Well, as you know, Trump’s been impeached on Trumped up charges, none of which are mentioned in the constitution. This is historic. I hope a trial occurs so that Trump is completely exonerated, the Democrats rebuked for their partisan efforts, and the evidence of Biden’s possible corruption gets a fair trial.

So if you're trying to argue a paradigm shift then make your case?

Provide supporting data relative to employment job descriptions, dress codes, analogous social norms and customs snd the like.

Did I miss something or have you provided that somewhere?

What I’m trying to argue is that we should resist the pressure on science to conform to a limited, ever-changing and infantilizing lexicon of speech, in this case the lexicon of the politically correct. I’ve already given examples and shared the concurring arguments of others to give force to the argument.

Yep. It's not politically correct to do so. It's common sense.

Would you like me to repost my justification? Otherwise you have not provided any justification for it being appropriate and suitable or proper for the circumstances.

I'm waiting....

I think it’s totally appropriate because I’m not offended by his shirt. It’s just a collared shirt with cartoons on it. It’s common sense.

How do you square that circle and make it objectively true that all public officials should wear sexually-charged t-shirts during public speaking engagements?

I never said anything like that. I think that shirt is appropriate given the venue. You don’t. So why do you think it is inappropriate? Is it because it is politically incorrect to do so?

Talk about thread-drift. I don't like the expression "quantum supremacy" because it implies no further scientific progress is likely in computing. Not because of PC, which I endured for years at the college level. How did this devolve into muscle-shirts? :brow:

What do you think about their taking issue with the term and their justifications for doing so? Are they right? Are they wrong?

And so you would tell your children that correct?

I wouldn’t, no.

Look I know you want to make me look silly, but is that argument coming any time soon?

Yes I think it’s appropriate.

I will discuss the second part of the topic no problem. But the first part I'm confused with your logic.

On the one hand you're saying you would not endorse a president wearing a sexually-charged t-shirt at all his/hee public speaking events. And so you would, in our analogy, go ahead and tell your children that it would be inappropriate for the president to do so.

On the other hand you're not willing to concede to the inappropriateness of the astronomer's sexually-charged t-shirt.

Did I get that right,?

(Again we're talking about what is appropriate for the venue. )

I wouldn’t tell them it was inappropriate. I wouldn’t tell them this because 1) I am not prim and wish not to promote that behavior to anyone, and 2) I think there are better ways to go about it. We can simply tell them what they should wear, what people expect them to wear, and why they should do so, for example.

So are you conceding that the astronomer's sexually charged t-shirt was inappropriate for the venue?

I am not, no.

Look, let’s discuss the topic. I’m willing to hear your argument. As far as I know you think the shirt is inappropriate for the venue. Do you believe this justifies the treatment of Matt Taylor?

I wouldn’t tell them that, no.

If you don’t want to discuss it I get that. Perhaps it’s not high-brow enough for you. But I think that because it dumbs down public discourse is one of the reasons it should be opposed. I was only trying to give some examples.

Okay let's take it to the next level how would you defend that in the face of your children watching TV when the president of the United States wears a sexually-charged t-shirt at a public speaking event. Tell me how you would defend that.

I would simply tell them the president has every right to wear the clothing he chooses even if we don’t like it because that freedom is more important than our aversion to his t-shirt. I would tell them that whether I find the shirt offensive cannot, and should never, be used as an excuse for suppressing that freedom, because that’s exactly the mentality used by totalitarian and repressive forces to justify their denial of human rights.

Okay should the president of the United States wear a wife beater tank top and a public speaking event?

I don’t think that is appropriate, no. But if he did I would defend his right to do so as I would anyone else.

let me get this straight are you saying wearing sexually-charged attire is appropriate for most wedding pictures?

No I’m saying people can decide on their own the appropriateness of their attire no matter what I think is appropriate or not.

Actually you avoided my point, proving your own efforts to dumb down the discourse.

Are you saying that if a woman wore trousers with sexually charged graphics that that would be appropriate?

No I’m saying people can decide on their own the appropriateness of their attire.

It’s “inappropriate”? Like it was once inappropriate for women to wear trousers?

I don’t think his shirt was inappropriate at all. What I do think is inappropriate is berating a decorated scientist and tarnishing his feats because they don’t like his t-shirt.

Dude, it has nothing to do with morality. It is political correctness. Do you get that?

Then what’s the problem with “wearing a sexually charged t-shirt”? It didn’t hinder his job at all. If it is simply a matter of not liking the t-shirt, then saying “I don’t like his t-shirt” suffices.

Far-right? That’s a lie, but I appreciate the concern.

I find policing what people wear is far more offensive and inappropriate than a rocket scientist’s choice of shirts. If you want to engage in that sort of behavior there are plenty religions that have morality police.

The whistleblower alleges that Trump made “a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cyber security firm Crowdstrike,”

Politifact even quotes both. Except the transcript reveals he made no such “specific request” to locate and turn over servers.

The Whistleblower alleges “ The President also praised Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko, and suggested that Mr. Zelensky might want to keep him in his position”.

But that’s not true.

But politifact is right about one thing, something I’ve been saying the whole time.

Where the complaint and the president veer apart is on what the events mean. The whistleblower writes: Trump "is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." That’s also how House Democrats have framed it in the first article of impeachment.

Republicans dispute that interpretation of Trump’s call. They point out that there is no explicit mention of either 2020 or the re-election campaign in the White House summary of the Trump-Zelensky call. They say the whistleblower made a sensational leap in word choice (none more so than "Trump pressured") that unfairly shaped media coverage of Trump’s handling of Ukraine.

Given the history of corruption in Ukraine and Hunter Biden’s involvement there, Trump asking about it was legitimate.

Of course politifact wouldn’t go so far as to say that part is a complete and utter lie, fantasy, fabrication as I have done, but at least it’s there. That’s pretty damning to their whole case. This mischaracterization of Trump’s call, his motives, will sink the dem and whistleblower’s whole case.

Political correctness is used as a pejorative, yes. But it does also mean that language or policies are used with the intention to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in society. Or then in a more general definition: something that is correct from a certain political viewpoint, but not universally accepted to be so.

Do you remember the time when the rocket scientist Matt Taylor successfully landed a spacecraft on a comet? We all should, yet the amazing accomplishment was overshadowed by the response to the shirt he wore during the live-stream of the mission, which had upon it women in “pornographic poses”. The PC backlash went on to imply that the shirt was an example of why women shy away from STEM fields—“casual sexism” as a Slate article put it, and “casual misogyny” in a Verge article—and that Taylor and his shirt were guilty of it. After the greatest moment of his career was ruined, Taylor broke down in tears upon admitting his poor choice in shirts, and apologized profusely to the victims of his “sexism”, who no-doubt laid prostrate on the floor around him.

So on the one hand I can agree with avoiding offending people in our own language, but often its about enforcing an orthodoxy and punishing anyone who strays from it.

The concept of political correctness was invented as satire by the left, adopted by conservatives lacking the self-awareness to realize they were being mocked, and finally appropriated by reactionaries to justify their victomhood complex. The only people decrying political correctness - i.e., the absolute minimum that you can do, as a human being, to accommodate your fellow citizens - are right-wing ideologues seeking to justify existing systems of inequality. Your bigotry is pretty transparent.

That’s not true. Most Americans at least oppose it, right and left young and old, and every shade of color.

Most members of the “exhausted majority,” and then some, dislike political correctness. Among the general population, a full 80 percent believe that “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Even young people are uncomfortable with it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24. On this particular issue, the woke are in a clear minority across all ages.

Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness—and it turns out race isn’t, either.

Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87 percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/

Political correctness has been derided by pundits from all over the spectrum.

That’s a fair analysis. I appreciate it.

Though I cannot think of one thing he could be impeached for—they were trying to impeach him before he even stepped into office—you are right that Trump shouldn’t be confident in his win. The Democrats are winning in the dark money front.

Nonetheless, Trump might have an easy win in 2020, according to Moody's accurate election model.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/15/moodys-trump-on-his-way-to-an-easy-2020-win-if-economy-holds-up.html

My point is that science should remain ideology-free and scientists should have free reign to use the words they see fit. The threat from the religious is well-known and hardly warrants discussion, but the threat from the post-modernists and constructivists is becoming more apparent.

The Sokal affair is an example, but also the cancelling of Nobel Laureate Timothy Hunt proves pressure can result in loss of employment and social ostracism.

Philosopher of Science Noretta Koertge wrote a wonderful article on this very topic and gives plenty more examples.

https://www.nas.org/blogs/dicta/political_correctness_in_the_science_classroom

Political correctness and the use of euphemism in science has nothing to do with politics. Political correctness is reviled by both left and right.

It is science. “Quantum Supremacy” is a technical term in quantum computing. The word “supremacy” still has meaning outside the context of race and colonial studies.

What evidence do you have to ground this suspicion?

It’s complete speculation. Democrat megalomania and duplicity was made apparent in their emails. Given the flimsy case it is almost certain to be politically motivated. Then again, never attribute to malice that which could be explained by stupidity. I could be wrong.

“if its values contradict each other, and its exceptions are highly situational and inconsistently applied.”

https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Sociology/Book%3A_Sociology_(Boundless)/3%3A_Culture/3.5%3A_Culture_and_the_Dominant_Ideology_in_the_U.S./3.5C%3A_Value_Contradictions

They’ve been trying to impeach the president before he took office. I suspect they’ve chosen this time because their ability to win the next election through democratic means has quickly diminished.

The problem with values and value systems is that they are often internally contradictory. I think some form or other of compromise suffices. Perhaps politics is the result.

I wrote it as clear as I could, but if you say the moon is made out of cheese and I say it is not made out of cheese we have a contradiction. In order to “solve” the contradiction we need to determine which of the statements is accurate.

We can contradict a statement by merely stating it’s opposite. To solve it we’d need to determine whether the statement or its contradiction are true.

That would be a false sense of security. Any mob, religious or not, can and has torn apart the innocent on a whim.

Right, so they seem more worried about the politics and not justice. I don’t think you’re wrong on that one though I would say this has been a partisan charade since the beginning. We’ll find out just how partisan it is with tomorrow’s votes on the articles of impeachment. My own suspicion is it will be more partisan on votes “for” and more bipartisan on votes “against”.

Human labor has been replaced by machine-labor for quite some time now, at least since the industrial revolution. As old work perishes new work is born.

So they're admitting to being partisan hacks who care more about protecting the Republican party than holding the President accountable for misbehaviour.

What misbehavior? You guys keep saying he did something wrong.

I’m not going to explain to you how sanctions are more effective than hashtags and Guardian articles.

False, I said it was far more effective than any anti-Trump virtue signalling. I never said “effectiveness” so your use of quotes is a fabrication.

The act promotes respect for human rights at all levels of government by enabling the US executive branch to apply targeted sanctions on any individual involved in a human rights violation, from senior officials to low-level officers and even nongovernment associates. These sanctions can take the form of asset freezes for funds held in US banks and bans on visas for coming to the US.

The Global Magnitsky Act functions as a deterrent, forcing foreign officials at all levels who would use unlawful violence or corruption to consider repercussions from the US government. The act also provides incentives to foreign governments to improve their own accountability mechanisms. By cooperating with the US on Global Magnitsky investigations, foreign leaders can show that they will not tolerate human rights abusers in their own countries.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/09/13/us-global-magnitsky-act

The point of the Global Magninski Act is to deny individuals entry into the US, allow the seizure of any of their property held in the country, and effectively prevent them from entering into transactions with large numbers of banks and companies.

Obviously a token gesture.

One far more effective than any anti-Trump virtue signalling, but sure.