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Thread: Paedophile or Democrat?

  1. #1

    Default Paedophile or Democrat?

    The people of Alabama face what they must think is an uneviable choice. Which way will they go?
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  2. #2
    http://thehill.com/homenews/media/36...ndorsed-moores

    They will go with the pedo because you're combining 2 of the most morally bankrupt groups in the US, Alabama residents and the GOP. You have to understand that as a person of culture you just don't understand Alabama dating norms, and you haven't considered the vast ocean of women that haven't accused Moore of assaulting them.
    Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 12-06-2017 at 01:31 PM.
    "In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."

  3. #3
    Pedophile generally preferable to Alabamans.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  4. #4
    Sadly I think you're right.

    Equally sadly I think nobody would be surprised, it would just confirm a stereotype about "sweet home Alabama".
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by RandBlade View Post
    Sadly I think you're right.

    Equally sadly I think nobody would be surprised, it would just confirm a stereotype about "sweet home Alabama".
    I wonder if pedophilia is the correct word, here. I always understood it as a desire for pre-pubescent children. Any given 14-yr-old can be very physically mature in appearance, so maybe it's not fair to give this, ah, man that particular label. That said, he's accused of sexually assaulting these girls and women, which is every bit a monstrous act as well.

    As for the election - unless hell is freezing over, unless the sun will rise in the west and set in the east, unless the true end of times is upon us, that senate seat is Roy Moore's. The Crimson Tide shall not go blue.
    The Rules
    Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
    Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
    Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)

  6. #6
    A 14 year old is a child not an adult under our laws and definitively not mentally mature enough to consent to engage sexually with a middle aged/old man. Any sick old man who preys on and abuses children is a paedophile IMO. Part of paedophilia like part of many rape cases can be the simple abuse and preying on the vulnerable rather than pure physical attraction.

    This isn't like the grey area of children/young adults only separated by a year or two. This is a middle-aged to old man abusing children. Call him a sex pest or whatever else you want but to me he is a paedo.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by RandBlade View Post
    A 14 year old is a child not an adult under our laws and definitively not mentally mature enough to consent to engage sexually with a middle aged/old man. Any sick old man who preys on and abuses children is a paedophile IMO. Part of paedophilia like part of many rape cases can be the simple abuse and preying on the vulnerable rather than pure physical attraction.

    This isn't like the grey area of children/young adults only separated by a year or two. This is a middle-aged to old man abusing children. Call him a sex pest or whatever else you want but to me he is a paedo.
    Its funny-sad to be debating which are the more appropriate words to describe a very bad man's horrible behavior... funny because the man's nature isn't at all in question, sad because a whole lot of people are about to send that shit bag to the US Senate. Fucking sad.
    The Rules
    Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
    Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
    Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by EyeKhan View Post
    I wonder if pedophilia is the correct word, here. I always understood it as a desire for pre-pubescent children. Any given 14-yr-old can be very physically mature in appearance, so maybe it's not fair to give this, ah, man that particular label. That said, he's accused of sexually assaulting these girls and women, which is every bit a monstrous act as well.
    I was being flippant, obviously many Alabamans, with their child-marriage-endorsing culture, take a different view.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  9. #9
    I could possibly see the physically maturity being brought up in a chance encounter. Even if 14 is stretching the limit there.

    But there are several different reports about this guy targeting high schoolers. He knew exactly what he was doing and how old they were.
    "In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    I could possibly see the physically maturity being brought up in a chance encounter. Even if 14 is stretching the limit there.

    But there are several different reports about this guy targeting high schoolers. He knew exactly what he was doing and how old they were.
    Please don't misunderstand what I have said. I absolutely believe he knew exactly what he was doing and to whom he was doing it and that makes him a first-rate douche bag asshole sexual predator. I just think the pedophilia term is inaccurate, that's all.
    The Rules
    Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
    Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
    Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)

  11. #11
    The term you're looking for is child molester.
    Hope is the denial of reality

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by RandBlade View Post
    The people of Alabama face what they must think is an uneviable choice. Which way will they go?
    While I don't doubt that Moore is a scumbag by whatever particular term y'all settle on, this OP is clearly begging the question. If (/when) Moore wins the election, it isn't necessarily evidence that Alabamans are so unhinged in their hatred of Democrats that they'd put a predator in the Senate - rather, it's more likely that the vast majority of those voters have convinced themselves that the allegations against Moore are either untrue or exaggerated. This is aided and abetted by the post-truth media that many of them likely consume.

    Yes, there are those people in the conservative media who have made various allowances for Moore - arguing it was an acceptable cultural norm, or that Moore is the lesser of two evils since his opponent supports the murder of babies on an industrial scale, or whatever. But I'd bet that the vast majority of his supporters just flat out don't believe the allegations to be true. They're wrong, but it means that your initial assumption is also wrong.
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
    While I don't doubt that Moore is a scumbag by whatever particular term y'all settle on, this OP is clearly begging the question. If (/when) Moore wins the election, it isn't necessarily evidence that Alabamans are so unhinged in their hatred of Democrats that they'd put a predator in the Senate - rather, it's more likely that the vast majority of those voters have convinced themselves that the allegations against Moore are either untrue or exaggerated. This is aided and abetted by the post-truth media that many of them likely consume.

    Yes, there are those people in the conservative media who have made various allowances for Moore - arguing it was an acceptable cultural norm, or that Moore is the lesser of two evils since his opponent supports the murder of babies on an industrial scale, or whatever. But I'd bet that the vast majority of his supporters just flat out don't believe the allegations to be true. They're wrong, but it means that your initial assumption is also wrong.
    I don't always agree with you but I appreciate how you don't leap to the worst possible interpretation for your political opponents motivations.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
    While I don't doubt that Moore is a scumbag by whatever particular term y'all settle on, this OP is clearly begging the question. If (/when) Moore wins the election, it isn't necessarily evidence that Alabamans are so unhinged in their hatred of Democrats that they'd put a predator in the Senate - rather, it's more likely that the vast majority of those voters have convinced themselves that the allegations against Moore are either untrue or exaggerated. This is aided and abetted by the post-truth media that many of them likely consume.

    Yes, there are those people in the conservative media who have made various allowances for Moore - arguing it was an acceptable cultural norm, or that Moore is the lesser of two evils since his opponent supports the murder of babies on an industrial scale, or whatever. But I'd bet that the vast majority of his supporters just flat out don't believe the allegations to be true. They're wrong, but it means that your initial assumption is also wrong.
    I thought about posting the same thing you did. I ultimately refrained because human psychology tells us that the reason many of them will hold that opinion are things like confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. They convince themselves the allegations are untrue or exaggerated because Moore is a Republican who they wanted to vote for anyway. And at some point, there ceases to really be a difference between not caring, and lying to yourself so you can maintain the delusion that you do care.
    Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy View Post
    I thought about posting the same thing you did. I ultimately refrained because human psychology tells us that the reason many of them will hold that opinion are things like confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. They convince themselves the allegations are untrue or exaggerated because Moore is a Republican who they wanted to vote for anyway. And at some point, there ceases to really be a difference between not caring, and lying to yourself so you can maintain the delusion that you do care.
    I don't disagree, LF. But there's a critical point here: it's not that they actually think it's okay to put a sexual predator in the Senate. They think it isn't okay. That's why they have to do all of this work to convince themselves he's the subject of a slanderous political attack. And while it says all sorts of terrible things about our political culture and the remarkable ability people have to fool themselves, it doesn't actually say that pedophile > Democrat.

    I'm appalled at how good people are at fooling themselves; while I try not to fall into the same traps, I have no doubt that I, too, allow my biases to affect my judgment. And the way in which truth and honest data have been maligned in recent years only makes this worse, where people don't know what to believe. But all this election tells us is that Alabamans really, really can't stomach voting for a Democrat, so they'll construct a narrative that makes sense to justify their choice.

    Perhaps it's a subtle distinction, but I think it's an important one.
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
    If (/when) Moore wins the election, it isn't necessarily evidence that Alabamans are so unhinged in their hatred of Democrats that they'd put a predator in the Senate - rather, it's more likely that the vast majority of those voters have convinced themselves that the allegations against Moore are either untrue or exaggerated. This is aided and abetted by the post-truth media that many of them likely consume.
    I'm not saying you're completely wrong on this. I've dealt with more than 1 pissed off customer cause I couldn't produce a physical resource to back up some random conspiracy theory involving Trump and everyone who is out to get him, and we all have to deal with Lewk on this board.

    But...

    That type of behavior just isn't prevalent here. There are no denials. There are only insane defenses. From Mary (yeah, from the bible) being a teenager to people being too cultured to understand why his behavior wasn't bad. These voters simply don't care what type of person Moore is. All they see is that he is stopping a liberal from destroying their country, full stop.
    Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 12-07-2017 at 11:55 AM.
    "In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."

  17. #17
    Yes, if you look at the substance of the defences of Moore they seem to fall along the lines that what he did wasn't that big a D, not denials of the allegations. I mean, there are some deals but it's mostly downplaying.
    When the sky above us fell
    We descended into hell
    Into kingdom come

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post

    That type of behavior just isn't prevalent here. There are no denials. There are only insane defenses. From Mary (yeah, from the bible) being a teenager to people being too cultured to understand why his behavior wasn't bad. These voters simply don't care what type of person Moore is. All they see is that he is stopping a liberal from destroying their country, full stop.
    Just reading the headline...

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/16/politi...ent/index.html

  19. #19
    Yes, from Moore, which he quickly softened or out right changed depending on how you want to interpret his interviews concerning dating "young ladies"

    The beauty of it is that so few people actually believe him or push the denial angle, all the way up to his own lawyer. You simply don't see the denials of the accusations, just remarks about it not being bad enough to allow a liberal to win. When Moore himself admits to first noticing his wife when she was 15 you really don't have that kind of denial defense to stand behind.
    Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 12-07-2017 at 06:47 PM.
    "In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."

  20. #20
    I understand the appeal of promoting a narrative that portrays the unwashed masses as being deluded partisans but ultimately guided by a moral compass that is normal in the same way we think of our own moral compasses as being normal. Nevertheless, I think it's important to consider the possibility that what's normal in AL may not be normal for us.

    Moore has been accused of several things. One of these charges involves actions that are both illegal and utterly reprehensible: clear sexual assault of a vulnerable minor. I can understand Alabamans and other Republican voters dismissing those allegations, whether out of partisanship or internalized misogyny or whatever. However, he's also been accused of actions that aren't equally illegal and blatantly transgressive but nevertheless extremely questionable. And this latter category of allegations aren't being denied--rather, they're being portrayed as being no big deal.

    Early responses from various prominent people featured bizarre justifications--eg. that the allegations didn't concern anything illegal, that he went "a little too far" but stopped, that this was nothing weird because Mary & Joseph were basically like Corfman and Moore etc--and some pretty fucked up attacks on the women for being silent for so long. But, obscured by these headline-grabbing statements, there's a quieter endorsement--esp. in various Evangelical circles--of prominent and well-to-do men enthusiastically "courting" much younger women, with early marriage being the ultimate goal.

    Child marriage is legal all over the US. Alabama, notably, resisted initial attempts to raise the legal marrying age from 14 to 16. There were at least 200,000 child marriages in the US between 2000-2015, with 10 states not reporting any data. The majority involved girls marrying adult men, although there's little info on the actual age differences (one article mentions 14% married to other minors, 60% marrying someone aged 18-20 and the remainder marrying older men but mostly not older than 29). Accounts of how Moore's past behavior was viewed by his contemporaries indicate that, while he may have been regarded by many as a nuisance, his shenanigans weren't so far outside the range of socially acceptable behavior as to make him a pariah.

    In light of the above, I think we have to be open to the possibility that there may indeed be a substantial minority in the US that endorses or accepts Moore not simply out of partisanship but because they genuinely don't think what he may have done was all that wrong.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  21. #21
    Eh, define substantial. There certainly is a minority that thinks that. But as I think I've said in the past, you can just about always find 5-10% in a large diverse population that will take an extreme position that the rest of the population just flat can't understand. I flat out cannot believe that minority is actually a majority capable of electing Moore against the sentiments of the rest of Alabama society.
    Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"

  22. #22
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  23. #23
    I see what you did there
    "In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."

  24. #24
    To me, the saddest thing is that Alabamians (and the Republican Party) didn't reject Moore long before these accusations of sexual impropriety.

    He was kicked off the AL Supreme Court for refusing to follow the US Constitution.....yet, he got re-elected?! He's on tape saying that Muslims shouldn't be allowed to serve in Congress, and that women shouldn't be in any elected office....yet, he's got a strong base of support?!

    Yeah, I don't know how that kind of cognitive dissonance can be maintained in the 21st century, but it is. I don't know how much of it's related to social media and confirmation bias, party politics and polarization, or cultural and religious tribalism, but it's all there.

    It might help if the GOP could make up its mind about who runs under their party ticket, and publicly denounce and de-fund the "kooks and creeps" (like they did for the John Birch Society, or David Duke, for example). But that all ended when Trump became the party nominee, then the GOP leader, and now POTUS.

  25. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    I'm not saying you're completely wrong on this. I've dealt with more than 1 pissed off customer cause I couldn't produce a physical resource to back up some random conspiracy theory involving Trump and everyone who is out to get him, and we all have to deal with Lewk on this board.

    But...

    That type of behavior just isn't prevalent here. There are no denials. There are only insane defenses. From Mary (yeah, from the bible) being a teenager to people being too cultured to understand why his behavior wasn't bad. These voters simply don't care what type of person Moore is. All they see is that he is stopping a liberal from destroying their country, full stop.
    Quote Originally Posted by Steely Glint View Post
    Yes, if you look at the substance of the defences of Moore they seem to fall along the lines that what he did wasn't that big a D, not denials of the allegations. I mean, there are some deals but it's mostly downplaying.
    I think both of you are having trouble distinguishing what conservative media outlets are doing (especially the likes of Fox News) and what Alabamans actually believe. Only 4 in 10 women in Alabama believe Moore made unwanted sexual advances against his accusers. Women. 71 percent of Alabama Republican voters think the allegations are fabricated. Etc.
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  26. #26
    Republican pollster vs. Republican voters.

    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  27. #27
    I don't believe it for a second but I'd laugh so hard if this was true:

    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  28. #28
    http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/201...not_to_de.html
    Fuck that this needs to be required. But at least someone was paying attention after Georgia destroyed their records in the middle of a lawsuit.
    "In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."

  29. #29
    I don't get the need to have machinery in an election. What's wrong with hand counting the results?

    We have the results hand-counted with representatives of the parties there to supervise (but not touch) the ballots and to argue out contentious ballots sometimes with amusing consequences: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/articl...lot-paper-mark
    Quote Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer View Post
    ℬeing upset is understandable, but be upset at yourself for poor planning, not at the world by acting like a spoiled bitch during an interview.

  30. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by RandBlade View Post
    What's wrong with hand counting the results?
    Florida. 2000.
    "In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."

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