SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Small town Republican thoughts on refuting the alt-right. In The Republican Journal:
I want to make one thing very clear: The Waldo County Republican Committee absolutely, unequivocally condemns Nazi and KKK ideologies and actions, as well as any other kind of bigotry, and we encourage all of our voters and the community at large to do the same.
For fellow Republicans out there, worry not, we don't like Antifa's ideology and actions either, but we need to clean our own house; we need to worry about our own responsibilities.
Such honesty, and clarity of thought!
The most dangerous part of politics today is identity politics, trolling, pathos and a severe lack of critical thinking. You cannot defeat the insidious hatred of bigoted politics with more hate. By doing so, you morph the conversation away from policy and ideology to silly label syntax, eventually devolving completely into back and forth verbal gymnastics. Make no mistake, these trolls are ready for you as you stoop to their level, and they beat you up with mountains of experience.
So what do we do? Very simple. Stay neighborly by controlling your reaction. Seek out those with whom you disagree, try to understand them first, and politely offer your counter argument.
And it looks like the Republicans in Maine, if not in Illinois, are rejecting the alt-right.
The way to defeat Mr. Kawczynski is not by attacking him, but by attacking his ideas. Here are some flaws in his thinking: His immigration ideas are antithetical to the Maine Republican party platform, a section of which states, "We support the assimilation of legal immigrants into Maine society."
Kawczynski's ideas stand in contrast to Maine history and culture; in fact, it is white folks with racist ideologies who pose the greatest threat to Maine's foundation, not other races of people.
Another brilliant tidbit:
Ultimately, all you have to do is walk outside with your eyes open in this state to see that Kawczynski's fearmongering about "white genocide" is completely laughable.
Entire guest column is well worth a read.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 09 2018, @05:18PM (1 child)
The many genders thing is a bit exaggerated, but rooted in truth: There are more than 2 genders. There are even more than 2 biological sexes, and that bit is proven science - all you need is an extra chromosome or two to get some odd combinations.
It seems this could very easily be dealt with on government forms and the like, by having 3 options: male, female, and other. Maybe we should try to get to a state where someone's gender just isn't that important.
As far as the wage gap myths, what exactly is the myth? In most professions, women get paid less then men, black people get paid less than white people, and those kinds of things are well-documented.
I don't think it's well-documented at all that women or blacks get paid less than white men *for the exact same job*. It's absolutely true that these groups get paid less, on average, but these groups also do different jobs. There aren't many female (or black) software engineers, and there aren't many male day-care workers or preschool teachers. You can debate the reasons for these discrepancies and what should be done to address them, but let's compare apples to apples.
For instance, welders tend to earn more than child care workers, even though a typical person in both of those professions has a high school diploma and a year or two of post-high school training.
Yes, but welding is a much, much, much more dangerous job (underwater welding in particular), and it's a dirty, nasty job in many places. Working with children can be a PITA, but it doesn't involve inhaling noxious fumes and having hot welding slag spray in your face, nor does it involve having to enter dangerous confined spaces where it's quite possible to pass out and die from lack of oxygen. Welding is also very skill- and talen-based: some people can do it much better than others, and welders doing particularly difficult types of welding make a lot of money because only a few people can do it, and it can't be done easily by robot. Finally, the pay difference is a function of the market: the market can only support so much pay for child care workers; if you raise their pay a lot, then the price of child care will be much higher, and very few parents will be able to afford it; already, many parents choose to simply have one parent quit their job, rather than pay for child care, because they make about as much with their job as the child care would cost. Double that cost and now there won't be many parents making use of child care services.
Engineers earn more than social workers, even though both of those generally require a masters' degree.
First, most engineers I've met do not have a master's degree, and I certainly haven't seen that many engineering jobs that require one. It's a bonus early in your career and gets you more pay at first, but after some point work experience counts more. Engineers with MSs tend to be more specialized as well.
But aside from that, again, this is a function of the market. Engineers work in companies where products are created and revenue generated. An engineer working for Apple helps them create the iPhone, which sells for a small fortune making Apple the wealthiest company in the world, so that engineer is able to command a high salary. How much money do social workers generate? None; they're actually a cost on society. You can argue that they help society save money by not sending so many people to prison, or helping kids grow up to be more productive, but that stuff is really hard to quantify, and as government workers, they generally aren't paid well just like all government workers (including engineers).
Even within the same profession, there are substantial pay gaps: For instance, the heavily female medical specialty of pediatrics gets about half the pay of the heavily male medical specialty of radiology, even though they have similar levels of qualifications.
Two things: why don't more women go into radiology then, if it pays more? And second, from what I'm hearing and seeing, this is changing, because a lot of radiology is being outsourced offshore (you don't have to be on-site to read an X-ray), , the pay is falling. But back to the first point: a lot of this looks simply like women are voluntarily choosing lower-paying professions, knowing full well that they pay less. Whose fault is that? There's a bunch of jobs I'd probably rather do than engineering, where I would have less stress and more fun, but I don't do that because they don't pay much and I don't want to live in a small apartment with roommates for the rest of my life. Obviously, women overall are choosing to de-prioritize salary, in favor of job satisfaction. You can't do that and then rightfully complain about being paid less.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 09 2018, @10:51PM
One reason NOT to become a welder, is eyesight. Many welders begin losing their vision early in their careers, many more later in their careers. The care that they put into maintaining their eye sight is important, but welding damages your eyes no matter how careful you are. Over time, even a careful welder can be blinded by the work he does. The worst welding job to have, is inside of a fabrication shop, where you are surrounded by other welders. There is no angle at which you can escape being arc-blinded by your coworkers. Yours truly had the opportunity to go into welding, but since he was starting out with poor vision, he decided that such a career choice would be pretty stupid.
That doesn't even begin to consider more immediate risks, like electrocution, or a failed weld endangering your life, or the cranes and other equipment routinely operating around you, all while you're closed off from the world under your welding hood.
When day care workers have to deal with going blind from looking at all the funny looking kids they care for, then we can compare day care workers to welders.