Fun-Sized Advice

On fun-sized advice

In a moment of drunken inspiration, I told him and he doesn’t feel the same way. Now what?
What do you mean, “Now what?” Now go have a snack. It’s no big deal. Just don’t act weird, and everything will be fine.

I just found out that someone is using my photos on Tinder and catfishing dudes with them. My social media pages are all locked down, they must have just screenshotted them from my own Tinder page. Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening again?
Nope. Not a goddamn thing.

Is it ok to give up on finding love? I’m exhausted and the constant disappointment (whether I’m the dumpee or the dumper) is wearing me down.
There’s no need to give up when all you need to do is take a break.

Is 16 too young to give my daughter the books you recommended on religion/philosophy?
Hell no. If she has questions, help her answer them.

In the recent “On Third Party Voters” post, you seem rather angry, and I completely agree/understand why, but, a bit tangentially here… What does “male ego” have anything to do with it? What does that even mean? -A sincere question from a longtime fan.
Libertarianism would not exist without the male ego. Libertarianism is built on, around, and for the male ego. Libertarianism is the male ego distilled into political ideology. If you don’t understand what the male ego has to do with Libertarianism, then you don’t understand either Libertarianism or the male ego.

How can people be so blinded by Trump? Why don’t they see that he is a monster?
When a monster validates your bigoted morality and justifies your patriarchal worldview, you see what you wantย to see.

Hillary Clinton doesn’t care about brown & black people though, especially brown & black women. How can you justify that?
By not accepting the ridiculous premise of your stupid fucking question. That’s how.

Why isn’t the media hounding Trump for his taxes?
They are. Every damn day. He doesn’t give a fuck.

I know you come from a family of Republicans…what are their thoughts on the election/Trump?
They’re mortified at what the Republican party has become, they loathe Donald Trump, and they would never vote for him.

White male angst is going to kill us all.
Yeah, what’s new?

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38 thoughts on “On fun-sized advice

  1. Soooooooooooooooo says:

    I came into to say first post, but I’m second now because I was getting pushed around and drunk a lollapalooza: (

    I have nothing significant to say lol

  2. Soooooooooooooooo says:

    Oh wait, yes I do! I’m a black women and I’m voting for Hillary. Come on son like Trump has our back…

  3. VeryOff says:

    “How can people be so blinded by Trump? Why donโ€™t they see that he is a monster?”

    There’s a lot of reasons.

    He’s given them the ability to justify their bigotry by claiming they are just not “politically correct.” That allows people to not actually emotionally examine themselves in order to empathize. Now that they’re isolated, the world looks a whole lot more hostile. Now here comes Trump, promising to make it better. And he has the credibility because even the most insane shit blows right past him. If you act like Trump, suddenly nothing’s a problem!

    He finds a simple reason for every woe you have, and he doesn’t even know what your woes are! He lets you do all the work. That’s the magic of him speaking “his” mind…it’s your mind doing the speaking. Immigrants? Taxes? Corrupt politicians? YEAH! It’s all their fault! Now that your amygdala is pumping fear juice, just look to the demagogue for solutions. Seriously, none of his “solutions” are anything more than sandbox bullshit, but people are so juiced on fear that it sounds fine. Build a wall, blow up some people, “no really, i got a plan, it’s huge.” Nobody can pick apart an invisible plan! So he’s lodged the doubt that he might actually have a plan.

    You too can be as comfortable as Trump by ignoring logic and just being “politically incorrect.” He’s rich, don’t you want to be rich? He’s telling you you can be! “we’re gonna win so much you’ll get tired of winning!” That’s the beauty and infectiousness of his authoritarianism. All he has to do is say that because he’s rich, he’s clearly right, and you can be like him and everything will be great again. All you have to do is shout like him in order to mold your world. It’s worked so far, nobody holds him accountable. So you have no reason not to believe him.

    People don’t see what he is because once you’ve bought a piece of his insanity, you have to double down and people don’t understand sunk cost when it comes to emotional decisions.

    • Rainbowpony says:

      Well, there are also legit reasons. Globalization has not been good to the working class. The left offers government programs, but these people want jobs. Trump promises that.

      He can’t do it though.

      • VeryOff says:

        “Hillary’s vision is a borderless world where working people have no power, no jobs, no safety.” – Trump

        working people…with no jobs…
        By far my favorite tweet.

  4. Hmmm says:

    So is the media asking him about his taxes everyday and they’re just tired of reporting that he won’t do it because it’s not news anymore? I feel dumb for asking, but I’ve been trying to read as many sources as possible and I’m not seeing it as often or as seriously written about as I thought it would be.

      • Hmmm says:

        Thank you for the link! It’s the first thing I’ve read about this that points to a specific reason instead of a bunch of possibilities.

        It doesn’t seem like it’ll matter in the long run if we never actually get to see them though. His supporters are going to keep conveniently ignoring his refusal to release them just like they’re conveniently ignoring that he’s a demon in designer suits.

        • Josh says:

          This boils my blood. It really feels like news outlets are really letting trump slide here. Drill the point home, please. I truly believe that this is trump’s Achilles heel and nobody cares (enough).

      • Strangely Rational says:

        Great article! The one thing I can’t quite wrap my head around is this “middle class” exemption that allows a household AGI up to $500K. That sounds a bit high to me to be considered middle class.

  5. Betsy says:

    Re: the last question, I concur – I was close to thinking these days that dudes should be banned from politics. So many of them seem to relish conflict at some level, whether it’s Putin appealing to imperial nostalgia, or Americans fantasising about military greatness, or socialist purists that hate everybody and will not attempt to look beyond political labels to find common interest (I say this as someone who is a leftist). None of those things will make any of us happier, it just has to do with ego. It’s not that women aren’t prone to those things too, but fuck if that tendency isn’t more present in dudes. What makes Bernie great, in fact, is the absence of that tendency in him.

  6. definitely not batman says:

    Ever since Bernie managed to shift the Overton window to the left, I finally realized what the right wing nuts mean when they say “smug liberals.” Most of my friends, I’ve discovered, are insufferable. They think they know everything, they’re moralistic and insisting on the impossible – the morally and ethically pure Messiah who will lead them into a true revolution. You know, with the overthrowing and taking the power back and burning buildings and, like, executing sociopathic capitalists in the city squares. They shifted so much to the left they stumbled into fascism, dehumanizing everyone who doesn’t agree with them/fits their mold and then saying the most horrible shit. Hillary being their main target, of course, but none of the other people on the (bogus or actual) left came out unscathed either. It’s horrible, I didn’t expect this at all and I find it incredibly alienating.

    But I have a different question though. Is a “true revolution” even possible in the West anymore? There’s so many people and the political system has gotten necessarily bigger and more complex in order to accommodate everything. Its movements are getting slower, it’s almost ground to a halt now, at least in America. We’re also being policed so relentlessly by both the state AND our own damn selves. Is it even possible to mobilize a critical mass of people for anything of this sort to ever happen, considering the ever-increasing diversity and diffusion in society? Is the system itself, for lack of a better expression, too big to topple? Because unless we really find ourselves under a literal dictatorship and people start dying in camps, I don’t see it happening.

    • WhoAmI says:

      No political system is too old to get a revolution, and the american one is anything but old.
      You seem to think revolutions are something that comes from huge, concerted masses to raise against great injustice. That’s not how they happened the past last centuries.
      In fact, the western world is coming to another period of so-called decadence, and those aren’t the safest times, revolution-wise. Consider the late Heian Period in Japan, the late French Ancien Rรฉgime, the Weimar Republic…

      • definitely not batman says:

        First of all, I never used the word “old” even once in my post. Second of all, it’s not that I think that that’s what a true revolution is, it’s what my friends think, and I’ve put it in quotes. Third of all, all the examples you offered were about toppling monarchies, which doesn’t apply here. At least try to pay attention.

        • WhoAmI says:

          You talked about the progression in time of a state, getting more complex and settled, that’s what I shorthanded as “old”. That was a bit reductive, maybe. Sorry about that. :s
          My examples were not all of a definitive switch from a monarchy to a democracy, only the french one. The Weimar Republic ended with a reinstauration of the idea of a german empire, if anything. Hell, I could have cited the last years of the Edo period and the Meiji restoration rather than the late Heian period and Dan-no-ura. It’s always the same damn thing. That’s why they call it a revolution : it’s always about a country doing a big turn on itself, just to come full circle and things to stay vaguely the same. The french revolution is no exception. The abolition of feudalism didn’t change that much in the country ; it just put different people at the top.
          In that sense, yes, a new revolution in a western country is totally possible.

      • Gaybeard says:

        The American state is pretty old. You’ve had 300 years of relatively peaceful transfers of power with no revolutionary re-organization of your founding documents. You’ve basically had an unbroken cycle of stabe(ish) government. That’s pretty rare in historical terms.

        • WhoAmI says:

          The USA are 300 years old, but their history is only 400 years old. By contrast, many european countries are only 200 years old or less, but their history is one or two thousand of years long.
          But yeah, regardless, the US do have a fairly stable system. Hell, they’re still running on their first Constitution, when other countries are talking about rewriting it a sixth time. Don’t know how they did that.

    • Gaybeard says:

      What’s a “true revolution”?

      Revolutions aren’t really man-made, they’re a lot more like natural disasters. It takes a critical mass of suffering and desperation to make people willing to feel so backed into a corner as to turn to violence against the state as a way to achieve their goals.

      Also, I think it’s going a little far to say that your friends have turned to fascism just because they’re flirting with rhetorical justifications of political killings. Political killings don’t always, or even often, lead to wanton violence and genocide.

  7. Chou_Chou says:

    I’d love to read more about libertarianism = male ego. My intuition tells me it’s true, but I’d like some intellectual scaffolding. Anybody know good write ups about it?

  8. Strangely Rational says:

    I come from a family of Republicans myself, and I have to scroll past all their political posts on FB. They’re Christians, and before Trump became the nominee, they had horrible things to say about him. Now they’re posting things in active support of him.

    I think it’s disgusting. I left my Christian faith once I hit adulthood and started thinking for myself, but I can appreciate a lot of Jesus’ teachings in spirit, like caring for the poor and the outcasts and strangers, minding your own business, leaving judgment of others to God, and living a life with love and acceptance. This is the kind of Christianity I was raised with, but in my family it’s turned into something ugly. My parents actually identified as Democrats until the Republicans got all cozy with Christianity, lured them away, and twisted their social values.

    My family were good, loving, intelligent people, and now they’re posting hateful Fox News sound bites. When I started seeing that, I was horrified and lost so much respect for them.

    It’s truly bizarre to hold their current beliefs up to mine, as an atheist and secular humanist, and realize that my views are much closer to Jesus’ than theirs are. Not that I think Jesus is or should be any kind of authority, of course. But they do, and they’ve been blinded by politics. Think Jesus would be happy about that?

    Fuck your megachurches, fuck your protests about the government helping the poor, fuck your hateful judgment, fuck your racism, fuck your misogyny, fuck your constant interference in other people’s lives just because you don’t approve, fuck your rejection of reason and science, and fuck your religious hypocrisy.

    Thank goodness I do have one sister who is enlightened. She’s a beautiful person with a tremendous amount of love and acceptance for everyone. At least two of us made it out of there with our positive values intact.

  9. what says:

    CQ turned into something sad, and her comments section is consistently sadder. gonna provide some simple facts.

    victim mentality = permanent loser

    if you exist as a victim (a lot of you seem to) you’re fucked. good luck developing anything within yourself that’s potentially amazing. and realize that all of your non-platonic partners are going to prey on you, because you’re annoying, and you’ve decided to live as something broken; clutching to your past and spiraling into your same old bullshit. you’ll never sustain anything healthy and beautiful as a victim, little girls. I urge you to grow up and evolve, live in the present, don’t be so god damn sensitive to reality, take a hard look in the mirror if you’re exhibiting victim traits. you’re the problem. you’re limiting yourself. get over your bullshit, man.

  10. wrkrb says:

    It is very strange that libertarians are the primary association with third parties from my perspective (rural hippy kid turned nonprofit/environmental job hopper) because of the green party.

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