Then there's the anger and fear from what appears to be fascist, authorities tendencies in Trump. That's one reason why a President Pence doesn't scare me (and apparently others who are calling for Trump's impeachment). Sure Pence won't work for liberal interests, but at the same time I don't believe he'll be actively working to gut non-partisan areas such as a free press, due process, a free and fair voting process, etc.

  - he threatened legal action against the NYT [1]
  - he said he would 'open up those libel laws' [2]
  - he lies about falling subscription numbers at the 'failing NYT' [3]
  - in his first press conference in the White House he attacked a reporter as 'fake news', and refused to answer questions by CNN [4]
  - he tweets [5] incorrect ratings numbers about Fox vs CNN, calling CNN 'fake news'.
  - he's been singling out and attacking/mocking individual reporters [6], [7]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/us/politics/donald-trump-...

[2] http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/02/donald-trump-...

[3] http://fortune.com/2016/11/17/trump-new-york-times-subscript...

[4] http://uk.businessinsider.com/president-elect-donald-trump-c...

[5] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/82407841721374720...

[6] http://fortune.com/2016/11/03/donald-trump-katy-tur/

[7] http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/11/26/donald-trump-mocks-r...

[3] How is it a lie?

> is losing thousands of subscribers

You interpret this as net subscriber count to suit your narrative.

Now if the NYT lost subscribers during the election which they almost certainly did then the first part of the statement is literally correct.

Now the "because" phrase implies causation of "poor coverage". This would be difficult to work out unless the NYT had an exit survey and that data was public.

Without information, Trump is inferring that this is a reason. So if 1000 people left because of poor coverage, his statement is still literally correct.

So I do not understand how you can say it is a "lie" when the statement is "literally" correct.

If you wanted to say that it is "incorrect" then you must argue for your interpretation based on relevance.

If you wanted to say "vague" then you can also say that.

It seems very common place to call everything a "lie" these days, when there is never enough information to evaluate the factuality of it.

Modern "fact-checking" is a scary thing because depending on how you want to define things, you can "prove" any statement true or false how you like. This is a very scary thing.

[5] FOX 8.7M vs CNN 2.6M

[7] didn't happen. That is fake news.

You think it is ok for a presidential candidate to make those statements? Do you know of any other democratically elected leaders making those statements? You do not think this could have a chilling effect on the free press?

> So if 1000 people left because of poor coverage, his statement is still literally correct. > So I do not understand how you can say it is a "lie" when the statement is "literally" correct.

You assume it is literally correct, after admitting that there is no evidence for it.

A literally correct statement can still be a lie. From Merriam-Webster:

  Definition of lie
  1  to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive <She was lying when she said she didn't break the vase.> <He lied about his past experience.>
  2  to create a false or misleading impression <Statistics sometimes lie.> <The mirror never lies.>

In some of the other tweets in that article he is claiming readership is way down, and they are failing. I can not find any evidence for that, quite the contrary: their digital subscribers are way up and even though profits are down, they still aren't losing money.

I personally do not think it will. And I don't think anyone can make that argument that is has as of yet.

But if it does, what objective measures can we point to, to say that it has?

> You assume it is literally correct, after admitting that there is no evidence for it.

No hard evidence. But are you going to make the argument that 1000 ppl did not leave NYT over the course of the campaign. No, its a pretty reasonable churn rate for a newspaper.

Did they leave because of poor coverage? I personally noticed the coverage deteriorate, and tracking the sentiment against the NYT from Twitter, Reddit, etc. I believe this statement to be true. Am I certain of it. No. But do we need hard evidence of everything we say? No. Only if it matters. And this, simply does not matter. The question is would you hold a similar statement by Hillary or Obama with to the same standard. Depends what side of politics you are on.

> A literally correct statement can still be a lie.

If you had 100% proof (voice recording) that someone knew something, and then they stated publicly that they didn't, what do you call this? I would call it a lie.

Calling everything else a lie that cannot be proved is like the boy crying wolf. The word loses its meaning and is less effective at pointing out proven lies which both sides of politics could agree on. The left likes to cry wolf a lot over sexism, racism, etc. These words are almost meaningless now - whilst there are still proper racists in the world.

> Can you agree that saying the NYT is losing thousands of subscribers without saying they are at the same time gaining 41,000 net new subscribers is misleading?

They could be gaining 41K left wing supporters while losing moderates. Personally, I feel that they are losing a lot of moderates and republicans, and accruing a new base of progressive leftists because the paper has headlines that they agree with and don't want to question. So I don't think its misleading. It can be read as saying that the Times reader base is shifting, and the people who are reading it now are just looking for something to confirm their narrative. So in this scenario, net numbers don't matter so much. You can agree or disagree with that, but all I am arguing is that using lie is too strong and if you call everything a lie it has no meaning anymore.

That said, parent didn't say Trump is already doing all these things; they said that people fear he will, based on his actions and statements so far.

True at saying the people fear he will, but the fear is really bases on nothing and out-of-context quotes.

> More hard-line senators such as Phil Gramm, R-Texas, House Republicans and the Heritage Foundation saw the Chafee bill as an unacceptable compromise.

[1] http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2013/nov/15/...

I agree that an awakening is overdue given that for instance, America’s child poverty levels are worse than in any developed country anywhere, including Greece and only Slovakia, Chile, Mexico and Turkey have worse infant mortality rates. Median adult wealth is 27th out of 27 high-income countries; internet speed and access is 16th out of 34 countries and for people living below the poverty line - US is 36th out of 162 countries, behind Morocco and Albania.

However the US does score a first in its prison population. It comes #1 out of 224 countries. Only China comes close.

You do realize how ridiculous that stat looks right?

Are you arguing the poor are worse off in the US than in Morocco?

And let me guess, the poverty stat is excluding income transfers?

I swear to god politics has gotten even nuttier in the US than it has been. And it was nutty before! Facts don't matter, crushing your opponent matters. Truth be damned!

*Speaking as an American.

So: sure, ridiculous if you came to the stat looking for "worse off," I guess?

What else could that comment be claiming? It wouldn't really make much sense if the claim was "more people live under the poverty line in the US than Morocco, but they are among the most wealthy people in the world."

I honestly don't understand why intersectionality has become this bogeyman for mainstream liberals. It attempts to bring people together to fight for common interests.

I'm not a fan of this meme.

If it were kept in universities I wouldn't care, but it's infected left wing politics and HR departments everywhere.

I'm much more worried about left wing authoritarianism in the near future than a rather bland right wing authoritarianism today.

A major tenant of third wave feminism is intersectionallity, which is pretty much exactly the opposite of what your just said.

Third wave feminists are also being divisive when they label and villify those who challenge their dogma.

First off some context for this rant: a lot of people don't realize it but we are a lot closer to a post-scarcity world than the world would have you think. Check out this chart which shows GDP per capita since the 1950's. The productivity gains since the 1950's have been absolutely incredible, and the quality of life back then was pretty good. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A939RX0Q048SBEA

So, have you ever noticed there's never any dialogue about encouraging men to be stay at home dads, or reducing the overall household number of hours worked per week? Never. The dialogue is always about the "wage gap" and "women have value too" and "rape culture" and "microaggressions". Men who are stay at home dads still get shamed just as much as they did during the 1950's. This is how you know it's a sham - there is never any serious dialogue about actual equality. Income has in no way, shape, or form, kept up the with the GDP per capita shown in the chart above. There's never any explorations of policies that would actually increase equality, like restricting the number of "investment properties" a man or woman can own, behavior which is clearly parasitic. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_productivity_and_...

It's not in corporate interests to have people have actual equality. Increasing the labor pool without discussions of actual equality makes it so that people can be kept in debt, wages go down and the nexus of power moves away from the family and towards the corporation, which is what is happening.

There's also the constant screaming of "women have value too". The implication here is that if you are not working for money you have no value. Despite common belief, in fact it IS possible to generate value outside of a money context. Many of the world's greatest achievements have occured outside a money context, eg. the discovery of calculus, wikipedia, linux, countless famous works of art, literature, and philosophy. By saying that you only have value if you earn money is throwing many of the world's most accomplished people under a bus. The reason why "money is the only form of value" is such a horrible mentality is that it leads to people like Mozart dying in poverty and being thrown into a ditch, which actually happened.

Check out charts of combined household numbers of hours worked, you'll see it's going way UP not down, despite the GDP per capita chart shown above. There is clearly something dark in that picture. http://www.bls.gov/opub/working/chart17.pdf

I don't think these are idle complaints - feminism in its current form (money above all) is an ideology that's on a direct collision course with the whole 'robots are about to take all the jobs' reality, which I think is going to come a lot sooner than we realize, and when these two phenoma collide, what's going to happen is that it's not going to be equality (sorry folks) it's going to be Brave New World, an immensely stratified society.

What's incredible to me is that someone predicted this nearly 100 years ago. Aldous Huxley, you are a genius.

I should just buy a ticket to Iceland already.

Actually, I've noticed dialogue on both of these points, and even some modest, narrow policy progress (e.g., states that have adopted gender-neutral paid family leave, and some expansions in overtime coverage [0].) But, yes, it doesn't get enough focus.

[0] overtime rules mandate extra pay, but their fundamental purpose isn't to increase pay as much as to incentivize employers to limit the use of hours over the cap, and expand the size of the workforce in preference to longer hours where ongoing needs and available skills exist.)

Not to mention the whole idea of the march is based on identity politics.

Also AFAB people have a right to destigmatize their reproductive organs. (Think about how many times a day middle school boys draw penises on things)

Now that being said, I think the pussy hats are problematic because they are trans exclusionary, which is totally unrelated to your imagined feminist hypocrisy.

We all know if men marched with dicks on ther heads in washington they would be laughed and imo rightfully so.

And there would be cries about vulgarity and "what about the children?!" along with it.

Apparently the fly-over country is at least smart enough to notice the blatant hypocrisy, so props to them for that.

And how exactly are women treated poorly?

Specifically women's rights around their reproductive organs, between access to abortion, classifying sanitary napkins or tampons as a necessary expense, or sexual assault of those organs.

If men had women in congress debating over making ejaculation without intent to conceive illegal, if men were payed less for the same work on average, if men had powerful people talking bragging about grabbing them by the dick whenever they wanted, etc, maybe then you would have a point.

But as it stands, you're twisting my words into a false equivalence.

Women's rights are treated poorly. Women should have equal rights and should be treated equally if you believe they are equals to men. Women marching with pussy hats represents a different phenomena than men in dick hats. For that to be equal treatment the context has to be equivalent. And it is not.

I don't know why we need to get all squeamish about female genitalia now, as apposed to when we are talking about what rights women have with theirs and whether you can talk about grabbing them.

'For every hour that an American spent knitting a hat . . .'

Even a stopped clock....

Well, except that the MBTA keeps running, laws are enforced, we have decent public schools, and we don't all have lead poisoning -- a few things we've got over, say, Michigan.

I like Scott Adams, but this is silly. The 'N' word is not something to get energized over either, and neither is the 'Q' word. But those examples he ignores even though he mentions them himself earlier.

Another example: When the Dutch started their war of independence from Spain, the freedomfighters (terrorists?) called themselves 'Geus', derived from the french word 'gueux'. It means 'beggar', the lowest of social statuses. We turned 'Geus' into being a hero.

Same could happen to the color pink. So stop knit-picking (pun!) and join the fight.

"Trump is a master persuader and everything he does is on purpose. I know because I'm a master persuader, too.

Here's proof for his flawless persuasion technique (an anecdote follows).

Here's more proof, because one proof isn't enough (another anecdote).

Because I understand Trump and predicted his election, this is proof that I am really a master persuader.

So now go ahead and buy my book and my app."

I read quite a bit of Scott Adams blog and truth is: He didn't predict anything. He is a comedian. He could've spinned every outcome of the election in any direction in hindsight. He is in for maximum outrage and controversy, because that drives traffic and clicks and comments and ultimately, he makes money off it.

In his book, he even says that he did some pranks that lasted for years and he only did it for the lulz. This is exactly the same. If you think Scott Adams explains it all, you're being played.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/dec/12/pinkstin...

> The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger colour, is more suitable for the boy

That said, now is not the time to start infighting with people just starting to become politically aware/active. Most of the marchers have never done anything political before so mistakes/naivety are to be expected

edit: Is it just that it's more a missed opportunity to pick a more inclusive symbol?

A more inclusive symbol could have been chosen.

Q: The hats were meant more as a symbol of feminine solidarity...?

A: The solidarity excluded a major group that has historically been discriminated against even by progressive causes

We've got to pick our battles. It's looking like we might have done some serious damage to the climate.

Does this mean we should ignore some minorty or another? Probably not.

Inclusivity is all people working toward our collective betterment. Inclusivity isn't agonising over which symbol or colour or words includes all the freaks. There will always be someone who feels left out.

Inclusivity is all the freaks working the frontline with the normals and everyone getting on with the job, then having a beer together afterwards. Or whatever roasts your goat.

I am astounded by the negativity my comments have received for relaying long standing tensions and issues in the transgender community on relation to mainstream feminism. It's as if any time you ask the community here to look at historical context or complexity in social issues people just shut down, despite the fact that this site is made up of such a well educated, creative group of users.

No, it's that you're not suggesting useful, effective alternative actions. What symbol could people wear on their heads or bodies which would convey trans-inclusive feminism, and be recognizable easily by the masses?

Sometimes issues are complex, but messaging has to be simple. This is a painful, but necessary, trade-off: you can't expect everyone looking at your protest hat or sign to be "woke" and understand your complex beliefs. You don't get to issue moral condemnations against over-simplifying a good thing, provided that it does net good, without offering some strictly superior alternative. When you try to condemn an over-simplified good thing, you're basically just supporting doing nothing, which right now is unacceptable.

What you're saying also sounds, well, a lot like political hostage-taking. While I'm on board with trans-inclusive feminism (AFAIK), I don't see why feminism broadly should be held hostage by whoever's angriest or most judgemental about trans issues.

Would you cancel the Women's Marches just to dispute about symbolism? That would amount to telling cis women they're not allowed to have their feminism unless it conforms to your feminism. Political activism is about interests shared in common, not about hierarchies of wokeness.

> The symbol perpetuated a continued trend of trans-exclusion, in your example it would be as if people selected to march under the symbol of crosses when protesting on behalf of all religions.

I don't really think so. Women are women, after all, trans or cis. If you see cisgendered female anatomy as innately trans-exclusionary, well, that may be your problem, since after all the whole point of transitioning is to come as close as possible to actually having that very anatomy.

If I march for socialism with a hammer-and-sickle symbol, you would apparently be the person to tell me hammers and sickles exclude shovel-using construction workers. It's a symbol! It means whatever people want it to mean, and your interpretation has to carefully way your own prior experiences with those of the people putting forth the symbol. Language has to communicate, not merely carry moral connotation.

it's a non-issue, you're using it as a bludgeon for status by virtue signaling.

How is a public gesture, worn in front of everyone, supposed to target... actually, whom? The most intersectional possible audience? In fact, why should we rate the progressiveness of the message on which audience it seems to most precisely target, rather than assuming the audience (as ever, for politics) is everyone?

Instead of complaining that gestures aren't precise enough, we can acknowledge that this one gets its damn point across and talk about the policy question. Rape: for or against? Assault: for or against?

Personally, I'm against on both.

FYI, this is the sort of rubbish that that prevents me from voting for left wing parties these days.

2017 headline "Electrical standards commission will no longer refer to "male" and "female" outlets but rather "hole" and "prong".

No wonder we're all so confused about who we are under the kilt!

I.e. This is female: https://mobileimages.lowes.com/product/converted/695706/6957...

Yep, 1984 is here.

Edit: I'm not sure why I'm getting downvotes... It seems like a reasonable typo OP may have made given the context?

> I don't get why everyone assumes that you can only be a female if you have a vagina

It's unfortunate because I think you were acting in good faith and an explanation would be more productive