Elizabeth Warren Ancestry Thread Part 2

Did Warren do a stupid thing? Yes. Was it the stupidest thing ever? No. Was it so stupid that by itself it renders her incapable of being a good president? No. Is it worth talking about still? No.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Well all the more reason to vote for your drunken racist molesting uncle I guess.
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This is the part I have trouble getting over. No matter how many problems or annoyances you can come up with for a possible Democratic candidate, at the end of the day, your alternative is always Donald Trump, your drunken racist molesting uncle who leaves before paying his share of the bill.

But, I mean, Trump (presumably) has a penis, so that makes it okay, I guess.
 
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I wish more people could grasp that "I'm gonna vote for Candidate X" and "I'm a total fanboy for Candidate X and think they can do no wrong" aren't the same thing.

Barring some sort of factor that I'm literally unable to even imagine a reasonable hypothetical for happening between now and then, I'm gonna vote for whatever Democratic Candidate is nominated to run against Trump.

That does not mean I'll have zero issues with them or throw my support behind everything they do and say.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I wish more people could grasp that "I'm gonna vote for Candidate X" and "I'm a total fanboy for Candidate X and think they can do no wrong" aren't the same thing.

Barring some sort of factor that I'm literally unable to even imagine a reasonable hypothetical for happening between now and then, I'm gonna vote for whatever Democratic Candidate is nominated to run against Trump.

That does not mean I'll have zero issues with them or throw my support behind everything they do and say.
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Indeed. If Biden gets the nomination even I will reluctantly vote for him. I'll even wear a "Biden 20/20" eyepatch to support him. Possibly with fake bloodstains.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Well all the more reason to vote for your drunken racist molesting uncle I guess.
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Cannot tell if you're casting shade on the Republican or the Democratic frontrunner, but I'm guessing the latter since POTUS (allegedly) doesn't drink.

BobTheCoward said:
I think it is even worse that she would readily believe something that produces no benefit.
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The benefit to Warren was explained quite succinctly upthread.
 
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varwoche said:
Still, it's an indicator of a weak personality, and her present day handling of the topic hasn't helped.

Whoever faces Trump needs to be able to look into the eye of the beast without blinking. Think Frodo and Sauron.
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I'm going to have to disagree on both these points. Warren did the same thing that millions of Americans do - believing a family story. And when you expand that beyond claims of Native ancestry, probably almost everyone does something similar. I certainly know I believe some family traditions that can't be verified (because certain kinds of anecdotes rarely can be). I don't think there's anything in believing family histories that inherently indicates a weak personality. I guess you could fault her for being so conspicuously credible of the claims, but, again, that kind of behavior in general is so common, I'm not going to fault her for it; and I'm a person with recent, strong ties to a culture that results in frequent "hey, I'm that, too - well, like, a quarter or an eighth or something"-type comments from people that get annoying. But I don't hold it against anyone because I learned a long time ago that's just what America is like - people here like holding onto distant claims of identity. If I had to consider every family story or claim of ethnicity someone has told me a sign of personal weakness, I don't know if I could respect anybody

And I actually see her response as fairly strong so far. She was called out for being clueless and handling criticism poorly, apologized, and is publicly trying to make amends and do a better job. That shows a lot of maturity that's, IMO, a good counter to Trump's refusal to admit to even small mistakes. Doing things like using a marker to "correct" a map and make it seem like you were right all along is a sign of a weak personality to me, owning up to your mistakes isn't. Could she have done a better job? Maybe, it's hard to say what exactly the right response to any smear campaign is. Will the GOP try to make it into a big deal? Yes, and there is some ammo there (although, as I said in the previous thread, it might be dangerous territory because so many Americans, especially southerners, claim NA ancestry, too), just like with the emails thing, but at least the people with the biggest stake in Warren's claims have accepted her apology and generally tend to approve of her now.
 
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TragicMonkey said:
That she switched parties, and the reason behind it, is one of her best selling points.
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That she claimed to be a Native American and a Republican at the same time should have led her to deeper thoughts about her won identity.

Also, can we treat this like alcoholism: Yeah, she did that stuff back when she was in the GOP, but she's been clean for decades now.
 
ArchSas said:
I'm going to have to disagree on both these points. Warren did the same thing that millions of Americans do - believing a family story.
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I don't fault her for that aspect. The problem is, even per the family story, she was fractional. Self-identifying based on a small fraction is dishonest.
 
varwoche said:
I don't fault her for that aspect. The problem is, even per the family story, she was fractional. Self-identifying based on a small fraction is dishonest.
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I think it would be dishonest only to the extent that she believed it would be literally read that way by some person who had an interest and that her intent was to fool that party.

If you go to the website of a company that sells alcohol, you'll find that they ask you to enter your age to be allowed admittance. And for some godforsaken reason, they tend to use drop down menus instead of a typed entry. So you have to go through a slightly awkward process to find your birth year.

I assure you, I am over 21. In fact, I'm turning 40 this coming year.

And yet, on at least two occaisions on entering one of these websites, I have merely scrolled down to the first year that would be over 21 and submitted that age.

Have I presented something which is not true? Absolutely. Have I been dishonest? No. Because I didn't intend to mislead or cheat anyone. That's both the dictionary definition and the meaning of the word you'd need to use to have it be worthy of moral reproachment.
 
Cavemonster said:
I think it would be dishonest only to the extent that she believed it would be literally read that way by some person who had an interest and that her intent was to fool that party.

If you go to the website of a company that sells alcohol, you'll find that they ask you to enter your age to be allowed admittance. And for some godforsaken reason, they tend to use drop down menus instead of a typed entry. So you have to go through a slightly awkward process to find your birth year.

I assure you, I am over 21. In fact, I'm turning 40 this coming year.

And yet, on at least two occaisions on entering one of these websites, I have merely scrolled down to the first year that would be over 21 and submitted that age.

Have I presented something which is not true? Absolutely. Have I been dishonest? No. Because I didn't intend to mislead or cheat anyone. That's both the dictionary definition and the meaning of the word you'd need to use to have it be worthy of moral reproachment.
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You encounter dropdowns like that because of a universal programming rule: any field you allow the user to free text input will let a constant stream of garbage data into your database.
 
Since there's no actual verification of the age and it's all on the honor system is should just be a "Are you Over 21, Yes or No" box. What's the point of making any system to input actual age in that kind of context?
 
varwoche said:
I don't fault her for that aspect. The problem is, even per the family story, she was fractional. Self-identifying based on a small fraction is dishonest.
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:thumbsup:

To the extent that we can categorize "race" (I think there should be more boxes to check here in the U.S.).
 
JoeMorgue said:
Since there's no actual verification of the age and it's all on the honor system is should just be a "Are you Over 21, Yes or No" box. What's the point of making any system to input actual age in that kind of context?
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Because many children are too ignorant to do the subtraction necessary to figure out what years are more than 20 years ago.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Since there's no actual verification of the age and it's all on the honor system is should just be a "Are you Over 21, Yes or No" box. What's the point of making any system to input actual age in that kind of context?
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To catch the young kids that can't math it out.
 
Cavemonster said:
I think it would be dishonest only to the extent that she believed it would be literally read that way by some person who had an interest and that her intent was to fool that party.
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I can't read her mind, retrospectively or otherwise, when she wrote her race down as "American Indian". All I know is she wasn't truthful, knowingly.

... And yet, on at least two occaisions on entering one of these websites, I have merely scrolled down to the first year that would be over 21 and submitted that age.

Have I presented something which is not true? Absolutely. Have I been dishonest? No. Because I didn't intend to mislead or cheat anyone. That's both the dictionary definition and the meaning of the word you'd need to use to have it be worthy of moral reproachment.
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I find this comparison unconvincing for two reasons: (1) For all practical purposes, you didn't misrepresent yourself. You were legally qualified to make the purchase. Whereas Warren misrepresented herself. (2) That's a far more casual scenario.

By the way, your concept of the dictionary definition of "dishonest" is wrong, in the sense of too many qualifiers.

Belz... said:
Foolish, perhaps. But dishonest?
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Clearly.
 
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