The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)

[dream big]

18 hours ago, Springer said:

When Reckless Military Training Creates Preventable Deaths, Accountability Must Go to the Top | Military.com

 

Military Watchdog  a day ago

MILITARY WATCHDOG -- Seemingly every day we read stories like this. Today we pay the price for the principally Obama administration changing the long established and at least more successful, if not perfect, promotion criteria selecting senior officers and NCO from peer-superior ranked evaluation and performance rather than political fidelity and ideological servility. The result is philosopher and compliant generals more like Senior Executive Service (SES) than Lee and Grant, Eisenhower and Patton .......... Here we go again, lots of luck fighting the Chinese and Russians with the Austin-Garrison purge.

This POS and his cohorts will have blood on their hands when we get our asses kicked by the Russians or Chinese.  But by god at least we don’t have mean tweets anymore!

[HeloDude]

When you design/build lethal tools that are used by white people to kill non-white people…but you’re still trying to show that you care.  Or something…

https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-lockheed-martin-forced-thousands-of-employees-to-undergo-white-male-re-education-training

[SocialD]

49 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

When you design/build lethal tools that are used by white people to kill non-white people…but you’re still trying to show that you care.  Or something…

https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-lockheed-martin-forced-thousands-of-employees-to-undergo-white-male-re-education-training

 

Lol, pure eyewash to appease the woke mafia.  Whether these companies believe in it or not, they'll be doing these things just to look good to the people they're trying to keep off their back.    

[VMFA187]

54 minutes ago, HeloDude said:

When you design/build lethal tools that are used by white people to kill non-white people…but you’re still trying to show that you care.  Or something…

https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-lockheed-martin-forced-thousands-of-employees-to-undergo-white-male-re-education-training

So I work for said company and other than an email about celebrating LGBTQalkdhfadsf+ month I haven't heard of any woke policies or courses being implemented. But I'm just a lowly CIP so who knows. 

[Pooter]

https://youtu.be/sSfejgwbDQ8

Jon Stewart on the lab leak theory. Absolute gold. 
 

A few thoughts in no particular order:

-I really miss Jon Stewart on tv and his show was genuinely the last time a parody news show was funny. Definitely didn't agree with him all the time but you could tell he thought critically about things and formed his own opinions. 

-Pretty wild that the lab leak theory is now mainstream after being a cancellable offense only a few weeks ago. 

-Maybe the lab leak would have been taken more seriously by everyone involved if trump and fringe right wingers hadn't immediately equated it with an intentional release of a bioweapon. That was one of trumps biggest weaknesses. He said plenty of true things but most of them were buried under a mountain of horsesh!t and/or packaged in the dumbest way imaginable. 

[kaputt]

7 minutes ago, Pooter said:

 

-Maybe the lab leak would have been taken more seriously by everyone involved if trump and fringe right wingers hadn't immediately equated it with an intentional release of a bioweapon. That was one of trumps biggest weaknesses. He said plenty of true things but most of them were buried under a mountain of horsesh!t and/or packaged in the dumbest way imaginable. 

The lab leak theory would have been taken more seriously if the powers that be in the media, big tech, etc… didn’t have such an out of control case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. It doesn’t matter what dumb way Trump mouthed off about that; anyone with half a brain could put two and two together early in the Pandemic and realize that a lab leak, from a totalitarian nation with bio lab/research facility in that same city, was a legitimate possibility. Who cares how Trump phrased it, there are other adults in our political class that should have put their heads together and tried to find a way to get the world behind finding out the truth. 

Also the fact that talking about a lab leak was a silence-able offense and is now not just speaks to the MASSIVE hypocrisy many in positions of power have in this country. Big tech and political leaders went out of their way to silence legitimate discussion on the topic, but now that a certain orange man is out of power and Fauci’s emails have leaked, it’s okay to talk about again. Orwell much?

Regardless we’ve probably lost any opportunity to actually find out the truth. Whatever way the virus came to be it sure as hell worked out in China’s favor. 

[Pooter]

21 hours ago, kaputt said:

The lab leak theory would have been taken more seriously if the powers that be in the media, big tech, etc… didn’t have such an out of control case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. It doesn’t matter what dumb way Trump mouthed off about that; anyone with half a brain could put two and two together early in the Pandemic and realize that a lab leak, from a totalitarian nation with bio lab/research facility in that same city, was a legitimate possibility. 

No. It does matter. The president of the United States cannot continuously spew garbage and then magically expect everyone to take him super duper serious when one tiny portion of what he's saying turns out to be true.  Trump is like a right wing idiot's Nostradamus. They think he's a genius and make constant excuses for him because he's right occasionally, while conveniently ignoring the mountain of chaff and nonsense.  
 

I agree that trump derangement syndrome is a thing and the media was looking for reasons to discount or oppose anything trump said.  But two things can be true at once. The media needs to uphold better journalistic standards and trump needed to uphold basic standards of truth and honesty as the president of the United States. 

[kaputt]

17 minutes ago, Pooter said:

No. It does matter. The president of the United States cannot continuously spew garbage and then magically expect everyone to take him super duper serious when one tiny portion of what he's saying turns out to be true.  Trump is like a right wing idiot's Nostradamus. They think he's a genius and make constant excuses for him because he's right occasionally, while conveniently ignoring the mountain of chaff and nonsense.  
 

I agree that trump derangement syndrome is a thing and the media was looking for reasons to discount or oppose anything trump said.  But two things can be true at once. The media needs to uphold better journalistic standards and trump needed to uphold basic standards of truth and honesty as the president of the United States. 

Well you've proven that your issue is with Trump (surprise surprise) and not the fact that the entire media, big tech, and democrat party complex tried to silence discussion on something that had a legitimate possibility of being true. 

That was the entire point of my post. The media, tech, democrats, etc... allowed zero discussion of the lab leak, even from commoners on Facebook, simply because the lab leak theory had a slight stain of orange on it. You could even be called racist if you so much as dared to insinuate such a thing was possible. Sorry, but its not the outlandish statements of Trump that stopped discussion of a totally possible theory, its the Orwellian efforts of those sitting on the left side of the aisle, using fear, threats, and actual force (technological force of platform bans) to have a narrative fit the only one they wanted at the time.

 

 

[lloyd christmas]

55 minutes ago, Pooter said:

No. It does matter. The president of the United States cannot continuously spew garbage and then magically expect everyone to take him super duper serious when one tiny portion of what he's saying turns out to be true.  Trump is like a right wing idiot's Nostradamus. They think he's a genius and make constant excuses for him because he's right occasionally, while conveniently ignoring the mountain of chaff and nonsense.  
 

I agree that trump derangement syndrome is a thing and the media was looking for reasons to discount or oppose anything trump said.  But two things can be true at once. The media needs to uphold better journalistic standards and trump needed to uphold basic standards of truth and honesty as the president of the United States. 

Your second paragraph explains the first.  

[Pooter]

39 minutes ago, kaputt said:

Well you've proven that your issue is with Trump (surprise surprise) and not the fact that the entire media, big tech, and democrat party complex tried to silence discussion on something that had a legitimate possibility of being true. 

That was the entire point of my post. The media, tech, democrats, etc... allowed zero discussion of the lab leak, even from commoners on Facebook, simply because the lab leak theory had a slight stain of orange on it. You could even be called racist if you so much as dared to insinuate such a thing was possible. Sorry, but its not the outlandish statements of Trump that stopped discussion of a totally possible theory, its the Orwellian efforts of those sitting on the left side of the aisle, using fear, threats, and actual force (technological force of platform bans) to have a narrative fit the only one they wanted at the time.

 

 

Yes, I understand your point and I completely agree big tech, media et al. are way out of line. This is truly some dystopian  1984 shit. But it's a wild oversimplification to pretend that one side is solely responsible. 
 

I think you need to ask yourself why you're holding social media companies to higher standards of truth and transparency than the literal elected leader of the free world. Factual, responsible discourse should start with the president and serve as an example to everyone else.

If you elect a troll, don't get upset when they get banned. 

Edited June 16, 2021 by Pooter

[HeloDude]

40 minutes ago, Pooter said:

If you elect a troll, don't get upset when they get banned. 

Fair enough—so why hasn’t AOC and Ilhan Omar been banned as well?

[brickhistory]

One of the all time most brilliant business moves I've ever heard of:

 

Quote

Victoria’s Secret is reportedly undergoing a “major overhaul,” dropping the Victoria’s Secret Angels and replacing them with what it calls the “VS Collective,” featuring women like soccer star Megan Rapinoe.

https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2021/06/16/patriarchal-sexist-victorias-secret-replacing-the-angels-with-soccer-star-megan-rapinoe-and-the-rest-of-the-vs-collective/

No doubt they'll soon be replacing silk bras and thongs with flannel shirts and hiking boots.

"Hello, LL Bean? I'd like to place an order..."

[ThreeHoler]

Well, at least there is a trans person.


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[Lawman]

Yes, I understand your point and I completely agree big tech, media et al. are way out of line. This is truly some dystopian  1984 shit. But it's a wild oversimplification to pretend that one side is solely responsible. 
 
I think you need to ask yourself why you're holding social media companies to higher standards of truth and transparency than the literal elected leader of the free world. Factual, responsible discourse should start with the president and serve as an example to everyone else.
If you elect a troll, don't get upset when they get banned. 

Are you F’ing kidding.

The media claims to be the arbitration element of governance but has basically given itself a pass on what they were doing a year ago.

This is there “we don’t have to apologize even though it was deliberate” message https://apple.news/AQ28_k7_pR46x8Kzjf89QOw

They didn’t care what or where this thing came from, just in preventing Trump from shifting the focus of all the negative out of it. It had nothing to do with the validity of intelligence (which hadn’t changed since some of us started reading the lab theory stuff all over SIPR around April of last year). The media had more than just Trump to look at and confirm of this theory had legs. All those anonymous sources for every other story apparently didn’t exist on this one subject.

It’s absolute proof they were in the bag for a particular side and came out and exercised every form of censorship and de-platforming anybody that didn’t tow the line. Meanwhile now it’s such a possibility Jon Stewart is free to joke about it on late night TV and it’s a god damned comedy trope.


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[Pooter]

1 hour ago, Lawman said:

Are you F’ing kidding.

The media claims to be the arbitration element of governance but has basically given itself a pass on what they were doing a year ago.

This is there “we don’t have to apologize even though it was deliberate” message https://apple.news/AQ28_k7_pR46x8Kzjf89QOw

They didn’t care what or where this thing came from, just in preventing Trump from shifting the focus of all the negative out of it. It had nothing to do with the validity of intelligence (which hadn’t changed since some of us started reading the lab theory stuff all over SIPR around April of last year). The media had more than just Trump to look at and confirm of this theory had legs. All those anonymous sources for every other story apparently didn’t exist on this one subject.

It’s absolute proof they were in the bag for a particular side and came out and exercised every form of censorship and de-platforming anybody that didn’t tow the line. Meanwhile now it’s such a possibility Jon Stewart is free to joke about it on late night TV and it’s a god damned comedy trope.


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It's almost like the president of the United States, who has the highest access to intelligence reports of any human being on earth, could have....... set the story straight. 
 

but instead we got: "it's not a big deal it'll go away soon OH WAIT actually it's a huge deal and probably a Chinese bioweapon OH WAIT take this hydroxychloroquine drug and shine a flashlight up your ass OH WAIT masking is a fundamental violation of your rights."

Again, for the one millionth time, of course the media is biased.  Of course they hated trump. And of course they wanted to do everything in their power to trash him.  But at a certain point even they are limited by the bounds of reality.  If trump came out and made responsible, cogent, fact-based points based on quality intelligence he had pertaining to the origins of the virus, that would be very difficult to discount.
 

Instead he spewed xenophobic, scientifically illiterate mixed messaging like the absolute clown that he is.  He is not a serious person, so stop complaining that he wasn't taken seriously.

 

[ViperMan]

Meh. On the point of the origination of the virus, it doesn't matter what Trump said, didn't say, implied, opined, or hypothesized. Presidents behaving in ridiculous ways, saying untrue things, and so on, is not new. Anyone alive knows this after watching at least Obama, Bush before him, and Clinton before him. And in the specific case of Trump, everyone knows he is not of particularly high fidelity. Hence, any equivocation between his bloviating about a lab-leak/bio-weapon/whatever, and the media's insistence that it was a natural occurrence is BS. The media is the entity known as the 4th estate - not the President - it is their job to remain as impartial as possible. This responsibility includes sometimes ignoring BS (i.e. a lot of what the President said) while they continue to ask pointed questions and follow reasonable lines of inquiry. If I had to debrief what the media did, I would call it task misprioritization and channelized attention. Going one step further - you can't even blame the media. We as aware citizens need to ask important questions and engage in dialogue that will help push the nation in the right direction.

Thaaaaat said, Jon Stewart did an awesome job highlighting the Bayesian logic we all use but are seldom conscious of - which is why the media's culpability is even more egregious since we all suspected something was up.

Facts: A novel corona virus first began infecting people in Wuhan, China. Also, a virus lab exists in Wuhan that has experienced previous viral leaks. Finally, researchers at this lab came down with disease manifesting symptoms consistent with those we now know COVID-19 causes.

Getting to the bottom of this requires evidence which may or may not be forthcoming. In absence of it, it is helpful to examine the situation from different perspectives.

1st Frame: What is the probability that a novel corona virus would arise randomly from nature and begin infecting people in Wuhan, China vs. any other place in the world? Very low.

2nd Frame: What is the probability that if a novel corona virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, that the first city where a breakout would occur is in Wuhan, China? Very high.

The "media" was intent on pushing the first frame, without evidence (beyond Trump said it), but examining the same question from a different perspective sheds light on what was and what is more likely.

[Prozac]

8 hours ago, Lawman said:

It’s absolute proof they were in the bag for a particular side and came out and exercised every form of censorship and de-platforming anybody that didn’t tow the line. Meanwhile now it’s such a possibility Jon Stewart is free to joke about it on late night TV and it’s a god damned comedy trope.


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Uhhh, who is “they”? Last time I checked, the guy with the highest rated evening “news” show was most definitely “in the bag for a particular side”. Just not the one that supports your narrative. Here’s a newsflash: no media source is impartial. Most media is garbage. A few sources are good. We live in a free country and that fact will probably never change. 

Edited June 17, 2021 by Prozac
Formatting

[Lawman]

Uhhh, who is “they”? Last time I checked, the guy with the highest rated evening “news” show was most definitely “in the bag for a particular side”. Just not the one that supports your narrative. Here’s a newsflash: no media source is impartial. Most media is garbage. A few sources are good. We live in a free country and that fact will probably never change. 

The guy with the highest rated “cable news program” doesn’t sit in the White House press corps, doesn’t get briefings from the Secretary of State, doesn’t have dozens of upper echelon contacts from years of working in the field to use as a vetting source for the truth.

EVERY one of those dipsticks sat around and took the information not just from Trump but from Pompeo and other members of the administration and went “yeah it’s a conspiracy America, don’t listen to this, in fact we will turn it off for you.” Then the talking heads from whatever network they work for worked overtime to shut down any story involving the Wuhan lab when it came out of the mouths of people that receive Senate Intelligence briefings.

The media narrative has in one coordinated effort, killed any real chance of holding China accountable for their actions throughout this whole ordeal. And they did it because for them it was more important to blame Trump for it than to actually stop, examine, vet, and report the truth of the matter.


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[Lord Ratner]

20 hours ago, Pooter said:

No. It does matter. The president of the United States cannot continuously spew garbage and then magically expect everyone to take him super duper serious when one tiny portion of what he's saying turns out to be true.  Trump is like a right wing idiot's Nostradamus. They think he's a genius and make constant excuses for him because he's right occasionally, while conveniently ignoring the mountain of chaff and nonsense.  
 

I agree that trump derangement syndrome is a thing and the media was looking for reasons to discount or oppose anything trump said.  But two things can be true at once. The media needs to uphold better journalistic standards and trump needed to uphold basic standards of truth and honesty as the president of the United States. 

Your fallacy here is that Trump was the original suppositor of the lab leak theory. He was not. If your measure for believing something is your political opposition to someone who repeats it, your filter is broken. Grown ups in media, politics, and science should be able to think about something even though someone they despise said it.

 

And I'm tired of people (you, sure, but lots and lots of people) saying that the problem with Trump is that he lied all the time.

No.

The problem is that he was a bitter narcissist. He treated people around him poorly. He was ill informed on things he should have known. 

 

Trump did not lie more than the rest of the politicians. To say so is to demonstrate an almost unfathomable ignorance or bias... Or both.

 

You probably can't even come up with a Trump lie that was unique to him as a president. Lying is not their job, it's just how they get it. 

[Negatory]

There’s a lot of complaining here about liberal media not putting credence to potential lab leak theories. I agree with that assessment, but it’s not even close to a pure liberal media issue.

You guys lose your credibility when you fail to point out that Fox/OAN did the exact same thing by blindly supporting bogus claims. How many times was the virus a hoax on Fox? How many times was it going to be no worse than the flu on Fox? How many times was hydroxychloriquine touted as a miracle cure on Fox?

Unfortunately, there comes a point where you have to place credibility in one source and disregard others. There is not enough time in the day to sift through every assertion from both sides, and most people take the easy route: they trust one network or group more.

12 hours ago, ViperMan said:

On the point of the origination of the virus, it doesn't matter what Trump said, didn't say, implied, opined, or hypothesized.

Yes it does. This is a ridiculous assertion. GWB lying about WMDs, Clinton lying about BJs, Obama lying about tax cuts - they all are bad and matter. Trump being a terrible leader is a large reason why Jan 6 happened and why the nations Covid response was so stupid.

Words mean things. Words from political leaders mean more. To assert otherwise is absurd.

Edited June 17, 2021 by Negatory

[kaputt]

12 hours ago, Pooter said:

 

Instead he spewed xenophobic, scientifically illiterate mixed messaging like the absolute clown that he is.  He is not a serious person, so stop complaining that he wasn't taken seriously.

 

Dude, I’m sorry, but your whole post is evidence that your entire justification for the silencing of legitimate discussion of COVID origins is based on your own personal views on Trump. You couldn’t even help yourself. Sadly the entire media, tech, and to some extent Democrat complex felt the same way. 
 

Not a single person in here was complaining that Trump wasn’t taken seriously, or even defending him. The problem is that rational discussion was silenced due to a hatred of Trump; so much so that not even common sense minded, middle of the road individuals could mention the possibility of a lab leak without risking being canceled, banned, called a racist, etc…

Just re-read your post man. You even included “Xenaphobic” like you’re still reading from sort of April 2020 playbook.
 

 

[Negatory]

On a side note, how do you have rational discussion about origination of a virus when you’re spending the majority of your time convincing 50% of Americans that the virus is even real or is killing people? Misinformation hurts productive discourse, that much we can agree on. 

[kaputt]

11 minutes ago, Negatory said:

Misinformation hurts productive discourse, that much we can agree on. 

The silencing of discourse is what hurts productive discourse.

[Lord Ratner]

47 minutes ago, Negatory said:

There’s a lot of complaining here about liberal media not putting credence to potential lab leak theories. I agree with that assessment, but it’s not even close to a pure liberal media issue.

You guys lose your credibility when you fail to point out that Fox/OAN did the exact same thing by blindly supporting bogus claims. How many times was the virus a hoax on Fox? How many times was it going to be no worse than the flu on Fox? How many times was hydroxychloriquine touted as a miracle cure on Fox?

Unfortunately, there comes a point where you have to place credibility in one source and disregard others. There is not enough time in the day to sift through every assertion from both sides, and most people take the easy route: they trust one network or group more.

Yes it does. This is a ridiculous assertion. GWB lying about WMDs, Clinton lying about BJs, Obama lying about tax cuts - they all are bad and matter. Trump being a terrible leader is a large reason why Jan 6 happened and why the nations Covid response was so stupid.

Words mean things. Words from political leaders mean more. To assert otherwise is absurd.

You have to define Hoax. The final numbers show COVID-19 as somewhere around 3x as fatal as the flu. And if you're not a senior citizen, pretty much the same threat as the flu. But once upon a time, against the evidence, 3.6% fatality rate was floated. Then there was the transition from reporting fatalities pre-race-riots to new cases post-race-riots. Or the sudden lack of concern for outside congregation when the protests kicked off in June, but don't you dare go to the beach, even though we already knew that outdoor spread was not a threat. Or the masks on masks off debacles. Wear a bandana over your mouth or you hate grandma, even though opening windows would be way more effective. How many times did a random 20-something year old die of COVID make national news, but with no presentation of the statistical likelihood of dying from COVID at that age (virtually zero)? Or what about the whole "you're vaccinated but still need to social distance" nonsense. So yeah, hoax has many applications. I don't recall many serious voices on either side calling the virus fake. 

Edited June 17, 2021 by Lord Ratner

[Lord Ratner]

20 minutes ago, kaputt said:

The silencing of discourse is what hurts productive discourse.

Exactly. We have the first amendment because the first thing authoritarians do with discourse they don't like is deem it "misinformation."

 

Yet even now as the same players who fought *hard* to silence anyone who voiced the lab-leak theory admit there is something valid there, they are curiously silent on the idea that silencing voices you believe to be incorrect was a bad idea.

 

I can't wait for the same awkward shuffling and changing of subject over global warming. An entire industry of "experts" addicted to government grants told us the world would be literally doomed if we didn't follow their edicts within a few years, and for decades their models and predictions failed while the theory adapted to the very data that disproved it. 

 

You should trust experts for an explanation of what something *is*

 

But there is no such thing as an expert on what you (we) should *do*

Edited June 17, 2021 by Lord Ratner