Open Thread

What’s on your mind?

Comments

[not guilty]

The New York Times has published a guest essay from two professors at Northwestern University headlined, "Americans Are Turning Against Gay People." https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/opinion/heated-rivalry-gay-prejudice.html

A Substack version of the same content, which I hope is not behind a paywall, appears here: https://grissom.substack.com/p/americans-are-turning-against-gay

The essay observes that:

In the two decades before 2020, visibility, recognition and legal inclusion of gays and lesbians progressed in lock step — larger and more prominent Pride parades, rainbow-lit landmarks, federal legalization of same-sex marriage. That progress translated into something remarkable: Americans’ bias against gay people declined faster than any other bias ever tracked in social surveys.

Research led by Professor Charlesworth and published in 2022 detailed this decline. Drawing on 7.1 million responses from Americans collected from 2007 to 2020, the researchers tracked both explicit bias (how people answer questions like “To what extent do you prefer straight people over gay people?”) and implicit bias (more automatic responses inferred from how rapidly people associate words, such as “straight” with “good” and “gay” with “bad”). Across every U.S. state and demographic group, anti-gay bias plummeted — by roughly 75 percent on explicit measures and 65 percent on implicit ones, on average. Forecasting models suggested that, at that pace, anti-gay bias could hit zero as early as 2022.

That encouraging news, however, was later offset:

[More recently T]he Charlesworth research team was analyzing new data showing that anti-gay bias had begun to rise. The analysis of an additional 2.5 million responses from Americans collected from the beginning of 2021 through 2024 revealed that progress had not only stalled; it had reversed. In just four years, anti-gay bias rose by around 10 percent.

Increases also appeared in bias toward Black, darker-skinned, older, disabled and overweight people, but not as starkly. Just as bias against gay people fell especially steeply before 2020, it has surged particularly sharply since.

Perhaps most surprising is that these trends were distinctly robust among the youngest American adults — those under 25. This group increased its animus against marginalized groups in general and gay people in particular at a faster rate than older Americans did. Also surprising is that although anti-gay bias has risen faster among conservatives, it has also risen among liberals.

A chill wind blows. Bigotry has become more fashionable.

I have a question for those commenters who regard yourself as a pious Christian or Jew -- in whose image do you believe gay and lesbian persons are created?

[Dr. Ed 2]

In answer to your last question, in whose image do you think Adolf Hitler was created?

When it was tolerance lead people alone, whatever they help they do in their privacy of their own homes as their own business I was all for that. But what it became in your face, sexuality with sexuality is not appropriate, and I mean, sexuality of any sexuality and now harassing children, I say too far.

It’s like the French revolution. They started with some legitimate issues and then went off the deep end.

But that’s my initial question. If you’re just legitimate, then answer in whose image Joseph Stalin was created. Or PolPot. or Robert Mugabe.

Do you now understand your logical fallacy?

[bloocow2]

In what way do you think gay people are "harassing children"?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Drag queen story hour.

[Martinned]

In answer to your last question, in whose image do you think Adolf Hitler was created?

I can only speak for myself: I don't believe Adolf Hitler was created at all.

But then, I'm not interested in gay bashing, nor in gay bashing based on the say so of a fictional man in the sky. So I'm the opposite of the target audience of not guilty's question.

[not guilty]

Your avoidance of the question is duly noted, Dr. Ed 2. Whenever a MAGAt resorts to whataboutism, it is an admission of having no substantive response.

As for me, I don't take the creation story of Genesis 1 (where Yahweh created man and woman simultaneously) literally, nor the separate creation story of Genesis 2 (where Yahweh created man first and woman later). I don't believe Adam to be a literal human being who lived to age 930.

I accordingly don't have any problem believing that Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Robert Mugabe were each created when their respective mothers and fathers fucked each other. Each likely resembled his parents.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Thank you for showing both your bigotry and your logical fallacy

[not guilty]

Did you fail high school biology, Ed?

[Dr. Ed 2]

No, but it appears that you did. Not to mention basic logic 101.

[Michael P]

Hey, if he couldn't move goalposts to apply different standards for himself compared to others, how would he ever be able to form an argument?

(Note the differences in valence and criteria between "in whose image do you believe ___ persons are created” and "each created when their respective mothers and fathers fucked each other". Unless NG's theory is that Adam and Eve were somehow "gay and lesbian persons", then probably all believers in Genesis believe that "gay and lesbian persons" were similarly created through sexual intercourse and to some extent resemble their parents. But "not guilty" doesn't recognize this, and cannot meaningfully answer your point.)

[RedheadedPharoh]

It's from lived experience. Honor it.

[not guilty]

What is from lived experience, Redheadedcan'tspellPharoah?

[Commenter_XY]

NG...Every human being is created in the image of God.

[Brett Bellmore]

In the Creator's image, though we are all flawed mirrors of that image.

I suspect bigotry has become more fashionable for a couple reasons.

1. Various systems of legal and extra-legal preference have, predictably, eroded the principle of EQUAL rights. And once you persuade people that equal rights aren't obligatory, most people aren't self hating enough to want to be on the bottom of the pecking order.

2. Nobody likes their oppressor.

You can say "marginalized groups" all you want, but everybody is still going to notice who gets the special treatment, the quotas, obligatory over-representation in media, can't safely be criticized.

[Stephen Lathrop]

When mid-term elections are held in Minnesota, suppose it remains under ICE occupation as it is today, but with additional federal troops mobilized and sent there under the Insurrection Act. Suppose also that senior Democratic Party government officials have been arrested and remain under federal indictments. Would it be possible under those conditions to hold free and fair elections, and get timely vote counts which would be trustworthy?

Would the situation be worse if senior Democratic Party elected officials were held in custody during the interval between the start of voting and release of a certified election count?

If that seems like a problematic situation for Minnesota—and potentially for other states which might be closely contested—what legal actions to prevent it should be happening now? If actions such as any you might suggest were happening, what kind of court supervision, on what schedule, would be necessary to make it work to produce election results that would be accepted as free, fair, and reliable?

[Mr. Bumble]

"Opium Dreams" by Lathrop. Available on Amazon.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bumble — I don't blame you for dodging the questions. Everything I mentioned has either already happened, or been explicitly threatened. You okay if the courts just give it all a pass?

[Mr. Bumble]

"Everything I mentioned has either already happened, or been explicitly threatened."
Neither Minneapolis nor Minnesota have been occupied by anyone.
No official are being held in custody; fever dream projections aside.
Looks like Mother Nature will slow things down with the frigid weather forecast for the next week or so.

[Michael P]

On the other hand, the left told us very vociferously in 2024 that the only way to have free and fair elections was for prominent politicians from the other party to be under indictment, ideally jailed, and perhaps barred from being named on ballots. It is passing strange that Stephen Lathrop pretends to be concerned about this state of affairs for a midterm election.

It would be helpful if he understood that Minnesota has a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and further that labeling them "senior Democratic Party government officials" gives away that such people exercise their offices for partisan ends rather than just being senior government officials.

[RedheadedPharoh]

Many Democrats are already saying it's needed for 2028.

[Commenter_XY]

lathrop is a liberal lunatic.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Maryland, 1864.

[Mr. Bumble]

Don't think there are many gold bugs here but for what it's worth it looks like gold will break $5000.00/oz.

[Martinned]

Still a terrible inflation hedge, but a good alternative to Bitcoin...

[Mr. Bumble]

Sad to see that Pam Grier has become obese and suffering from dementia.

[Dr. Ed 2]

speaking of disappointments, the original Daisy Duke from the 70s has become rather rotund.

[Dr. Ed 2]

So Europe is gonna ban American goods, and what do they think that Trump will do them?

[Martinned]

Whatever the fuck he wants, just like now. What's the difference?

[Dr. Ed 2]

This was written 50 years ago by Gordon Sinclair as a Canadian newspaper editorial.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210514110639/https://www.broadcasting-history.ca/in-depth/news-broadcasting-unique-stories-americans-original-script

Maybe America should say to hell with the rest of the world.

[Martinned]

Maybe America should say to hell with the rest of the world.

What do you mean "maybe"? That's what the US has been doing since Project 2025 took over the White House.

Look at how many "fuck you"'s to the rest of the world there are in the week 1 executive orders alone: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/28/nx-s1-5276293/trump-executive-orders

[A Japanese Student]

Today was the sentencing day for Tetsuya Yamagami, now convicted of murdering Shinzo Abe. The assassin got life in prison, exactly as the prosecutor asked.

Some of the jurors (who participated in sentencing) appeared in an interview; they said the fact he killed a former PM did not influence the sentence.

[bloocow2]

Are people still doing investigations into the Moonies and their political connections in Japan? I remember it being a huge scandal after the assassination. Which, in terms of achieving his stated aims of drawing attention to this kind of thing, makes Yamagami pretty successful as far as assassins go.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Gavin knew some should be tried for treason and executed.
There was a time in this country when politics ended at the waters edge, when the opposing party gave lip service to supporting our president.

Newsom is over in Switzerland, acting as a US President. Most countries would summarily execute him for that.

And what rate does he have to participate in Davos? Why can’t Trump just have his passport revoked?

[Martinned]

Most countries would summarily execute him for that.

Get help. (Or at least stop commenting here if you aren't capable of writing something sane.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

Take Great Britain, a country historically affiliated with free speech for the past four 500 years. Then I’m throwing people in jail off saying things on Twitter the government doesn’t like.

What do you think Great Britain would do if someone went to Daros and said something that the British government didn’t like?

[RedheadedPharoh]

If he was a foreign invader they would give him sexual access to all teen and preteen boys and girls. But only Whites.

[Martinned]

Get help.

[bloocow2]

Clarify something for me. When you say "most countries would summarily execute him for that", is this something you approve of? To try Gavin Newsom for treason and have him executed?

Heaps of people go to the Davos conferences, by the way. It's not just world leaders.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Would you have approved of Trump having gone three years ago and proclaiming are than president to be the incompetent moron he is?

When is the last time that a presidential candidate went there, as a presidential candidate, bf=fto attack the current president?

[OpinionsVary]

So Halligan is leaving her job. There's the on-going battle about whether she had said job in the first place but she's now decided to resign. But only days ago, she was filing this bombastic brief to the court, an all by declaration of war against the judge in question.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.586311/gov.uscourts.vaed.586311.22.0.pdf

How in the world to you get from filing *that* brief to going 'welp, guess I should be looking for a new job now' in only a few days?

[Sarcastr0]

Wasn’t her term up anyhow? I’m not sure this isn’t. Ore performance.

[Martinned]

Good point:

Media may not have noticed that Trump’s Board of Peace Charter was drafted so that the US need NOT ratify and become a party.Trump’s current status as US President is a necesary stepping stone but his unitary rule in the new international organisation would be personal, permanent and even hereditary

2/The Board of Peace is a plan of private enrichment for Trump and his family - one of many. If any three states will ratify it and one of them pays a billion dollars, the Charter will enter into force. But the US Senate will never in any composition give its consent by a majority of two thirds

3/I hope foreign ministry lawyers in different countries have analysed the text. Davos may become the end of flattery and pretending that things are normal. The truth must be told and the Mad King dethroned. Applying the 25th Amendment is then domestic business for the US.

[Michael P]

Yes, Democrat partisanship sinks the ability of the US government to achieve much of anything. But you could have extracted that solitary good point by quoting just the one sentence about the Senate never passing this treaty.

[Martinned]

The US hasn't ratified a meaningful treaty in decades. But I am at a loss to understand why you think that's a problem the current Regime is interested in solving.

[RedheadedPharoh]

You are breaking the law by not registering as a foreign agent and targeting lawful government functions with your speech.

[Mr. Bumble]

Possibly because there hasn't been a meaningful treaty in decades?

[Martinned]

Mark Carney continues to be the most effective leader of the international community in the age of Trump. His speech in Davos yesterday.

A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable. And there is another truth. If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate.

Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships.

Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty.

They'll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty – sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.

This room knows this is classic risk management. Risk management comes at a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty can also be shared.

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/

[Martinned]

Earlier in his speech he discussed Havel's famous Power of the Powerless:

[T]here is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along [with the US Regime], to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.

Well, it won't.

So, what are our options?

In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless, and in it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?

And his answer began with a greengrocer.

Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite’. He doesn't believe it, no-one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persist – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this “living within a lie”.

The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It’s time to abolish NATO.
Those ingrates will be speaking Russian, but for American blood.

[Martinned]

Even if that were true (and the war in Ukraine suggests that it isn't), how does that benefit the US?

[RedheadedPharoh]

It saves us billions of dollars and the lives of our citizens.

Europeans can go fuck themselves. They are irrelevant. They don't invent, they don't innovate, they don't contribute. They are a dead civilization overrun by foreign hordes. Clinging to an ancient, no longer relevant reputation.

[OpinionsVary]

Turning back the clock to the Cold War (where the Soviet Union might have had the conventional forces for this)... How do you imagine such an Russian invasion would work? Would the British and French just not use their nuclear weapons for some reason? It's obviously in the US's interest that Russia and Europe don't nuke each other but in your scenario where Russia invades and the US just shrugs, why wouldn't have the two European nuclear powers hit the launch button if the Russians are about to win?

[Michael P]

Those ingrates will be speaking Russian, but for American blood.

Many would not have been born -- their parents would have been killed, in war or in a gulag or as kulaks or through starvation. The lucky ones would have been bred with Russian immigrants instead.

But even Europeans who were born to European heritage stock are apparently too ill-educates to understand that Russia in 2022 did not stand in the same posture as the Soviet Union of 1945. They probably also don't realize how much they depend on US exports of fossil fuels: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=554503 .

[Dr. Ed 2]

This is priceless when you realize what Carney has done with China?

Talk about being a hypocrite

[Martinned]

This criticism of the Havel reference seems right to me:

Carney in his Davos speech reference communist dissident Václav Havel, who talked about the Greengrocer who lives within a lie. By putting up the "workers of the world unite"-sign in his window the greengrocer signaled not a belief in worker solidarity, but loyalty to the regime.

Havel pointed out that no one believed in the sign, yet everyone kept putting them up. This is what he called living within a lie. Carney compared that to the rules based international order, who he claimed was also a lie that we needed to pretend to stop believing in.

This comparison does not ring true to me. In Havel's example, the worker of the world unite-signs were put up by people who had no interest in having the workers of the world unite. By contrast, many of us who talk about a rules based order would like it to be true.

Yes, Carney is right that the rules based order has alway been imperfect, but he goes too far in his cynicism. The order did constrain stronger actors and established norms to an extent. And evoking the rules based order helped keep that order alive.

This is fundamentally different from the analogy in Havel were the signs aren't bringing real socialism any closer. Carney is right though in that the order as we once knew it is gone. But like all values, it wasn't imaginary just because it was socially constructed. It existed and it was good.

I see people now quoting Carney and saying "see, the rules based order was always fake, just a tool for US hegemony". Like I said, while the order was imperfect, I don't agree with that description.

[Michael P]

The petty tyrant of America's Cap desperately wants to be relevant, but he will not confront Russia or China and their recent patterns of actually "abandon[ing] even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests". He's too busy sending Canadians to the suicide booths. Eurotrash call this being "the most effective leader of the international community", not realizing what an indictment that is.

[Martinned]

Why would Carney want to confront Russia and China when his main problem is with the tyrant on his southern border? His whole optimal strategy, as he explains in this speech, is to manage his risks. And one way to do that is to repair Canada's difficult relations with China.

https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/01/16/prime-minister-carney-forges-new-strategic-partnership-peoples

[RedheadedPharoh]

Why do you think Canada is embracing China? It's love for the totalitarian rule and oppression of its people?

[OpinionsVary]

It would be the periodic threats from Trump to annex Canada. He had quieted down on the 51-st state bit but with Greenland flaring up, I suspect its just a matter of time until invading Canada is back too. He has been posting map pics showing Canada part of the USA again.

[Commenter_XY]

Eurotrash, you made me laugh = Mark Carney continues to be the most effective leader of the international community...

What a dolt.

[Martinned]

One of the problems of having your head that far up Trump's ass is that you wouldn't recognise a good leader if you crashed into one.

[RedheadedPharoh]

What outcomes has hos great leadership produced that you're using in your judgment?

[Mr. Bumble]

...and so today begins year two of Trump 47.

[RedheadedPharoh]

Only 3 more years until Trump 48!

[Commenter_XY]

Will Bill and Hillary Clinton be prosecuted for contempt of congress?
Answer: Yes

[Martinned]

They are enemies of the Regime, so they will be prosecuted regardless.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It’s more a matter of precedent and other enemies of a different regime being prosecuted.

[Sarcastr0]

Those files sure haven’t been release yet.

So here is another distraction for the MAGA rubes.