The Antisocial Socialist

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sabotabby

You are missing so much not being on FB, I tell you.

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franklanguage.livejournal.com

When I ditched FB—or it ditched me—I got my life back. Well, a big chunk of it.

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sabotabby

I normally don't spend that much time on it, but medical leave brings out all of my terrible habits. I find it pretty easy to ignore the rest of the time.

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curgoth

Oddly enough, this is the second post about non-threaded comments being overrun by libertarians that I have seen this evening.

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sabotabby

It got really off-topic and then he outright got caught in a lie. The whole thing was fun, but beneath me.

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maeve66.livejournal.com

All of this is oh, so true.

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sabotabby

Oh man, he blocked me so now I can't quote his hilarious comments. Basically he called me a venomous bigot for pointing out the part of his argument where he outright lied.

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Oooh oooh what'd he lie about? :D

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sabotabby

It was your typical white guy claiming that he was working class and had paid for university himself without government or family help. This makes me get a skeptical face, since I've only ever met white guys who claimed that and you can't make the kind of money between the ages of 13 and 18 (let's be generous and say 12 and 19), without a degree, that would allow you to fund four years of undergrad. He also claimed that the taxes that paid for the first 12 years of his education were taxes that he, personally, had paid.

I attacked the latter claim first, since it would have to either involve time travel or mean that he started paying income tax at the age of 5. He got so flustered trying to figure this out that he finally admitted that "generations" of his family had helped him pay for school because his parents were too busy bailing his brother out of jail. Then when I posted the two contradictory statements side by side, he blocked me. :)

New rule: If you have to lie about your own life to advance your political agenda, you fail.

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hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

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I do know people who paid their way through college; it was by working all through high school and also holding jobs during college, as well as full time during the summers. Sometimes the school-year work is on-campus jobs through the university, and sometimes it's not. Also, the sources of help you list does not include scholarships from the university. Actually, almost all private universities accept so much gvmt help that ultimately a school scholarship probably should be included in that list, but maybe he wouldn't do so.

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sabotabby

You might be able to do it if you went to college here, but not university. Tuition rates are just too high. Maybe in Québec, but not Ontario. And while a scholarship took care of my entire first year's tuition and some of the rest, this dude was clearly not scholarship material. (Also, I would consider that taxpayer/parental contribution as well—meritocracy is a myth. I was able to get high enough grades for a scholarship because I went to a good school with good teachers and because my mother was able to help with living expenses, meaning that I was working part-time, not full, and the money was going to university savings rather than to the family's expenses.)

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As I say below, this does depend a lot on the situation, and I'm only familiar with the USA.

On whether school-given or nonprofit-org-based scholarships are parental/gvmt help or not, I can see arguments both ways. I certainly can see why a libertarian would see an absolute difference, and I myself (though with no economic libertarian leanings at all) see reasons for making that distinction. (For a reductio ad absurdum, does "parental help" in college include good maternal nutrition so one has a good brain?)

All this is mere interesting discussion, because the guy really stepped in it when he talked about "his" taxes paying for his 12-grade education!

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joxn.livejournal.com

Maybe he paid capital gains taxes on his trust fund all throughout his tender years?

Seriously, a "merit scholarship" is not your own hard work. It's other people's generosity.

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I think your reductio ad absurdum is interesting as I see that as something very important overlooked by most right-wingers, the huge advantages that background, stability, security, family support, community and indeed nutrition give a child. They tend to overlook that they might apparently have supported themselves, but that their ability to do so often stems from huge advantages and support they had earlier in life.

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You and I pretty much agree. Let's see if I can clarify: I agree that it only makes sense to always keep in mind (& discourse) that most of us "successes" have had huge advantages, most if not all based on social structures that disadvantage others. And I agree many right-wingers don't or won't see this. The reductio ad absurdum is only in a specific context of how much help one got in paying one's way through college. When the issue is that specific, I don't necessarily include things such as good health care that allowed a person to work, if that person did take a job to pay for college. When talking about general support and advantages in life, I would include everything. This comment may come across less as clarifying and more as niit-picking, in which case, sorry.

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No, not at all - I agree with you, too, and I was thinking I might sound too nitpicking, as these things come out ambiguously in typing!

(deleted comment)

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My age may well be showing! I know private college tuition has gone up and up, so my examples may be outdated.

I also don't really know the Canadian system. In the USA, "university" could include state universities, some of which are very good and all of which (I think) are not too costly for in-state students.

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At my university (Cambridge, the England one) you were not allowed to work during term time as you were set about 70 hours a week of academic work (not that I did that much - I would have exploded and died!). At Oxford you were not allowed to work in summers or other holidays either, but maybe all that has changed now they have abolished free education here. It was actually better going to Oxbridge if you were from a poorer background as the colleges themselves were wealthy enough to have cheap-ish term-time accomodation, whereas at most other universities students seemed to have to pay for privately rented accomodation for most of the year, so needed a lot more money.

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Dearie me.
I think more damaging and troubling are the ones who do have some claim to have done well by themselves against the odds or whatever, but who completely refuse to acknowledge that not everyone has the less obvious advantages they might have had, such as emotional support or a few lucky opportunities or having been born great at maths or something. They are harder to argue with and tend to need to be shown real life examples of the vast diversity of human experience and its influence on indiviudals' abilities and circumstances, somehow. Actually I'm guilty of that myself because I often moan about how people from poorer backgrounds could read lots of books and get well-eduacted (before they closed the libraries), wilfully forgetting that obviously if you come form a background culture of no books it isn't necessarily going to just happen like that!

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Have you seen Stephen King's pieces, "Tax Me for F*ck's Sake"? I found it very cheering.

ETA: Despite the fat phobia, which I just expect from King.

Edited Date: 2012-05-28 11:30 am (UTC)

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sabotabby

I have, and it's wonderful, except what's King's beef with fat people anyway?

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King for many years was a yo-yo dieter, who I think finally learned to stay at a weight he liked by developing a miles-per-day walking habit. (He was out on such a walk when almost killed by a van, and although the van driver was totally at fault, I think that's an ironic comment on whether or not habits to lose weight make you live longer.) His novel Thinner, in which a man is cursed to keep losing weight, is in large degree an ironic comment on his struggles to keep his weight down but also (to him inexplicable) ambivalence as he did lose weight. (Much of this comes from statements he's made in interviews.) Think of pathetic, lecherous, selfish Harold Lauder in The Stand, the fat smothering mother of Eddie Kasbrack (sp?) in It, etc.

One of my best articles, I think, is "Playing the Heavy," in which I examine how King's novels It, The Stand, and Misery reflect general cultural views of fat, morality, and gender; it was published in a collection of essays called The Dark Descent, edited by Tony Magistrale (do not confuse with the horror anthology of that name, I think edited by David Hartwell). I also have a promising-but-needs-revision piece on anti-fat and subversive almost fat-rights statements in Thinner, which I presented but which has not been published. I can send e-mail copies of either or both to anyone who LJ-messages me.

At one World Fantasy Con, many years ago, I heard King & Peter Straub exchanging diet tips. (The one I recall is "Never buy larger pants.") Now I know Peter personally, and he badly wants to lose weight, but he does have heart issues, and he genuinely likes my talk against anti-fat stigma in society. His fiction doesn't show the consistent pattern of fat-phobia that King's does.

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tinyrevolution.livejournal.com

A+

I am distraught that all my online community seems to keep moving towards a platform without threaded comments! If someone makes you mad with their ignorance inside a thread which already has 20+ comments, you are basically doomed to swallowing it and moving on or getting sucked into a complete frustrating waste. Well, maybe that's a plus. But it's much harder to do the graceful "here's some facts, moving on now".

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sabotabby

Yeah. One would almost think it was intentional, a movement away from serious discussion and towards superficial social interaction. Not that I'm that conspiracy-minded.

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eyelid.livejournal.com

OMG FB discussions. So stupid.

I've noticed a lot of people getting off FB, too, after the first mad rush. What do they replace FB with? Do they just go outside instead?

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sabotabby

Hah, you wish. Tumblr and Twitter, I think.

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eyelid.livejournal.com

but you can't really have any meaningful interaction on those things. It seems so completely different from LJ (or even FB). How can one replace the other?

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sabotabby

I think a lot of people aren't after meaningful interaction.

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I like that last idea, though of course some of them have stockpiled weapons and tins of food stuff and might unfortunately survive awhile.

My facebook has too few people for me to get toooo upset by arguments. Most people on it I can trust to be ok. Occasionally I put my foot in it by swearing - well, I do that every day, actually - or mentioning one of my many pet prejudices or forgetting that many of my online friends are either Christian or "spiritual" and blaspheming once too often. I think I also alienate people by moaning constantly (that's what Facebook is for, isn't it?). I was meaning to Facebooky-friend you ages and ages ago but then never get round to asking you as I keep thinking aaarrgh I hate Facebook and being about to leave it! It aint that exciting anyway. I think I'll invite you all to be bored by baby photos in the winter, as my LJ account aint letting me post photos any more.

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sabotabby

Oh wow. See, my own FB is very low-drama; I barely ever friend anyone I don't already know unless they're political, so just get into beefs with friends-of-friends. It seems to be mostly old childhood friends and relatives who are problematic—I defriended most of the former except for a few cool people from my high school, and the latter consists only of my uncle (who never posts) and my step-siblings (who are rad).

I will totes be your FB friend. Though I am hard to find so you might need to e-mail me first.

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