…just look at the American voter. Here’s an exchange that took place: our Trumpkin was gloating about the repeal of Obamacare, and then announces that I’m gonna be fine
because he’s insured…through the Affordable Care Act.
Oh, gob. Obamacare is the stupid nickname Republicans gave to the Affordable Care Act, you twit. You deserve every bit of suffering you get in the months to come.
All those other people who are going to suffer, don’t.
I wish I could say I was surprised, but these are the same people who protest with signs saying “keep your government hands off my medicare”.
Like…
I just…
I’ve posted about ACA a fair amount recently, and have always called it ACA, as I despise the whole “Obamacare” thing, but perhaps I should have been more clear.
This explains the entire 2016 campaign.
Now let’s be fair, this person doesn’t deserve the suffering (well, not because of this), it’s all the terrible people who pushed a narrative that led someone to believe the ACA and Obamacare were two different things, all those Republican leaders who called it Obamacare and railed against it, who created a narrative that it needs to be removed but a replacement is not needed immediately and everything will be fine, and who are not going to be affected in the slightest if it is repealed but who do deserve the suffering.
You know, America.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but by a combination of disinformation and stupidity.
(with apologies to T.S. Eliot)
I can’t tell you how overjoyed I am that someone is looking forward to being condemned by the socialist death panels. They’re an example to us* all.
* Well, not to me personally, ‘cos I don’t live in such a fucked up country, but only in a country which merely aspires to be so fucked up.
Thank you, Frank Luntz, for this world you’ve helped to create. May you one day receive your just reward.
@4 Oh he deserves the suffering and while I’m not given to schadenfreude usually, the one thing I’m looking forward to in 2017 is the despair of these fuckers. I can’t wait to rub it in either. They voted on the basis of bringing suffering, misery and death to millions for their twisted top-of-the-people-heap “morality” and I have no sympathy for people who get burned by their own malice. (Or stupidity. It’s not like the facts were hidden – 63 million of us weren’t complete morons, and the other 60 million didn’t have to be complete morons. They hose that and they can reap the consequences).
*chose
I know several people who are identically deluded. They really do think the ACA is something the Republicans furnished to replace ‘Obamacare’.
PZ I see where your confusion is:
“Obamacare” is free healthcare plan for the lazy unemployed blahs. Goes along with their Obamaphone.
The “ACA” is the modest public-private healthcare reform that covers white people who are just down on their luck. It’s like George W. Bush’s gracious extension of low income universal service lifeline benefits to cover cellphones.
The lesson here is to be ferociously vigilant about the labels and make it clear what’s happening to everyone. It happened with’big bang,’ and hemp vs marijuana and on and on. Atheism vs satan worshippwts anyone?
@Caine #2, I’ve always referred to the act by its proper name as well.
I’m also notorious for reminding those who gripe about the “Obamaphone” that Saint Reagan created the program and that cellular coverage was only added when it became cheaper than POTS service (referred to as a wired telephone service).
Two things are infinite, as far as we know – the universe and human stupidity.
— Attributed to Albert Einstein
Can we avoid ablist insults like “moron”?
For one thing, most cognitively impaired people are decent people and do not deserve to have their condition used as an insult. (They get enough undeserved crap as it is.)
For another, neither Trump nor any of his cohort are cognitively impaired. They are, in fact, rather clever. That’s what makes them so dangerous.
It’s like the practice of claiming they are “mentally ill.” Sadly, it is not a mental illness — if it were, then theoretically we might be able to cure it.
If you want to call it an illness, call it a moral illness.
Reminds me of a dream I remember having. Someone was gloating about how they’d arranged things to give everyone else quite the surprise, did a self-satisfied little jig, and fell through the floor.
I swing between feeling truly sorry for those people, and wanting to scream in their faces, “YOU. VOTED. FOR. THIS! AND GLOATED!!” as they start to whine about how unfair it is that they’re having to face the consequences that they were so certain would only be limited to those terrible other people.
@14 please give me an alternate word to use.
It must convey the anger I feel toward people who are perceptually blinkered, selfish and manipulative.
Obviously it cannot involve body parts, particularly genitals, and cannot involve mentioning any disabilities en pessant, which is difficult since being perceptually blinkered is something of a disability albeit self inflicted by the selfishness part.
thanks
@8 Fair enough, fair enough. I suppose it’s how I sometimes feel about people who thought status quo could beat the anger channeled by the Trumpside, though not as strongly or angrily.
AMM @14 To the contrary, Trump is quite cognitively impaired, as you put it. According to psychiatrists who try to treat clients suffering with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (e.g., Trump, who is a classic example), NPD is not curable. THAT’S what makes him so dangerous.
The kinds of people would have voted for Trump anyway. http://mediamatters.org/video/2017/01/05/cnns-dr-sanjay-gupta-highlights-how-obamacare-benefited-trump-voters-and-dangers-repeal/214941
Looking back, I can now recognize various moments at which I was concerned but should have been more concerned. One was when Alison Lundergan Grimes was running against Mitch McConnell. Reports I saw said that she wasn’t seeking to align herself closely with Obama during the campaign and that many Kentuckians who benefited from the ACA didn’t recognize that the Kynect they liked was Obamacare. I thought at the time that one of the first priorities of state Democratic parties should be driving this message home, and didn’t understand why this didn’t appear to be the case. I overestimated the competence of the Democrats.
The political nature of the Republican attacks on the ACA shouldn’t be underestimated. I’m only now beginning to fully appreciate how the great care I was able to get in 2016 because of the ACA, culminating in my surgery over the summer, is enabling me to be fully (and not just internetally :)) politically active – just in time, as it happens, to oppose Putinism/Trumpism. It helps the Right when people are so limited by potentially treatable medical conditions or the costs of care that they can’t participate in protest or politics. Any sort of social difficulty or insecurity – in work, in housing, in education, in food, in environment,… – redounds to their advantage. When people have basic social and economic (in addition to political) security and rights, they’re in a better position to fight. The Trumpublicans know this, and are cynically counting on their antisocial legislation to give them an advantage in the political arena.
They’ll cause terrible harm, but they won’t win.
Moron isn’t ableist. Nobody understands the term nowadays as an objective descriptor of a “cognitively impaired person,” and nobody’s used it in that sense in probably a hundred years. “Idiot” would be ableist by the same standard. If I call Donald Trump a moron everyone understands I’m making no predictive statements about his IQ scores.
(Assuming Trump has the literacy skills necessary to complete an IQ test. That is an ableist statement.)
“Moron” and “stupid” live in that region occupied also by “lazy” and “evil,” which is to say, fairly describes no one but is meaningful as an insult.
“Moron” and the like don’t refer to cognitive impairment in about 95% of their usage within living memory. Since the terms are useful the way they are used, why not just circle that instead of circle-jerking this?
The standard response to this is “well, those words are brandished at people with cognitive impairment sometimes!” The fact that the suggested alternatives are similarly brandished at other marginalized groups, like “irrational” (women), “ignorant” (racial minorities), etc. is conveniently ignored.
Azkyroth I suppose we COULD just make a rule that we weren’t going to insult people, period, and not fallback on some pharisaical rule like “never make an ableist statement” which only seems to antagonize people even more than just insulting them would…
Ah, now I see the rethug rationale for insisting on “block grants”. Most people won’t bother to wonder where the money originally comes from to pay for their parents nursing home fees (includes my father at the moment). Since they obtained the money locally, they figure local taxes. Not federal taxes being distributed to and by the states to aid all poor citizens. They essentially stopped reading and thinking at some point in their lives.
The programs, like SSA and medicare, where the money comes directly from the feds, are popular. And why over half the population would like to see medicare expanded to the population as a whole. They know good results when they see it up close and personal.
There’s something else that bothers me about this. While Trump is terrible at most things (running a business, speaking intelligible sentences, being a decent human, presumably being president), there is one thing he is really really really really good at, and that’s deflecting the blame for his own colossal failures onto others.
When all these idiots lose their insurance, any reasonable person would be able to add “Republicans said they wanted to get rid of insurance plan” + “My insurance plan is now gone” to equal “I made a terrible mistake with my vote.” But these aren’t reasonable people we’re dealing with, and cognitive bias is a strong master. Trump may not spend five seconds figuring out what kind of health plan his administration ought to put forward, but I bet he’ll burn the midnight oil trying to figure out whom to point his followers at when they howl out their dismay. It will be the Democrats, obviously, but he’s also fond of using powerless groups as scapegoats. Somehow this will be the fault of the Mexicans, the Gays, Women, or some combination of all three. At least we can hope that we’ve gotten past using the Jews, like his predecessor did.
Really? Do you believe everything that you read on BookFace?
Do you believe anything any rethug says without triple fact checking from unbiased sources? If so, you are part of the problem.
millssg99, #27
What part of that are we not supposed to believe?
Facepalm.
I don’t do Facebook.
What am I believing?
Here we go again, with millssg99 playing stupid. Nope, tired of his games.
rampant ableism? never really a surprise. it’s the thing even the most progressives liberals and more regressive conservatives can agree on.
maybe someday PZ’s intersectional feminism will include challenging ableism…. but i’m not holding my breath. i suspect Richard Dawkins will denounce his sexism long before PZ and fans denounce their ableism.
Why would we do that?
Several of us have articulated why we don’t consider the use of “moron” in this context ableist. You could argue that we’re mistaken, but refusing to engage with that and flailing at this strawman* is intellectually and regular dishonest.
*in before someone decides “strawman” is ableist.
As to moron being abelist, of course it is.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/02/19/actually-i-hate-the-word-moron-used-as-an-insult-thank-you-very-much/
The argument that “well how it is used in this context is disconnected from its underlying meaning” could be made for gendered insults as well.
#35
“Of course it is” oh well I guess that’s that, conversation over.
@33
Weren’t you the one literally talking about shooting people a while back?
If our problem is limited to using words you think are ableist, yours is literally suggesting we kill people, and I don’t think you’re one to play the moral high ground righteous anger card.
I happen to like Disabled Feminist’s Ableist Word Profile about the word “moron”:
Ableist Word Profile: Moron
Here’s a quote from the article:
@35
And would be a perfectly valid argument, depending on the insult and the context.
Hence, reclaimed slurs and using slurs jokingly among friends who belong to the group described by the slur.
Here’s another great link:
10 Questions About Why Ableist Language Matters, Answered
So, an actual issue which has immediate real-world consequences, effecting millions of people and vast amounts of money and certainly within a year of any action taken (and probably much less), cannot be discussed, because a few people have hijacked the discourse and want to deal with a purely social issue, whose real-world consequences, though extant, are long-term and at two or more removes from any action taken. They try to frame this hijacking as being an act of moral benevolence, implying that those who don’t care or are more interested in the original discussion are inferiors.
Wow, if the hijackers had a path to take over the blog moderation, and were actually being financed by the insurance companies to keep anyone from trying to produce a solution which harmed the industry, this would be the Democratic Party in microcosm.
That’s like “What is the EU?” being the #1 Google search in the UK the day after the Brexit vote. But don’t hope for these people to come to their senses. To draw another parallel, the people who voted for Brexit are for the most part still happy with their vote, and of course they are. The alternative is to admit that they probably fucked their country up for the next 20 years or so and the same will happen with the US. Trump will be great. Bestest president ever!
Can I use my Token Aspie Powers(tm) to give everyone the right to say “moron” and “idiot” and “stupid” etc
Those words haven’t been used for actual developmental disabilities in like a hundred years and probably 95% of people outside of these egghead discussions aren’t even aware that they were once associated. They’re just generic insults, not the r-word
So I decided to do a little research, and found that polling had in fact been done using deliberately different terms for the healthcare act.
http://web.archive.org/web/20131209032716/http://pollingmatters.gallup.com/2013/11/whats-in-name-affordable-care-act-vs.html
(and, as an aside, I am deeply annoyed that Gallup’s site redesign and search do not bring up a non-archived version of that page. It may have gotten dropped in the shuffle.)
http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/poll-more-oppose-obamacare-affordable-care-act
I have note yet found any polling that demonstrates conclusively that people definitely think that Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are different things, but it doesn’t seem unlikely given human confusion.
Goddamnit.
I have not yet found any polling that demonstrates conclusively that people definitely think that Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are different things.
Oh, and Republicans have definitely helped contribute to the confusion, deliberately misleading people into thinking that the healthcare systems being offered were not “Obamacare”.
(source)
Owlmirror, #45
If they have such different opinions between “Obamacare” and “The AMA, signed by President Obama”, they probably don’t realize that those are the same thing. Typically the name a policy is introduced with doesn’t change your perspective on it if you understand it.
Owlmirror, #46
I have a distinct feeling that it may be some sort of dishonesty.
Will people really hate Obamacare, even after it saves them?
@Owlmirror #46
It seems many republicans were fully aware that they are voting against their own interrests. They were just hoping that only those promisses that will hurt others will be kept and the rest is hot air.
Amaizing. Truly amazing. How stupid can people be?
Well, there’s research that shows that is you offer people a 300 bucks salary increase, but only if the colleague they deem lazy gets 500, they will reject the offer. They will rather have less money than let somebody they deem “undeserving” have some. Now think about whom those people deem “undeserving” and what basic provisions they think are “handouts for lazy people”.
#48 Agreed, the next step in the dishonesty is to claim that the ACA was ‘basically Romneycare’ (and therefore a conservative-authored) all along due to using that as its model.
@Giliell #50 I did not know about this. That research sounds interesting (and depressing), when I get home I will try and find the abstract.
But this is not even similar to that scenario. This is more akin to being offered a 500$ pay reduction on the condition that the lazy colleague gets 300$ reduction and afterwards thinking that after I sign only the colleague gets the reduction whilst I get a payrise. Some people in the article linked by Owlmirror even explicitly express sentiments to that effect.
US republican voters evidently want single-payer socialistic healthcare. But they only want it for themselves. They do not want to pay into the system when/if they are well-off, but they want the system to catch them if they fall.
*shakes head in despair*
To paraphrase Obi-Wan: more stupid than you can possibly imagine.
I often wonder how America gets itself washed and dressed in the morning .
Thank you, thank you, thank you for this. It made my whole week (so far).
This is the quality of moron who voted for Trump.
The U.S. is doomed.
Republican. Because ignorance is a virtue.
Athywren @15
Yeah, that’s what hits so hard. They are so gleeful about us hurting and getting “revenge” against us because we dared exist in a way they were able to ignore more easily before and then act so shocked when the things we did to try and make their lives easier get strip-mined.
And then they blame us for losing those things as well, because all we are to them is a punching bag for getting out their frustrations that the world isn’t exactly as it “used to be” or that they weren’t handed what they felt “entitled” to.
And then they gaslight us to our faces about it and say we’re the abusive and dangerous ones everyone needs to watch out for because we’re afraid that this punching session is going to cost us our lives.
Giliell @42
That’s what scares me a lot. Cause we’re already seeing it. Republicans going all in with the frightening fascism of Trump and his most vociferous supporters because well, he had an R next to his name and he’s the president and thus supporting him and everything he does now becomes the most important thing.
Because the alternative is to break from the culture and tribe of Republican.
And I think this mass radicalization of the right is going to lead to a lot of dead bodies before everyone moves to phase 2, pretending no one actually supported the pogroms and the “cleansings”.
@54, davidc1,
Immigrant labor, documented or not.
Giliel @42
This.
I see the same heightened angry response from Brexiters / Trumpists when there is any question raised about whether what they are proposing is a good thing / asking for details of what it means etc etc. Lots of “you lost, get over it” and “are you calling over half the voters stupid?”
I don’t get the impression that they are happy with their votes. That anger has to come from somewhere.
For clarity, I’m talking (mostly) about Brexit.
Otherwise the “over half the voters” bit doesn’t make sense….
Gilliell@50, I’d really appreciate a link or reference to that research. I can’t seem to find it with google scholar based on your comment, and it sounds quite interesting.
I remember back in 2010 seeing a teabagger in a wheelchair with a protest sign saying, “Keep your dirty government hands off my Medicare.”
I had a conversation with a guy on twitter once, about how his use of “gay” to mean “bad” wasn’t homophobic, because what he actually meant by “gay” was “retarded.”
If moron doesn’t refer to cognitively impaired people, how is it defined these days? I’m just wondering, because that’s the one and only definition I’ve ever understood for it, and a quick dictionary lookup of both “moron” and “idiot” refer to “a stupid person” and “stupid” refers to “a great lack of intelligence or common sense,” which kinda seems like a roundabout way of saying cognitive impairment to me.
I had a conversation with a guy on twitter once, about how his use of “gay” to mean “bad” wasn’t homophobic, because what he actually meant by “gay” was “retarded.”
If moron doesn’t refer to cognitively impaired people, how is it defined these days? I’m just wondering, because that’s the one and only definition I’ve ever understood for it, and a quick dictionary lookup of both “moron” and “idiot” refer to “a stupid person” and “stupid” refers to “a great lack of intelligence or common sense,” which kinda seems like a roundabout way of saying cognitive impairment to me.
Err… sorry for the double post whenever the spam filter gets checked.
I had a conversation with a guy on twitter once, about how his use of “gay” to mean “bad” wasn’t homophobic, because what he actually meant by “gay” was “re—-ed.”
If moron doesn’t refer to cognitively impaired people, how is it defined these days? I’m just wondering, because that’s the one and only definition I’ve ever understood for it, and a quick dictionary lookup of both “moron” and “idiot” refer to “a stupid person” and “stupid” refers to “a great lack of intelligence or common sense,” which kinda seems like a roundabout way of saying cognitive impairment to me.
Athywren @64
It seems to me that, the closer an insult sounds to a clinical diagnosis that someone might actually identify with, the more it should be avoided.
In other words, if I call someone “retarded,” it’s pretty conceivable that a bystander might say “Wait — I was once diagnosed as retarded. Cut it out.” But if I say someone is “dumber than a box of hammers,” is there going to be anyone out there who identifies with my insult and says “Wait — I’m dumber than a box of hammers!”
But I’m genuinely curious. If you were talking to someone who said “I’m not worried about the repeal of Obamacare, because I’m covered by the ACA,” what would your reaction be? Could you really manage to forego making any comment at all on the mental acuity of such a person? What’s wrong with calling someone as dumb as a box of hammers when they are, in fact, as dumb as a box of hammers?
@#64, Athywren – not the moon you’re looking for
So… do you think the person who made that Facebook post in the picture up there is mentally disabled?
If so, then you are basically saying “unless you are smart and informed (about the things I personally consider important, anyway), you are mentally disabled”, and I don’t think I’m alone in saying that you can fuck off with that attitude.
If not — and I haven’t noticed anybody on this thread suggesting that the Facebook post was the result of mental disability, so if not, then you are in agreement with everyone — then how would you describe that person? Some variation on “not smart” is not going to cut it, for a variety of reasons. And if we’re going to make up a word which will explicitly have the definition “someone who is the opposite of smart, but this word does not have any relation whatsoever with mental disability so please don’t use it as an insult” then good luck getting anyone to take you seriously. Frankly, that definition invites usage which is the opposite of its intention.
Meanwhile, here’s this discussion of the Affordable Care Act. The ACA is a lousy law, a giveaway to the insurance industry which was based on a plan designed by a right-wing think and originally championed by Mitt Romney, and it only got passed because the Democrats needed a way to distract everyone from the way they were not stopping any wars or taking any actions against the banks and brokerages who crashed the economy, or against the Bush administration for starting those wars. Nevertheless, thanks to the utter cowardice of the Democratic Party during the relatively narrow window when they had control of the government, it is now the law, and a lot of people now depend on it — it literally is keeping them alive. Do you seriously think it’s more important to have a discussion about terminology which might, if people are vastly more informed about the roots and definitions of words than they generally seem to be, possibly alter behavior at some undefined date, than about the ACA? To the point where it’s okay to hijack a thread which is explicitly about the ACA? Really?
This screenshot should be in school history textbooks.
@64, Athywren
Wait, what? You think a great lack of intelligence or common sense means (or requires) cognitive “impairment”?
(Personally I don’t think I’ve used the words under dispute in years.)
Not ableist, feel free to use…
Fuckwit.
Shit for brains.
Assclown.
Asshat.
Trump-brained.
Chachi.
Ignorant.
Republican.
Conservative.
Full Chachi.
You’re welcome.
What?? Hell no, a word meaning the opposite of smart is not definitionally ableist; even the other commenters that agree with you that ‘moron’ is ableist have mostly rejected that notion. To follow what Vicar said, it is simply the nature of organic language that there be at least one word to mean the opposite of smart, and english – being a synonym rich language – has many. Depending on the connotations of the word and the context in which it is used, there exists plenty of room between ‘opposite of intelligent’ while stopping short of ‘opposite of intelligent by reason of mental handicap.’
‘Stupid’ fills that role nicely.
***
#67 Also not ableist: stupid, idiot, moron.
So team Trump and team Republican both relly on ignorance and emotion lead responses to manipulate the electorate and both those traits appear to be in abundance in the US.
How can this problem be addressed?
Tabby: you left out the form in the OP that PZ quoted… DENSE MOTHERFUCKER.
Don’t make me agree with you. It makes me very uncomfortable.
Give them five minutes.
Nope, because it’s a gendered insult.
We have to apply the reasoning consistently.
And then we get to where we can only insult someone by calling them “ungood.”
But then we must remember that “ungood” comes from 1984, which is frequently referenced by conspiracy theories, and someone on the internet has on at least one occasion stated that all conspiracy theories (even those with no relation to Jews) are inherently antisemitic, so that’s also not acceptable.
How is , “gendered”?
How is , “gendered”?
“mother” is gendered. What are you, dense?
oh Chas
where have you been?
Clinton won the election. Trump won the Electoral College because it was rigged to favor the slave states (and rural states,) and it’s still with us because. I’m not quite sure of the real point of most of these posts and comments but it’s not about why Trump got elected.
Oh, Azkyroth, I’m not interested in joining this argument, but I think you may misunderstand what side of it I’m on.
Obamacare is the stupid nickname Republicans gave to the Affordable Care Act, you twit. You deserve every bit of suffering you get in the months to come.
So much for the old saying, “Too bad stupidity isn’t painful.”
In b4 someone concern-trolls that motherfucker originally was a black insult, and how dare you hypocritical lefties culturally appropriate the term…
Applehead, I think you forgot to call people “SJWs” there…
Late to the party, I realize, but the Senate hasn’t voted to repeal the ACA. Was the OP based on something that isn’t real?
Oh good, a spiraling debate about ableism as it relates to calling people doing stupid-ass things various colloquial synonyms for stupid. Sometimes I wish I could end the circular firing squads and just put a gun to my own head instead.
Well, that didn’t take long to get jacked into pointless wet-eyed handwringing.
Never mind which words can be used for spiteful, irrational unthinking dimwits. How are you going to counteract their influence in a system where he who targets the people most susceptible to propaganda wins?
@ 80 weldonribeye
I believe it refers to this.
Get sad when I see this! The film Videocracy by Erik Gandini (could be found on YouTube, with subtitles ), shows how far the “stupidification” of people has gone in Italy. Media probably have the same impact everywhere, but some country haven’t cought up yet. Hope the media ship turn soon, or else we might have some gloomy years ahead!
1) Before getting into a debate on whether this or that word is ableist, it might help to decide whether or not dictionary definitions are relevant, because it seems to me that they aren’t – until they support an argument.
2) Before deciding whether or not a word or phrase is a gendered insult, it might help to decide, in light of the view that gender is in no way related to genitalia, what actually constitutes a gendered insult.
3) There would probably be no need for the conversation initiated by the OP if the Democrats had thought to ram the fact that Obamacare is the ACA down the throat of the USA at every possible opportunity rather than sitting back in complacency, safe in the knowledge that no real work was necessary to defeat that clown Trump.
I can well believe that many more voters would take steps to safeguard their healthcare than would vote against their own best interests out of spite.
@ 83 Silentbob
Got it. Thanks. Guess I should have dug deeper before commenting.
In my opinion, one way to get past the equation of unwise=unintelligent is to redefine stupid to mean the use of whatever mental faculties one possesses to deny reality. This has the feature that the smarter one is, the more potential one has for stupidity.
@87, I refer to that as willful ignorance and intentional idiocy. One is actively striving for those behaviors.
Edward deBono invented the term ludocy for situations where people are playing an insane game intelligently. I guess that would make the Trump a ludotic.
Tackling the current ludocy seems to need several approaches
Make the population less vulnerable to propaganda
Shine a bright light on propaganda as it arrives
Reveal the actual underlying issues in ways that people really take home
Examine the rules of the democracy and fix the broken bits
Get more people engaged and network
There that was easy
Maybe some detail might be helpful but I’m tired now