We lost the battle for the democrat party's soul long ago

[randylahey]

Has it occurred to anyone that Randy is a bot?

(The lack of an ability to reason is the tell.)

Randy: says child trafficking/pedophilia is a problem that some of the world's elite are involved in, and wonders why people are objecting to bringing awareness to it

Feral: accuses him of being a bot

What in the actual fuck

Wow, you're right: "Mar-a-Lago...Epstein...Hillary...Hunter..."

I take it all back...

Your posts just keep getting worse and worse. Some of the world's elite are involved in sex trafficking. Posting a meme about someone at the bottom of the food chain proves absolutely nothing

[DCHawk1]

What's the point of criticizing art? I don't recall the left doing that ever really. But suddenly when "the art" is a movie bringing awareness to child sex trafficking, its had hands on deck and the left is outraged

This is all I need to know about you and your responses on this board.

Dumb post. Answer the question. You are scared to address the subject matter. Why does the left, the "party of tolerance",
Want to "criticize art" of a movie bringing awareness to child sex trafficking. Where was the criticism of anything else

Not to be pedantic, but "the Left" has a long history of division over this specific issue, whether aesthetics and art criticism are valid and necessary aspects of the revolutionary ideal. It is, for example, the animating spirit of cultural Leftism (via Lukacs) and of the ideological split between the Soviets and many of the Eastern Europeans (Tito in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and, naturally, Imre Nagy's revolutionary Hungary (aided by Lukacs, among others)).

In other words, "criticism of art" is a huge part of anti-/post-Soviet leftism.

[defixione]

If I have to explain it to you, you won't understand.

[Shirley]

Look Randy, another drag queen, I mean, "elitist":

[JKLivin]

I guess my question would be what motive Ballard would have for fabricating these things. He gave up a stable, high-paying job with Homeland Security to do this dangerous and stressful job freelance. Not a lucrative undertaking by any stretch.

Well.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-ent ... -caviezel/

“Sound of Freedom” is based on the life of Ballard, who left the Department of Homeland Security about 10 years ago and founded a group that works with local police to catch child sex traffickers in other countries — often by staging elaborate sting operations that it captures on video.

In the film, a brother and sister are lured to an innocuous-sounding photo shoot in Honduras, only to be snatched by abductors and imprisoned in the Colombian jungle. Caviezel’s version of Ballard spends much of the movie sneaking through criminal hideouts to find the children, risking his life and finally beating up the traffickers.

The real Ballard hasn’t claimed to do anything quite like that, but the film ends with a montage of clips from sting operations his group, Operation Underground Railroad, actually conducted in the country.

[...]

A Vice News investigation in 2020 found no clear falsehoods in Operation Underground Railroad’s rescue claims, but “a pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading.”

“The entire premise of its operations: that local law enforcement will take over when the dirty work has been done is dangerously naive,” the prominent human trafficking scholar Anne Gallagher wrote for HuffPost in 2015. “Why are police in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Colombia not arresting child sex traffickers if they are so easy to find? The simplest explanation is law enforcement complicity in such crimes.”

As for answering your question - I would guess that the answer is complex, and involves (among other things) genuine concern, along with profit-, fame- and adventure-seeking.

None of which, of course, are bad things in and of themselves.

But a responsible person should be aware of where the profit and fame come from. And in this case, it's fairly clearly from rubes, eager to swallow the exaggerations and mythmaking uncritically (and then run the cancel culture rebop to get internet-mad at anyone who challenges these things as being something less than objective fact).

I agree that there is a difference between reality and movie depictions. I wasn’t under the impression that Sound of Freedom was a documentary. The cause it is promoting is worthwhile.

[DCHawk1]

Look Randy, another drag queen, I mean, "elitist":

A. I'm not sure what point you think you're proving. The more predators arrested and put away the better -- whether they're priests, soccer coaches, or co-founders of The Lincoln Project.

B. I'm also not sure that that second tweet makes the point you (and she) think it does.

[jfish26]

I guess my question would be what motive Ballard would have for fabricating these things. He gave up a stable, high-paying job with Homeland Security to do this dangerous and stressful job freelance. Not a lucrative undertaking by any stretch.

Well.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-ent ... -caviezel/

“Sound of Freedom” is based on the life of Ballard, who left the Department of Homeland Security about 10 years ago and founded a group that works with local police to catch child sex traffickers in other countries — often by staging elaborate sting operations that it captures on video.

In the film, a brother and sister are lured to an innocuous-sounding photo shoot in Honduras, only to be snatched by abductors and imprisoned in the Colombian jungle. Caviezel’s version of Ballard spends much of the movie sneaking through criminal hideouts to find the children, risking his life and finally beating up the traffickers.

The real Ballard hasn’t claimed to do anything quite like that, but the film ends with a montage of clips from sting operations his group, Operation Underground Railroad, actually conducted in the country.

[...]

A Vice News investigation in 2020 found no clear falsehoods in Operation Underground Railroad’s rescue claims, but “a pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading.”

“The entire premise of its operations: that local law enforcement will take over when the dirty work has been done is dangerously naive,” the prominent human trafficking scholar Anne Gallagher wrote for HuffPost in 2015. “Why are police in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Colombia not arresting child sex traffickers if they are so easy to find? The simplest explanation is law enforcement complicity in such crimes.”

As for answering your question - I would guess that the answer is complex, and involves (among other things) genuine concern, along with profit-, fame- and adventure-seeking.

None of which, of course, are bad things in and of themselves.

But a responsible person should be aware of where the profit and fame come from. And in this case, it's fairly clearly from rubes, eager to swallow the exaggerations and mythmaking uncritically (and then run the cancel culture rebop to get internet-mad at anyone who challenges these things as being something less than objective fact).

I agree that there is a difference between reality and movie depictions. I wasn’t under the impression that Sound of Freedom was a documentary. The cause it is promoting is worthwhile.

The cause it is promoting is worthwhile to an extent. The problem is that there are millions of people who blow past that extent, and turn an issue into a culture war shibboleth, or a conjuring words loyalty test.

This happens all the time.

Rampant voter fraud (when actual, documented voter fraud is so statistically insignificant as to be functionally nonexistent).

Trans people ruining youth sports (when actual, documented instances of trans people taking advantage in youth sports are vanishingly rare).

People living off government welfare (when statistics show that work requirements make poverty and food insecurity worse, not better).

And on and on.

So yes, when the rubes get their panties tied in a knot because reasonable people take a critical eye toward the degree of artistic license taken in the movie (in combination with the rubes taking it as more or less a documentary)…my radar goes off.

[randylahey]

Democrats desperately need censorship to try to give them an edge in 2024

[defixione]

Jesus, Randy, really.

[JKLivin]

Well.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-ent ... -caviezel/



As for answering your question - I would guess that the answer is complex, and involves (among other things) genuine concern, along with profit-, fame- and adventure-seeking.

None of which, of course, are bad things in and of themselves.

But a responsible person should be aware of where the profit and fame come from. And in this case, it's fairly clearly from rubes, eager to swallow the exaggerations and mythmaking uncritically (and then run the cancel culture rebop to get internet-mad at anyone who challenges these things as being something less than objective fact).

I agree that there is a difference between reality and movie depictions. I wasn’t under the impression that Sound of Freedom was a documentary. The cause it is promoting is worthwhile.

The cause it is promoting is worthwhile to an extent. The problem is that there are millions of people who blow past that extent, and turn an issue into a culture war shibboleth, or a conjuring words loyalty test.

This happens all the time.

Rampant voter fraud (when actual, documented voter fraud is so statistically insignificant as to be functionally nonexistent).

Trans people ruining youth sports (when actual, documented instances of trans people taking advantage in youth sports are vanishingly rare).

People living off government welfare (when statistics show that work requirements make poverty and food insecurity worse, not better).

And on and on.

So yes, when the rubes get their panties tied in a knot because reasonable people take a critical eye toward the degree of artistic license taken in the movie (in combination with the rubes taking it as more or less a documentary)…my radar goes off.

Honest question: Do you think referring to people who disagree with you as "rubes" makes them more likely to come around to your viewpoints or less so?

[Mjl]

Child trafficking is a problem.
QAnon turned it into a right vs left thing that it hadn't previously been. As in, left says "child trafficking is bad" and cultists say "child trafficking is bad and it's the Democrats doing it and keeping the children in tunnels by the hundreds of thousands and torturing them so that they can kill them while they're afraid because it produces the best adrenochrome".
As a result, many are going to see child-trafficking things, warranted or not, as a QAnon-derived thing.

[DCHawk1]

Child trafficking is a problem.
QAnon turned it into a right vs left thing that it hadn't previously been. As in, left says "child trafficking is bad" and cultists say "child trafficking is bad and it's the Democrats doing it and keeping the children in tunnels by the hundreds of thousands and torturing them so that they can kill them while they're afraid because it produces the best adrenochrome".
As a result, many are going to see child-trafficking things, warranted or not, as a QAnon-derived thing.

The widening Gyre

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

It was a huge problem before "open borders." The right has a movie specifically made for them, it gets panned by two art critics. They criticized art, not the subject, and the right exhales accusations that the left supports pedophilia? What a stretch.

I think the movie was just made for anyone who wanted to watch it. It was not a left/right thing


But for some reason, the left is attacking it. Apparently people are not allowed to speak out against child sex trafficking/pedophilia according to the modern left, and they are trying to lump it in as another right wing thing

Scary road we are heading down. Disgusting

You have an issue with the left "attacking it". That's fair and your issue with it very well may be justified - to a degree.
Now I am going to ask you this, do you feel my problem/s with what the star of the movie has said about child trafficking and his other QAnon beliefs is/are justifiable?
Before you answer that question take in to account that last night you were posting about a/the "cabal".
One thing I agree with you about is that I feel it is a "scary road we (ALL of us on ALL "sides") are heading down" and it is "disgusting"

[KUTradition]

I agree that there is a difference between reality and movie depictions. I wasn’t under the impression that Sound of Freedom was a documentary. The cause it is promoting is worthwhile.

The cause it is promoting is worthwhile to an extent. The problem is that there are millions of people who blow past that extent, and turn an issue into a culture war shibboleth, or a conjuring words loyalty test.

This happens all the time.

Rampant voter fraud (when actual, documented voter fraud is so statistically insignificant as to be functionally nonexistent).

Trans people ruining youth sports (when actual, documented instances of trans people taking advantage in youth sports are vanishingly rare).

People living off government welfare (when statistics show that work requirements make poverty and food insecurity worse, not better).

And on and on.

So yes, when the rubes get their panties tied in a knot because reasonable people take a critical eye toward the degree of artistic license taken in the movie (in combination with the rubes taking it as more or less a documentary)…my radar goes off.

Honest question: Do you think referring to people who disagree with you as "rubes" makes them more likely to come around to your viewpoints or less so?

with you and randy it’s been obvious for years that it doesn’t matter how you’re engaged, rube

[JKLivin]

The cause it is promoting is worthwhile to an extent. The problem is that there are millions of people who blow past that extent, and turn an issue into a culture war shibboleth, or a conjuring words loyalty test.

This happens all the time.

Rampant voter fraud (when actual, documented voter fraud is so statistically insignificant as to be functionally nonexistent).

Trans people ruining youth sports (when actual, documented instances of trans people taking advantage in youth sports are vanishingly rare).

People living off government welfare (when statistics show that work requirements make poverty and food insecurity worse, not better).

And on and on.

So yes, when the rubes get their panties tied in a knot because reasonable people take a critical eye toward the degree of artistic license taken in the movie (in combination with the rubes taking it as more or less a documentary)…my radar goes off.

Honest question: Do you think referring to people who disagree with you as "rubes" makes them more likely to come around to your viewpoints or less so?

with you and randy it’s been obvious for years that it doesn’t matter how you’re engaged, rube

Nice.

[jfish26]

I agree that there is a difference between reality and movie depictions. I wasn’t under the impression that Sound of Freedom was a documentary. The cause it is promoting is worthwhile.

The cause it is promoting is worthwhile to an extent. The problem is that there are millions of people who blow past that extent, and turn an issue into a culture war shibboleth, or a conjuring words loyalty test.

This happens all the time.

Rampant voter fraud (when actual, documented voter fraud is so statistically insignificant as to be functionally nonexistent).

Trans people ruining youth sports (when actual, documented instances of trans people taking advantage in youth sports are vanishingly rare).

People living off government welfare (when statistics show that work requirements make poverty and food insecurity worse, not better).

And on and on.

So yes, when the rubes get their panties tied in a knot because reasonable people take a critical eye toward the degree of artistic license taken in the movie (in combination with the rubes taking it as more or less a documentary)…my radar goes off.

Honest question: Do you think referring to people who disagree with you as "rubes" makes them more likely to come around to your viewpoints or less so?

It’s not an agree/disagree thing.

[JKLivin]

The cause it is promoting is worthwhile to an extent. The problem is that there are millions of people who blow past that extent, and turn an issue into a culture war shibboleth, or a conjuring words loyalty test.

This happens all the time.

Rampant voter fraud (when actual, documented voter fraud is so statistically insignificant as to be functionally nonexistent).

Trans people ruining youth sports (when actual, documented instances of trans people taking advantage in youth sports are vanishingly rare).

People living off government welfare (when statistics show that work requirements make poverty and food insecurity worse, not better).

And on and on.

So yes, when the rubes get their panties tied in a knot because reasonable people take a critical eye toward the degree of artistic license taken in the movie (in combination with the rubes taking it as more or less a documentary)…my radar goes off.

Honest question: Do you think referring to people who disagree with you as "rubes" makes them more likely to come around to your viewpoints or less so?

It’s not an agree/disagree thing.

Exactly. You’ve framed it as a good people vs. deplorable creatures issue. That is one of the most serious things wrong with this country.

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

Honest question: Do you think referring to people who disagree with you as "rubes" makes them more likely to come around to your viewpoints or less so?

It’s not an agree/disagree thing.

Exactly. You’ve framed it as a good people vs. deplorable creatures issue. That is one of the most serious things wrong with this country.

I feel it's important to recognize and be able to identify and differentiate between good and evil and what people say and do in relation/s to good and evil.
Of course it can be subjective but the things that are black and white (not meaning race) shouldn't be so difficult to identify as good or evil nor should they even be questioned and debated.

[DCHawk1]

Exactly. You’ve framed it as a good people vs. deplorable creatures issue. That is one of the most serious things wrong with this country.

There's more than a whiff of oikophobia to it.

[JKLivin]

Exactly. You’ve framed it as a good people vs. deplorable creatures issue. That is one of the most serious things wrong with this country.

There's more than a whiff of oikophobia to it.

Yup.