Topic: What are social justice warriors losing their shit about today?

[SredniVashtar]

That's actually what l like about Shakespeare most, he was actually really bawdy for a major literary figure.

Yes, and  that's why people have had a problem with him over the years. Particularly the French, who can find the low comedy all a bit vulgar and low rent. Actually, though, Shakespeare is left in the shade by Boccaccio. If you haven't read the 'putting the devil back into Hell story' in the Decameron I would recommend it. Also, many of the others are exceptional for their breathtaking rudery.

[SredniVashtar]

Shakespeare was not a major figure at the time. Chaucer was even raunchier.

Oh, he most certainly was a major figure.


The difference is that he was not considered a god as he is now. There was an awful lot of talent around at the time, a lot of clever writers on the make like Ben Jonson, but they acknowledged him as a major talent even so. We see WS as very mysterious because we know so little about him, but among his peers he was someone they knew and hung around with, got drunk with, went whoring with, so it would be hard to preserve a sense of awe on that basis.


If you read Jonson's poem in the introduction to the first complete works you can see someone who revered the man's talent with a discriminating eye. The learned Jonson saw Shakespeare as a bit unlettered and not serious enough, preferring to rely on inspiration over all else. Perhaps that is why we find Jonson a bit uncongenial today - all head and no heart.


Chaucer of course had the Wife of Bath and so on. I don't know where either would rank on the raunchiness scale, but they certainly didn't mind a bit of naughtiness.

[Quick Karl]

As an academic, thought exercise: t would be interesting if everyone, including businesses, actually it would only take a size-able percentage, refused to pay Federal taxes, massive use of jury nullification, use the "urban" "don't snitch" theory to apply to their environmental-offending, thought-crime, or tax-notpaying neighbors, and if hackers released personal information, especially with regard to the homosexual or pedophilia and infidelity and financial shenanigans of politicians and if a size-able percentage of our police, firefighters, and military members up and quit and moved to "the woods" or decent suburbs and small towns and refused to serve in "urban areas", protect politicians, serve in foreign wars, etc. And for all local and state LEOs, prosecutors, etc refuse to comply, or work, with any Federal investigations. If governor, with full agreement with our the local troops based there (or size-able majority) seized all arms in local Army and National Guard depots and cut off utilities to any other Federal agencies, bases, or offices. And refused to go to war but instead defended their family, area, town, and the States/National borders. And if local, State, etc politicians, LEOs, judges, etc refused to enforce Federal judge's orders or decisions or regulations demanded by the various Federal regulatory agencies. This thought exercise could include also other forms of protest targeting large corporations who control, for the most part, the politicians are who seem to be intend for the globalist, open-border, cheap labor, politically correct, Orwellian super-state. Like everyone not paying certain debt (and local sheriffs etc refusing to enforce evictions,) hacking, not buying their products, and so forth. Even large moral victories could be interesting. What if, at least nationally, almost nobody voted? I mean even less than our usual pathetic numbers? Could our politicians, with a straight face, face other countries, the public, etc if turn-out numbers were amazingly low? (Probably they could but it would, or might, be funny.)

 Ideally, we could still have a nuclear arsenal that would, hopefully, stop another country invading during the power vacuum that would exist for time until things settle down until a brokered agreement (like our Consitution) could be arranged, but adhered too this time, that would be more fair and free to the People and States, as we originally intended.

I wish.

[SciFiAuthor]

Yes, and  that's why people have had a problem with him over the years. Particularly the French, who can find the low comedy all a bit vulgar and low rent. Actually, though, Shakespeare is left in the shade by Boccaccio. If you haven't read the 'putting the devil back into Hell story' in the Decameron I would recommend it. Also, many of the others are exceptional for their breathtaking rudery.

The French just dislike him because he was a rosbif. Actually, they dislike everyone because they aren't French. And even if you are in some capacity, say from Quebec, they still think you're vile and base and go out of their way to be pretentious and incessantly correct your French grammar. Yet they have their share of vulgarity; they couldn't keep themselves from reading the Marquis de Sade during the revolution and Molière certainly had his moments.

Yes, I'm familiar with the Decameron. It's actually an astonishing work if you think about it, it's almost as if Boccaccio was sitting around watching the black plague unfold with its flagellants, celibates, apocalyptic preachers and the like and said "these people are screwed up, I'm gonna write some sex novellas!".

[3OctaveFart]

Sredni-
Check out this book sometime.




https://books.google.com/books?id=CSGPCZjAhkIC&pg=PA273&lpg=PA273&dq=becoming+shakespeare&source=bl&ots=l2U76mw4TQ&sig=hooRRmz0oYn9dULSfOnZ0M83Vrc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mxmLVcqoO4X4yQSDuYHoDA&sqi=2&ved=0CFkQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=becoming%20shakespeare&f=false

His funeral was very sparsely attended for a "major literary figure".
I'm not even wandering near the theory Shakespeare was a coterie of dramatic artists, as that has been pretty well debunked elsewhere.

[Juan]

Now we must tear down the Jefferson Memorial because racism.

[Jackrabbit]

Now we must tear down the Jefferson Memorial because racism.

Start with this one:

[albrecht]

Now we must tear down the Jefferson Memorial because racism.

Yeah, this tide has been coming for quite some time and it is sad. But it is a logical conclusion by historical revisionists, cultural (and historical) relativists, and those simply who view, the USA, but also Western Civilization in general, as the greatest enemy, hence so-called "liberals" -and even homosexual activists- even going so far as siding with Islamist radical groups and movements in their protests etc. Some of whom, in actuality, attack them on the street in "tolerant" places like NL or refuse to sell them cake, as in Dearborn, Michigan. They hate the country, and Western Civilization, so much that they would rather side with terrorists, have open-borders to allow criminals (even child sex offenders) over and released into our communities (an interesting conundrum there: due to Court decisions and Obama's policies illegals even with rape and pedophiliac rape and murder must be released to our communities. Do they need to register as a sex offender? Or does the Obama Doctrine and awful Court decisions trump those State laws?) It is a weird phenomena because IF those groups they support; the terrorists, violent cartels, the Islamics, the communists, etc would actually defeat our culture and governments the "liberal" thinking people would be one of the first ones killed (but maybe after the homosexuals, Christians, Jews, educated, rich, the whites, the blacks etc.) Do any of these activists know how the people they support (illegal aliens, Islamists, etc and protest with treat blacks or homosexuals in their lands? If anyway is "closeted" or "self-loathing" it is these leftists, or "liberals" or "progressives" who think Western culture, civilization, and history is the real enemy.

[Juan]

Now they're coming for Gone With The Wind.

[albrecht]

Now they're coming for Gone With The Wind.

That was telegraphed the day after the latest nutjob shooting. Odd, there was no mention of banning or refusing to sell various hiphop or "urban" music after several shootings at "house parties" etc that same weekend  . I think it was CNN who had some "experts" bitching about Gone With The Wind and some online "journalists" even opining more caveats and footnotes "explaining" things for "great movie lists" that include things such as "Birth of a Nation." What with Walmart and now others banning the Confederate Battle Flag I've been waiting, but so far haven't heard, if re-runs of the great tv show "Dukes of Hazzard" have been cancelled and if kids' toys, or collectibles, of the General Lee '69 Dodge Charger  sales have been banned now? I assume, obviously, the reshowings of Smokey and The Bandit have already been eliminated from the TBS, or now, CMT, canon......I also assume places like Six-Flags Over Texas have removed a few flags (several once approved of slavery even!)

[Juan]

Sales of the General Lee toy has been banned.

[nbirnes]

Sales of the General Lee toy has been banned.

What if the people spearheading the campaign were not crazy lefties, but rather the ones with the proper incentive: merch makers, sellers, owners? 🌸

[albrecht]

Sales of the General Lee toy has been banned.

Holy shit. I was joking about this stuff. Amazing. In despite of all I know about politically correctness I serious thought of banning the venerable General Lee '69 Dodger Charger as a joke; afterthought, reductio ab absurdum. You might, really, be correct that Monticello, or at least the Jefferson Memorial might be next. Or, at minimum, we need to bulldoze Arlington National Memorial, the graves, and Arlington House! Hey, the leftists would love it. Kill two birds with one stone, both disrespect dead military members (obviously evil for serving a racist, classist, sexist, imperialist, capitalist country) AND get rid of the vestiges of Robert E. Lee (obviously evil!) A win-win for Obama and others of his ilk.

[GuerrillaUnReal]

Now we must tear down the Jefferson Memorial because racism.

The exiling of President Jefferson and a lot of other "unsavory" characters in American history is really what turned me from being a militant liberal into being a militant centerist. Well that and having to listen to concepts of race, entitlements and economics from young, broke, unemployed and lazy liberals.

Watching the left turn on arguably the most radical thinker in American political history who's miraculous existence at the right place in the right time in history brought forth the moral and ethic reasoning for every revolution and freedom of all people since is very conservative.

Jefferson was probably the biggest dynamo and genius of American history who put into place much of the greatness we experience today. He also fought slavery in his own time and tried to ban it in Virginia. But that would be like trying to ban computers today. But none of that fits the narrative some piece of shit on Buzzfeed wants to instill in some dumb fucking millennial who wants to rage against the machine because they didn't get a bike from their parents when they were young.

I mean yeah Jefferson was a little pansy who shied away from the dirty side of politics and he was an absolute coward during the Revolutionary War. But the man was one of the most profound geniuses of American and Political history. Jefferson was also a towering icon in liberal thought until about the last twenty years or so.

I think that's what makes me so mad about liberals today. You're supposed to be smarter than everyone else. But I tell you during the Obama Administration I've watched the left get dumber with a lot of extremism becoming more and more mainstream. The behavior from a lot of the left is the exact same behavior we were all supposed to hate out of conservative stereotypes. What scares me is how much history has been rewritten just in my short life.

[Juan]

I think most of this is just stupid - on many sides.  I remember as a grammer school student in Georgia when the legislature added the Confederate Battle Flag to the Georgia state flag.  That would have been about 1956-57 or so.  I thought that was stupid.

What does bother me, and President Obama expressed this just the other day, is the idea that Americans have racism as part of our DNA.  That sounds like Original Sin to me - a religious concept.  I think such a religious concept is dangerous in politics.  We see it expressed in banning this Confederate stuff.  If manufacturers don't want to make it or if stores don't want to sell it, fine.  Just don't whip up a frenzy in a bunch of religious nuts who don't realize they are religious.

[albrecht]

I think most of this is just stupid - on many sides.  I remember as a grammer school student in Georgia when the legislature added the Confederate Battle Flag to the Georgia state flag.  That would have been about 1956-57 or so.  I thought that was stupid.

What does bother me, and President Obama expressed this just the other day, is the idea that Americans have racism as part of our DNA.  That sounds like Original Sin to me - a religious concept.  I think such a religious concept is dangerous in politics.  We see it expressed in banning this Confederate stuff.  If manufacturers don't want to make it or if stores don't want to sell it, fine.  Just don't whip up a frenzy in a bunch of religious nuts who don't realize they are religious.

I'm fairly certain this character Obama has mentioned this theme several times before. His idea, I guess now a mainstream idea, is that the history of the USA, or Western Civilization in general, at some point(s) in the past, and even now with more ferocity due to its inherent, genetic nature, had racism (sexism, capitalism, bigotry, gender bias, xenophobia, anti-homosexualism, anti-Gaia bias, and whatever else) means it not only can't be saved (though using his religious allegory maybe the "original sin" can be forgiven by acceptance and acquiescence to "The One," as he and some others have called him during his more messianic phase of his political campaigns, avoid this Reckoning) but that it  must be destroyed. Oprah has mentioned "old people must die" or some such but I think Obama, and others of his ilk, think this the whole system must be brought to bear. As one burns a field or diseased place in hopes that, later, a new crop can be raised. And then a "fundamentally" changed society to be rebuilt upon its ashes.

[3OctaveFart]

Jefferson was a racist like any other. Check his Notes on the State of Virginia and particularly his evaluation of black physiology and reasoning power.

https://books.google.com/books?id=2S-empatKxoC&pg=PT62&lpg=PT62&dq=notes+on+virginia+jefferson+blacks+sweat&source=bl&ots=n_rq4Mn3ss&sig=LLqmxyG1Yi3o6H7DDEwHfwfA5nw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xmaLVfTtBYiVyQSygIPgBQ&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=notes%20on%20virginia%20jefferson%20blacks%20sweat&f=false

[albrecht]

Jefferson was a racist like any other. Check his Notes on the State of Virginia and particularly his evaluation of black physiology and reasoning power.

https://books.google.com/books?id=2S-empatKxoC&pg=PT62&lpg=PT62&dq=notes+on+virginia+jefferson+blacks+sweat&source=bl&ots=n_rq4Mn3ss&sig=LLqmxyG1Yi3o6H7DDEwHfwfA5nw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xmaLVfTtBYiVyQSygIPgBQ&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=notes%20on%20virginia%20jefferson%20blacks%20sweat&f=false

So? Point being, so what? Ignore his other obvious contributions? There were many racists, including our current President if we judge him by his writings, actions, mentors, friends, and speeches. So were/are many people. What's the big deal? Certainly, it would seem logically at least, for worse to be now, than back when it was the common belief- to one extent or another. But even if Jefferson, or Obama, or anyone was outright and admitted racist, does it make a difference to their actions or proclamations? If, for example, a "racist" told you you that it was raining and you were getting wet from some precipitation that was not frozen would she be wrong in that assessment? If that same "racist" said 2+2=4  would it be incorrect? Or what about a "homophobe" who, now, said there is global warming? Does that mean it is not true?

[3OctaveFart]

I'm on your side regarding the Golfer-in-Chief. Just keeping it real with Tommy.
No figure in American history has been hagiographed as much.
And there wasn't even really a national conversation about some of this stuff until his DNA was found in the wrong bloodstream.

[Eddie Coyle]

I'm on your side regarding the Golfer-in-Chief. Just keeping it real with Tommy.
No figure in American history has been hagiographed as much.

    Ironically, I've never dreaded such a mediocre President's post-Presidency so much. I think his "slip of the tongue" to Stephanopoulos some years ago will finally be admitted to as truth. I can't imagine HIS mother allowing her son to follow a "White Man's religion".

[chefist]

Jefferson was a racist like any other. Check his Notes on the State of Virginia and particularly his evaluation of black physiology and reasoning power.

There is a concept in anthropology called "ethnocentrism"...you really can't judge another society's standards to your own...head hunters did not think they were immoral...

So, by that standard, were Romans "racist"...sure...were Dixie Crats "Southern Democrats" racists...sure...but the past is the past...now we forge a new future...who we label as "racist" from the past does not help how we come together now as a society...

[Jackrabbit]

I think his "slip of the tongue" to Stephanopoulos some years ago will finally be admitted to as truth.

Was that when he called his wife "Michael," or was that something else?

[albrecht]

There is a concept in anthropology called "ethnocentrism"...you really can't judge another society's standards to your own...head hunters did not think they were immoral...

So, by that standard, were Romans "racist"...sure...were Dixie Crats "Southern Democrats" racists...sure...but the past is the past...now we forge a new future...who we label as "racist" from the past does not help how we come together now as a society...

I see no problem with measuring (by whatever value you might choose: economic progress, protections of minority opinion, political diversity, artistic freedom, religious expression, personal creeds, sexual/gender "identification," or whatever else) clearly Western Culture, at least of any other around now, or exist for such a time is superior in tolerance. Now, this, freedom might doom it. Sure. But I have no problem with that claim. It could be. But, even still, iti is better. Even in our WORST, we were better than most, if not all others. All people, do bad, horrible things. At least we try to do better, on occasion.  And our worst, at least in term of sheer numbers, were when we tried oddballl, wholesale communistic or socialistic top-down huge government ideas of human organization. Not our traditional ideas or religion(s.) But "modern" theories of best ideas.....

[Eddie Coyle]

Was that when he called his wife "Michael," or was that something else?

 "My Muslim faith"

[chefist]

"My Muslim faith"

heard that one myself...politicians will always misrepresent themselves to win...to their foundations....familial, religious, personal, you name it...ego and megalomania...

[SciFiAuthor]

I think that's what makes me so mad about liberals today. You're supposed to be smarter than everyone else. But I tell you during the Obama Administration I've watched the left get dumber with a lot of extremism becoming more and more mainstream. The behavior from a lot of the left is the exact same behavior we were all supposed to hate out of conservative stereotypes. What scares me is how much history has been rewritten just in my short life.

The extremism on the left is definitely getting concerning. Actually, I'm not certain the liberals can actually be called the left anymore. They've basically become their own kind of conservatives and there is essentially no longer a truly progressive movement in the US. Liberals now perpetuate racism by dredging it up constantly where gets continually revitalized. The country appears to me to be more racist now than it was in the 90's when there was a bit more of a Star Trek-like boldly move into the future attitude. It's that way because the left just wouldn't let racism die a natural death.

On top of that sits the Democratic Party, which sits on top the liberal social causes like a vampire and milks them for votes by making them into political wedge issues.   

[albrecht]

heard that one myself...politicians will always misrepresent themselves to win...to their foundations....familial, religious, personal, you name it...ego and megalomania...

When I saw that, back when, and he even used McCain, "want any war, anywhere," to justify his Muslim faith I was astounded. There is an interesting collaboration, and very devious, because McCain and those others just figure "any war is good" or "Muslim bad" but Obama figures the more radical, Sunni- but more specifically the most radical sects, are his preferred vehicle for change, which fits into nicely with some peoples ideas......in terms of hydrocarbon politics. Useful idiot, maybe? Problem is that Obama is also enacting policies here. Not that they care either, really.

[Quick Karl]

The extremism on the left is definitely getting concerning. Actually, I'm not certain the liberals can actually be called the left anymore. They've basically become their own kind of conservatives and there is essentially no longer a truly progressive movement in the US. Liberals now perpetuate racism by dredging it up constantly where gets continually revitalized. The country appears to me to be more racist now than it was in the 90's when there was a bit more of a Star Trek-like boldly move into the future attitude. It's that way because the left just wouldn't let racism die a natural death.

On top of that sits the Democratic Party, which sits on top the liberal social causes like a vampire and milks them for votes by making them into political wedge issues.

True dat, niggah.

[onan]

There is a concept in anthropology called "ethnocentrism"...you really can't judge another society's standards to your own...head hunters did not think they were immoral...

So, by that standard, were Romans "racist"...sure...were Dixie Crats "Southern Democrats" racists...sure...but the past is the past...now we forge a new future...who we label as "racist" from the past does not help how we come together now as a society...

I have never heard anyone say, "my point of view is not as good as yours."

[SredniVashtar]

Sredni-
Check out this book sometime.




https://books.google.com/books?id=CSGPCZjAhkIC&pg=PA273&lpg=PA273&dq=becoming+shakespeare&source=bl&ots=l2U76mw4TQ&sig=hooRRmz0oYn9dULSfOnZ0M83Vrc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mxmLVcqoO4X4yQSDuYHoDA&sqi=2&ved=0CFkQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=becoming%20shakespeare&f=false

His funeral was very sparsely attended for a "major literary figure".
I'm not even wandering near the theory Shakespeare was a coterie of dramatic artists, as that has been pretty well debunked elsewhere.

I'm not familiar with this book, but there is a very deep rabbit hole you get down when you start on that road. Mixing my metaphors a bit, but you get my point. It's unfortunate  that one of the best known Shakespeare debunkers was actually called 'Looney'  and poor old Delia Bacon went off her onion trying to tell the world that the works were written by Sir Francis Bacon instead. Try to get into a debate on authorship with a committed Oxfordian and you feel like you have entered the Twilight Zone.


As so often with conspiracy theories, you are often required to believe something that is much more implausible than the original idea.


As for few people turning up to his funeral. Well, so what? Mozart ended up interred in a pauper's grave, forgotten, so we don't know where his body lies. Nobody suggests that he wasn't a major figure in his time. There are such things as fashions and perhaps WS had fallen out of favour by the time of his death, as often happens. He did go back to Stratford and live the life of a prosperous bourgeois, buying the biggest property in the town, New Place, and perhaps he left all that noisy nasty London literary life behind him. There are all sorts of conundrums about Shakespeare, like the second best bed, but I am not sure that that  means we can go chasing any old speculation we fancy.


Anyway, I'd be interested to know if  you have any more concrete material to go on, because your point was not something I had heard suggested before.