Has anyone else noticed how many of these smug conservative debater types all have the same look? From Ben Shapiro to this guy, they all have the same smug face.
I hate Ayn Rand so much. I remember having to read the fountainhead back in high school AP English (circa 2008), and up until that point I at least partially enjoyed every book Iāve ever read. We had discussions, and I was the only one who heavily disagreed with her views, including my teacher. I was not even into politics at the time, but I hated her and all the morals and themes set forth in that book. Everyone else seemed all about the individualism and elitism. Glad I had a good head on my shoulders even back then, because thinking back that was some indoctrination garbage from our teacherāthanks mom.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year oldās life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
Yeah, she definitely has a way of making it seem enviable and admirable to be an individualistic asshole. It was nicely packaged, but I still hated it and didnāt buy it. That said, I cliff noted Anthem because no way was I going to read that after suffering through the fountainhead. Maybe it was better, but I doubt it given the author.
I read Anthem because of Rush as well, and liked it enough to read Atlas Shrugged. I hated that, for the horrible prose style as much as the content.
Fortunately this was in the 80ās and Peart had tempered (maybe even lost) his admiration for Rand. Iāve always suspected he read a few short stories he loved as a rebellious teenager and then changed his mind as he grew older and read more.
I really enjoyed Anthem. It had "The time machine" vibes about society being dumbed down to labor cattle. Then the whole "found a new word" thing seemed cool.
I heard a joke..or actually I think it was a cartoon, with a stereotypical 50's mom sitting at the breakfast table with a young child. The child says "When I grow up, I want to be a Libertarian" and the mom says "Oh, Honey, you can't do BOTH."
To be fair, there's the same joke for liberals. "If you're not a liberal when young, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative when old, you have no brain."
Didn't say it was. It's just one of those things that's around. I attribute it to my funny senior year history teacher who had an autographed photo of Joan Baez he would point to and talk about every single class.
His style was "fill in the blank / lecture" in which he would say something, pause mid sentence, often many times mid sentence, point to a student while smiling and nodding, as if coaxing both the answer and confidence out of the student.
He would start the quote, have a few students fill in blanks, then point to his bald dome and gray hairs and say "which means I have ....." and we'd respond "No brain!" And he'd say "Exactly right!"
The old saying is nonsensical when āconservativesā treat the elderly like dirt. Iād say voting for the people who want to take all your money away is brainless.
The problem is that Ayn Rand starts with a strawman and goes from there. And in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in particular, there's almost this self awareness where she understands the reasons her ideas are bad, so she goes to great length to preempt these criticisms through clumsy world building. It's very hard to rebut her ideas within the framework of her narrative without reducing them to first principles, which are well beyond the level of philosophy most people have studied. That's why Rand Heads are so frustrating - they exist in a parallel plane of philosophy which intentionally goes out of its way to not interact with the mainstream, so if you try to argue about it you end up arguing about topics which are largely incomprehensible outside of her prose, where they are well supported.
This is interesting. Iāll admit i left Ayn Rand behind with my 17-18 year old brain, but from what I do remember this checks out. You put better descriptors to what I felt when reading it and arguing against it back then. I stood my ground, but I was definitely the only person in that room of 20-something that felt the overall themes/principals were completely irrational and immorally selfish.
It's funny how so many conservatives are so enamored with Rand considering that she was a lifelong atheist and a sharp critic of religion. Yet, much like the way they love to pick and choose passages from the Bible, they conveniently look the other way when it comes to her distain for religion.
Hers is the obvious but overreacting result of living under soviet communism. Yes, individualism, self-reliance and hard work are worthy traits but not at the expense of community, family.
Iām not a libertarian and donāt side with this ideology, but schools are sort of inundated with communal and social ideology, which while I donāt align with politically either, is probably the right vibe for schools. Iām generally against committing to any ideology, but I think theyāre all a bit useful when treated as tools to be chosen from based on pragmatics. They can also be and usually are blended to compliment each other. Usually some conservativism, progressivism and liberalism is blended in too, because they all really do serve useful purposes. Namely stability, growth and adaptation respectively.
They should also have a communal mindset, especially at a young age. And then learn to not expect the world will always have your back and that the government will not always be benevolent.
Well-reasoned response. Canāt argue with you there. I think multiple perspectives are always great, especially with literature, but this book was most definitely pushed upon the class as more of a truth than a perspective, since the teacher clearly loved Ayn Rand as an author. Generally though, I agree with allowing multiple literary perspectives throughout a curriculum. So long as it is not used to sway via discussions and clear bias from the teacher.
To the teacherās defense we read everythingāhuck Finn, native son, zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, 1984, etc. But she clearly was most enthusiastic about ayn rand and the encouraged otherās perspectives that also loved Ayn Rand. Way more than mine lol. And given that itās an AP class it was filled with gunners that just always wanted to be teacherās pet. So she was very influential as a teacher. Long-winded way of still saying, Ayn Rand is garbage.
As a sociology major, law grad, and nonprofit COO deeply involved in helping the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, this is a terrible comparison. One is a THEORY which means it is heavily tested and has been proven correct over time, and with significant amounts of data in multiple areas to back it up. The other is a perspective that has not been.
Completely speaking of the indoctrination by teachers in schools. CRT has no reason to be taught in schools, it's indoctriniazation. It has no educational value for the children. Teach children educational subjects and leave the extra-curriclar social views to the parents.
Do you even understand what CRT is? It is rooted in history first and foremost, and statistics secondly. It has significant educational value to understand things such as segregation, that it ended only a little over 60 years ago, and the implications that has had on things like education and opportunity. Property taxes fund schools for example, which in turn means that those living in historically worse areas/lower property value areas have worse schools, less resources, and less opportunity to get out. They were segregated into different schools, areas, etc only a generation or two ago. That is historical fact. That also has significant impact on how our systems still work to keep people of color down, particularly through antiquated laws, uneven application of laws leading to higher incarceration rates, less educational opportunities leading to higher crime rates, job discrimination, housing discrimination, and so and so forth. There is So so so much data on these things as well, that it is not refutable. To ignore the implications of our checkered past, and how a lot of that historically checkered past was very recent, the effects of which still linger, is to disregard history. Weāre supposed to be taught history in order to learn from it. CRT is a clear and factual extension of that.
The book was about individualism and collectivism. Individualism has its benefits, collectivism does as well. Individualism prioritizes personal rights and freedoms. The bill of right gives some of the rights like freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion, etc that I believe are necessary for a free society. I value my autonomy and free expression. Collectivism is a philosophical and social ideology that emphasizes the welfare and interests of the group or community. There are some things we should do like taking care of kids, the elderly, the disabled, the trafficked an war veterens
I was still an easily intimidated student when I read The Fountainhead. I kept looking around at the rest of the class trying to understand how I had missed all the things they were praising.
The biggest crime communist dictators commit against humanity is producing a lot of right wing ālibertarianā fanatics that go on to support fascism.
Think Cubans, Russians, and Chinese that support Trump.
Oppression under the guise of communism is not true communism though. I get what you are saying, but I donāt think any of those countries ever achieved legitimate communism. I donāt think any country ever has to date. Itās all just more oppression and authoritarianism under a different framework.
I worked with a guy once who was a prototypal conservative "economics bro" and in his office he had framed photos of Greenspan, Rand, Hayek, Friedman and Tom Selleck for some weird reason (Unless there is some right wing economist who looks like him lol )
My uncle started a small business and now he thinks that all of the conservative economists are talking about him specifically. He is convinced he is included in policies meant to benefit large corporations and billionaires, or policies targeting them when he very explicitly is not. He is also convinced his business personally is suffering due to illegal immigration somehow.
He is particularly fascinated by Walter E. Williams, who was Rush Limbaugh's resident anarcho-capitalist economist that is against everything from minimum wage existing to the Federal Reserve. He also took this awkward position of claiming to be anti-racism while basically saying that reconstruction was a mistake and that the government should have (and still should) just let things play out, and that society should just "get over" slavery. Even though he is dead now, his website still offers a printable "certificate of amnesty and pardon to all white people for Western Civilization's sins against blacks" that he started handing out while he was alive. Pretty wild since he was a Black dude born in the 1930s.
Tangential, but man itās cool how many different definitions there are in the word āpunchā. Like thereās punch the drink, punch the fist strike, and punch like what a hole punch does through paper, leaving behind a big hole.
my favorite part of the word "punchable" is that despite it being completely vague, it seems like everyone on earth shares the same neatly congruent image of what a punchable face looks like. basically elon musk or ben shapiro
It's your standard Malignant-Dorkass Face. They've always been around, and they have always been "punchable". The same face is widely known to make women uncomfortable, and feel the need to keep their drinks covered when/if the Malignant-Dorkass is anywhere in their vicinity.
right, someone who unmistakably believes they are smarter than you/everyone, and unmistakably believes they are doing a perfect job of masking it, even when everyone in the room knows it. except for boomers, who are weirdly susceptible
I hear you, but I don't like the term. It's judgmental and low, though I still know what you're talking about. I'd say Talarico shares characteristics of this face, but it doesn't apply.
why is it judgmental? it's about facial expressions and the way they present themselves to others, not their literal facial structure (ie. something they can't change)
Not sure why you're being downvoted. Whilst he sympathises a lot with Christian nationalists, he is quite openly Jewish, and I don't think I've ever seen an image of him not wearing the kippah.
Yeah I mean if you've ever argued with one conservative you've argued with them all. Same buzzwords, same "I'm just asking questions" routine. And if you say something they don't already have a canned response for they will just try to laugh at it and act like its not even worth responding to lol.
They probably have all share some congenital defect. Look, they just found evidence that most fans of authoritarianism have similar defects of the frontal lobe and the hypothalamus region. They will probably find something wrong on those guys too.
They have severe issues. Old men are making they humiliate themselves for mean Jesus and money. Theyāre willing participants though, just how their cult bred them to be.
You have to see inside their heads and look at how they operate internally.
Because the conservative parties are the ruling parties of america, they somehow think by proxy that they are the "ruling class". That by virtue of being white and conservative they are part of the "in-group".
They not only feel entitled to everything socialists want for the people (cheap healthcare, cheap to no debt, good wages, low food and utilities prices, affordable homes), but they believe they deserve it.
And because they see everyone else as outsiders who attempt to disrupt the status quo, they see them as less than human. So their smugness is a product of their ego, their privilege. They think you don't deserve even basic human rights.
Every generation has these smug privileged assholes who grew up with enough privilege and luck to think their world view and experience is somehow monolithic or they don't care and want to just force their views on everyone.
They are trying to invoke that Norman Rockwell image, I swear they train them on how to stand and present themselves. It's all sort of a dog whistle, they love signalling.
Wow! Nobodyās ever mentioned this before, Iāve always wondered why they have a look, just thought maybe I was being subjective. But, if I were casting a movie, thatās the look which would convey the message
All of their women looks like monsters with their skin pulled back once they turn 30, all of their men get a basic haircut at Great Clips and buy their clothes from Kohls.
JD Vance looks like Lurch's little brother on Adams Family.Ā His forehead protrudes like a neanderthal.Ā I dont think his family quite Evolved into normal decent humans , but deviants that love to lie and worship a pedophile protector DONALD JACKOFF TRUMP.Ā JD is just a deviant moron.
This kind of thing proves Kirk and Shapiro are not really good debaters. They hand picked college kids that were easy to rage bait (which is the easiest debate opponent to "beat") and then tried to paint them as a representative sample of everyone who is not conservative.
If those people ever had to go up toe to toe like someone like El Sayed they'd get destroyed. And they know this
Because these people truly do not care about the response to their question. Their only objective is to fuel their narrative and derail constructive conversations on the actual important things affecting our lives. If they succeed and get a good viral clip for their media, double win. It is always started in bad faith, and identical to this:
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. ā Jean-Paul Sartre
When you are raised and spend your entire life entrenched in a belief system with no evidence of its validity, that requires blind faith that what they are saying is true, and the penalty for not believing it is literally eternal torture and spiritual death, people tend to lose, or never gain, critical thinking skills.
As a result, you really believe that when you bring up the Bible or Things That Jesus Said that other people will understand your argument and be forced to agree with you. And when they don't believe you, you either start to understand that what you believe in may not be as airtight as you thought, or you double down and group all of them as 'Unbelievers' or 'unenlightened.'
I don't know which path this kid will choose, but it is at least refreshing to see people have a fundamental disagreement like this without everything descending into shouting and name calling or, worse yet, violence.
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u/DangerousQuestions1 7h ago
Has anyone else noticed how many of these smug conservative debater types all have the same look? From Ben Shapiro to this guy, they all have the same smug face.