Mark vW

@Hey_Beth@sfba.social I was 13. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

@Hey_Beth@sfba.social The '72 Men's Basketball Final. Kornelia Ender beating Shirley Babashoff. Scoring in figure skating and gymnastics. Everything about Avery Brundage. The East Bloc pro athletes. The Olympics have a proud legacy of hypocrisy. Still... Emil Zatopek!!!!

@shye@deadrobots.social Trump wants to destroy NATO for Putin.

@kims@mas.to It was "her turn." Too bad the Dems didn't nominate someone who could beat Trump.

@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social is that a real person? Usually, doctors are easy to find online.

The INVESTIGATION of this alleged war crime is EVERYTHING.

@ticho@mas.to @MeanwhileinCanada@ohai.social Exactly.

@upstreamism@theatl.social Not so sure about the "require" a warrant bit.

@Shahin@mast.hpc.social @tristansnell@mstdn.social Reading about the fire eaters and John C. Calhoun is a good start. The South Carolina fire eaters were a crazy irrational violent bunch of interesting assholes.

@Shahin@mast.hpc.social @tristansnell@mstdn.social Hard question to frame. What prompted individual legislators to vote for succession? What prompted individual citizens to kill and die for the state? I think slavery inseparably permeated every reason, no matter how you frame the question. Take the non slave holding farmer who went to war because of local sociopolitical pressure. Saying he went to war solely because of slavery is simplistic. But if you take slavery out of the mix, that farmer would never have gone to war.

@McPatrick@zirk.us @tristansnell@mstdn.social No umbrage here. I'm a Unionist through and through. Sole causation arguments, thouhh...lol.

@McPatrick@zirk.us @tristansnell@mstdn.social They didn't plead. They went to war and killed people. War is ALWAYS about power--not the form of pleading. There's a sole causation argument I can defend. That power, of course, depended upon human slavery.

@McPatrick@zirk.us @tristansnell@mstdn.social Because I don't agree with you that slavery was the sole, absolute, and complete cause of the Civil War--and in spite of the undisputed fact that the Civil War never would have happened without the fight over slavery--and in spite of the undisputed fact that slavery was by far the "runaway" most significant cause of the Civil War, I am somehow defending the racists who use insignificant lesser causes of the Civil War to defend racist oppression?

@McPatrick@zirk.us @tristansnell@mstdn.social The foundation of any effective propaganda is a kernel of truth. You note one such kernel. The other was the South's continually decreasing power in the face of the industrially predominant expanding North. The Southern power elites really didn't like that shit--this was a major factor which had a somewhat plausible non-slavery component (but an overwhelmingly predominant slavery component).

@tristansnell@mstdn.social It was obviously the runaway but-for cause. But it wasn't the only cause.

@sarahtaber Good luck.

@annecollier Troubling that many of these proposed "child" protection laws require adults to provide personal information before engaging in constitutionally protected speech.