank credit in return they give up their freedom to the bastards.
These suckers are what Ben Franklin spoke of: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
Assholes already know they are assholes, it’s the folks around them who are duped by their slogans and mindfucking labels into thinking the assholes are OK; that they are right and we should all think like them. It takes leaders like Admin to shine a light on them and their works so others can see these assholes for the cockroaches they are and then people can wake the fuck up.
It’s not practical to judge everyone by their character. There are far to many many people in the world to that. But you can judge certain groups, classes, nationalities or races by the general behavior manifested broadly in a particular group or class.
Even if you put people into the general groups of “assholes” and “not assholes” what good does that do? One mans asshole is another mans idol, friend, or loved one.
I can tell you right now that as bad as they may be if you got rid of all the assholes nothing would ever get done because most of the non assholes are morons, conformist mullets or those who can’t function without supervision. Someone has to lead and guide others. That someone is usually an asshole. The most dangerous assholes can not only lead and guide but can also inspire great masses of morons.
Maybe we could separate good assholes from bad assholes. But that too would be very subjective. No matter. In the end as now assholes will run the show. Just maybe differently for the better or worse ………….probably worse. Men will always gravitate and centralize around an asshole and his ideas or bullshit to one degree or another. That’s just the way it is.
If you think things are bad because of the assholes in charge right now just wait until the next administration of assholes takes office. The fucking institutionalized morons out there will comply with the federalized central system and vote for Republicans or Democrats yet again. You’ll pine for the good old days under the criminals Bush and Obama as tyranny rages forward and rolls over your ass.
Remember we are all Doomed and Doomed really fucking bad. The best you can do is keep your rifle ready and when the time finely comes die a free man………… or as a free asshole.
Bruce redirects the argument by defining the terms: It depends what the meaning of ‘IS’ is.
Well done, sir.
Being a Jew just means that you’re a Christ hater .Being a Jew is not about race ,religion or culture. When one identifies as a Jew the only thing that unites them is a hate for Christ Jesus .Hell ,an African headhunter could be considered Jewish if he rejects Christ. You are the biggest , most hateful ass holes on this planet.
But thanks for saving the BP .bb
No server host holds you hostage as long as you periodically backup the database on a local hard drive. You can always repoint the nameserver to another provider and upload the database to that server.
You only get into trouble if you don’t keep your own copy of the DB, in which case if the host has an issue with you for whatever reason, said host can pull the plug and you are SOL. Said arguments with a hosting server are often financial as well as political in nature. I learned this lesson the hard way when the Diner was held hostage by my old server host. Fortunately, I had my friends from the Database Cavalry in California who rode to the Rescue.
[img
[/img]
Backing up a decent size DB is a pain in the ass, and plenty of bloggers yours truly included often neglect to do this, which is why you wanna have some friends who will do this for you if you don’t get to it. TBP is a healthy size DB now and would take a while to backup. If you don’t have friends who will do it, there are 3rd Party vendors who will do it for you for a nominal fee.
In the end of course, all of this is just Dust in the Wind. Almost nobody ever goes back and reads old articles and even fewer bother to read old commentary. So in the unfortunate occurrence you do not have a copy, you can always just start over again.
When the Internet Goes Dark or Full On Censorship by the State drops in, you’re not gonna be able to read any of this stuff anyhow, so don’t sweat it too much.
We’re all just Pissin the Night Away here.
RE
RE
“RE hates the 30 Blocks posts. “-Admin
Actually, I don;t hate them, at least not as much as some people who share my perspectives do.
i just don’t grasp the point of them. To me, they are distraction that takes your eye off the ball of what is really going on here. You know the old Jay Gould quote I am sure
“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
Basically, revving up the rhetoric between black & white just plays into the the hands of the Oilgarchs. If you expend your energies this way, you’re distracting people from the real enemy here, the Capitalist Oligarchy.
You do a wonderful job when you turn your CPA Brain on and dissect the economy, but you undermine this work when you distract the masses with the race baiting stuff. I just don’t see the point in it.
RE
I have struggled with this topic for most of my life. On a personal level I take each person as they come and make my decisions about their character based on how they behave. That works fine as long as there is some kind of interaction, but it doesn’t work so well on the vast majority of humanity who you are never going to encounter. Sometimes you bond with people who are very different from you in regards to age, race, background but are at the same time very much like you in terms of attitude, POV, common interests. Some of the best friendships I have ever had fall in that realm and it makes it exceedingly hard for me to make bigger judgments when it comes to collectives. I have always used this illustration when trying to describe how I feel about groups as opposed to individuals-
You are walking down a city street holding your child by the hand when up ahead an angry mob of people come surging around the corner headed in your direction. Do you attempt to find the good in each one, imagine that they might possess certain talents and tendencies that make them exemplary people in their own right? Or do you react to them as a collective for what they represent at that moment in regards to your child’s safety as well as your own? Only a fool would insist on waiting to meet each one and deciding then how to react. Sometimes our survival depends upon making the call about people as collectives rather than as individuals.
On the other hand one of the few regrets I have in my life was when I was in the military and was put in the position of being one of those crowds and treating the people we encountered as dehumanized “enemy” simply because they were downrange.
I think the trick is to find a way to live your life where you are able to balance the two ways of looking at humanity. Live in such a place that there simply aren’t enough people to look at them as collectives, but rather treat each encounter as a way of seeing people for who and what they are as individuals and deciding if they are worthy of being labeled friend or asshole. To be loyal to those who are your friends regardless of what collective they may be a part of. To never speak or act in ways that exacerbate the existing tensions between groups even if notice similarities or tendencies (you don’t tell a fat person that they are fat just because it’s true).
We have responsibilities as individuals to make the world a better place. That doesn’t mean everyone feels that way or acts that way, but clearly anyone with a core of decency, with any type of honorable lifestyle owes the world their best possible shot at making things better rather than worse.
Overall life has demonstrated to me that the best in human nature happens on the personal level and that the worst happens at the collective. Humans are damned by their existence as individuals living in a world of collectives until they find a way to overcome that contradiction.
As an aside, I have been sick as a dog for the last couple of days, couldn’t even get out of bed yesterday morning, but a farmer I know who needed a hand stopped by so my son and I went out and spent an hour helping him in the cold. If I didn’t know this guy, if it had been a demand to “do something” for someone, like you hear all the time form this organization or that for some anonymous sufferer in need of something halfway around the world or in another city I would have turned back over and gone to sleep. This guy is a neighbor and even if we aren’t close friends, he needed my help and I felt it was the right thing to do, so I got out of bed, put on my jacket and muck boots and did the right thing. And when I came home I climbed back in bed and my wife brought me a nice bowl of homemade chicken soup.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
“Live in such a place that there simply aren’t enough people to look at them as collectives, but rather treat each encounter as a way of seeing people for who and what they are as individuals and deciding if they are worthy of being labeled friend or asshole. “-HF
I would agree with this idea, but I don’t think anywhere on the East Coast of the FSoA qualifies.
RE
@ reply RE
There is no doubt a group of very powerful wealthy people. call them what you will, who have very strong influence over government, the legal, system, media, etc.
Where you err in your judgement, or miss the point, is to believe that they have taken away peoples character, free will, ability to choose right from wrong, moral code etc.
May I suggest you mistake strong influence for total control, thus your lack of understanding that there is such a thing as personal choices, a moral compass, desire to break out of a stereotyped pattern imposed by others etc.
As to Admin being a brilliant analyst of the economic scene, but a fool in others, Nonsense!
A Wise Man is always a Wise man; who can play the part of a fool if he desires; but a Fool can only and always be a Fool.
@HF
As usual, you state what needs to be stated and state it well. And then there’s Billy (“Check out the big brain on Billy!”) with the s.o.s. Sigh.
Yes, there are “collectives”, but as HF states so well, it is easier to avoid perceiving others as part of one of these abstract entities by viewing individuals as they are when encountered one on one in a less crowded environment. I live in a rural community made up of persons by and large of a skin tone darker than mine, speaking a language that isn’t my native language, but after having lived there for some years, when an acquaintance (the butcher at the local shop) was asked about me, he responded (or so I was told; I wasn’t there at the time): “Oh, him. Yeah, he’s a foreigner, but he’s just one more of the locals now”. I’m please to be thought of that way.
I tend to divide the world into two “collectives”: those who are curious about the wider world and those who inhabit it and hope to better understand both; those who have little or no curiosity about much of anything except their own tiny sphere, inside of which they are trapped by their self-absorption.
“Where you err in your judgement, or miss the point, is to believe that they have taken away peoples character, free will, ability to choose right from wrong, moral code etc”.-GO
Ya think?
Check out the Video to follow and get back to me on this.
RE
First of all your views were the same long before there were I Phones.
Next, you just don’t get it, kids walked around with Sony Walkmans all day in a prior generation.
Why can’t the left, of which you are a devout member, accept the idea of at least some personal responsibility, and stop blaming some conspiracy of the wealthy for their circumstances.
My aim is not to minimize the control tactics of our day, but to voice the opinion you greatly exaggerate the power of these marketers and turn it into the false paranoid belief of total control.
I myself am a strong believer that the current sport’s fanaticism is a tool of control as stated in Bread and Circuses thread by me. Myself and many others however refuse to succumb to it or get involved in any way by FREE CHOICE.
“Myself and many others however refuse to succumb to it or get involved in any way by FREE CHOICE. “-GO
How many others precisely is that? You have a lot of friends who are refusing to succumb here? This is a Big Movement in Bean Town these days, refusing to succumb?
Methinks Bean Town looks a lot like this these days…
[img
[/img]
[img
[/img]
I don’t think this qualifies as “refusing to succumb”. LOL.
RE
RE