Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.

[Rinel]

@ZombieGenesis said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I'm a big believer of calling things what they are not using hyperbole or ridiculous comparisons to get points across. We do not have "concentration camps" on our borders. Using that phrase belittles and demeans both what is happening now and the actual concentration camps that existed during WWII(and other times).

What we have are centers that appear to be offering inhumane and barely livable conditions to people we've invited to be guests of our country. The conditions of these centers are unforgivable and the death rates are inexcusable.

So they're "centers that appear to be offering inhumane and barely livable conditions" to people almost entirely of an ethnic group who are being held there with limited legal recourse, but they aren't concentration camps? What are concentration camps, then? Are the British camps of the Boer War no longer concentration camps? What of the Japanese-American internment camps? Those had better conditions than what we're seeing now.

You say you like calling a spade a spade, without hyperbole, but then you refuse to call these camps what they are. Just because we haven't recreated the death camps at Treblinka or Birkenau doesn't mean we aren't treading down the path we trod with Native Americans and Japanese-Americans.

People say "never again" loses all meaning when it's brought up too much, but in fact overuse of the term merely weakens it. It's only rendered truly meaningless when all analogies to the horrors of the past are forbidden.

[Ghost]

To be fair, I don't think anyone is refusing to call these centers what they are. I think they've got their own outlook on it, where the dictionary definition grows a bit fuzzy, and whatever form that takes doesn't match 1:1 with what someone else thinks they are.

I'm not judging anyone, here. I'm just saying that in this era of "extreme no quarter given" often a disagreeing viewpoint get mistaken as a "refusal to admit" something.

[insomniac7809]

@Ghost said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

To be fair, I don't think anyone is refusing to call these centers what they are. I think they've got their own outlook on it, where the dictionary definition grows a bit fuzzy, and whatever form that takes doesn't match 1:1 with what someone else thinks they are.

I'm not judging anyone, here. I'm just saying that in this era of "extreme no quarter given" often a disagreeing viewpoint get mistaken as a "refusal to admit" something.

I'd say it's less a "refusal to admit" and more a bizarre contortion of language to avoid using a term that matches in every particular but that someone doesn't want to apply in the situation.

[ZombieGenesis]

All I'm gonna say is this and I truly mean it as respectfully as possible; concentration camp is a charged term. When people use it they know full well they are bringing images of Auschwitz to mind. And quite a few people actually do throw the word Nazi in there for good measure. That is disingenuine and does not help the cause at all. When called on it you can nitpick and say "WELL the encyclopedia says..." all you want but the fact remains; you're using a term to paint the picture you want not the picture of what actually is(which is horrific enough). I just do not believe in using the pain and suffering of one group as a crutch to get people to empathize with the pain and suffering that another group is going through now. Even if the term is technically correct it can be twisted and used against those trying to help. I've seen people just throw that phrase out like that's it, it ends the argument. Why? Because of the baggage that term brings with it.

Anyway, I don't know why I commented on this at all. I generally don't get into political or religious discussions for obvious reasons. I'll leave this thread by saying that what is happening at the border, from most reports, seems to be an affront to humanity and something needs to be done. Semantics about what it's called aside.

[Tinuviel]

@ZombieGenesis Don't start a rant with "I'm a big believer of calling things what they are" if you don't want to get into the semantics.

[Ghost]

@ZombieGenesis I hear what you're saying and I don't think you're wrong, but agree it isn't worth the fight.

Regardless of book definition, one issue in America right now is a number of people don't understand these terms. They dont understand that fascism doesnt mean Naziism, but that Naziism is a form of fascism. So when the term fascist gets thrown around, a lot of people go "what, that's ridiculous, I don't hate Jewish people!".

So when the term concentration camp comes to mind, our culture has used that term to describe Auschwitz. Regardless of the actual definition, the knee-jerk reaction to the term is WW2 genocidal labor camps. To further muddy the definition, the US rounded up American citizens into Asian internment camps (which, IMO is a bullshit term), and with changes to the US educational system, the history of these internment camps is largely based on who hunts for the information because it's not being taught in class.

Are the conditions on the border equal to WW2? No. Do they qualify as concentration camps? Yes. Are there people who will argue this because they don't want the Third Reich imagery exaggerating the reality of the situation? I think this is reasonable. Does something need to change for the better? Absolutely.

IMO it's a fucking disgrace that we still claim Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty as national landmarks/icons. If you're not gonna live by the inscription, then pack it up and ship it back to Paris.

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

You can't rightly boast this and then be surprised when people show up going "Hey, I'm tempest-tossed."

[Tinuviel]

I think any further discussion on this topic should be relegated to the Politics section of the forum. That's what it's for.

[Ghost]

@Tinuviel A+greed = Agreed

[Selira]

entire post moved wholesale to politics forum

[Derp]

@Tinuviel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

This is patently incorrect.
From the Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Concentration camp, internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order."
They are not death camps, which seems to be where the confusion arises, but they very much are concentration camps.

People act like concentration camps could never happen here.

Guess what? They already did. Several times.

Let's just be real, you know?

[Tinuviel]

No, I'm not punishing you because you're black. I'm punishing you because you're a shitstain.

[Ganymede]

Liars.

You have no place in the practice of law. Stop doing it.

I recall the conference in chambers and what the judge ordered. Your proposed entry isn't even a football field within what he ordered, jackass. Now I have to get the Court back on the phone because of you.

You were suspended for two and a half years for lying to a client. I was willing to overlook that, but no more.

I will have your blood.

[Prequell]

@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Liars.

You have no place in the practice of law. Stop doing it.

I recall the conference in chambers and what the judge ordered. Your proposed entry isn't even a football field within what he ordered, jackass. Now I have to get the Court back on the phone because of you.

You were suspended for two and a half years for lying to a client. I was willing to overlook that, but no more.

I will have your blood.

This is weirdly interesting

[Ganymede]

@Prequell said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

This is weirdly interesting

It is vexing.

I work really fucking hard, in my opinion. Work's been so busy that I haven't RPed in, like, a week and a half. I'm too busy to put up with bullshit gamesmanship.

This is why people hate lawyers, including other lawyers.

[Ghost]

Question for legal/medical people:

My mom had a knee replacement surgery, and while it fixed the joint issues she says it hurts constantly. Turns out she is allergic to the metal that was used. Fucking yikes, right? She is allergic to an implant stuck inside of her body.

Anyway, does anyone know if allergy tests are supposed to be performed before replacement surgery? It seems logical to me that you'd test that first (because most allergies come in the form of "surprise, you're allergic to shrimp, now!")

I gather she signed the typical pre-operation waiver so she's on her own, but figured I'd ask if anyone knew about this stuff.

[faraday]

@Ghost Bummer for your mom I have no experience with replacement surgery specifically (IANADoctor), but from what I know of other medical procedures, they generally don't perform tests for allergies ahead of time. I found a few studies like this one saying that routine pre-testing is not indicated in implant surgery since the number of complications is so low and false-positives from skin tests are common (i.e. someone gets a rash from nickel jewelry but does just fine with a nickel-whatever-alloy replacement knee.) Still really sucks when it happens though.

[Sparks]

Nine months.

Nine months I've been on aimovig. In that time, I have had very few migraines, and without exception they all responded immediately to the abortive. (I've had one cluster headache, which is freaking terrible; cluster headaches are like migraines on the "Nightmare" difficulty setting, where the pain has a high enough chance of causing suicidal thoughts that they're actually also known as "suicide headaches". But I generally only get 1-2 clusters a year, and the aimovig was never going to help with those, so that's no surprise.)

Today, I woke up with a migraine. Oh well, this has happened once or twice before. "Shoot," says I, "I guess I better take my migraine abortive before I attend my teleconference with the UK office! It only takes an hour at most to kick in, so I'll be more than ready to go into the office today once the two hours of teleconferencing meetings are done."

That was three and a half hours ago.

It has not kicked in. The migraine is, in fact, actively getting worse. I will be working from a dark, quiet room at home today, and may take a half day.

I shouldn't despair. This is just one headache; it's not even the worst migraine I've had by a long shot. But it's the first one in nine months that hasn't responded to the abortive. And now that aimovig has been out long enough, they're seeing that some percentage of folks stop seeing as much effect—sometimes any effect—from it around 8-10 months into treatment. I've been waiting nervously to see if I skated through that window, because the neurologist says that so far she hasn't heard of anyone who makes it through that spot having the aimovig lose effectiveness.

And so all I can think is "Please let this be a fluke. Please don't let this be the first step of a return to the old state." Because that possibility makes me want to cry.

Nine months of understanding what it is to not have a constant low-grade migraine. To not have 2-3 spikes of severe migraine a week. Of actually being able to go out on a sunny day and not worry about whether the sun would turn into a death laser aimed through my eyes at my brain. To not worry about "should I go see that movie with friends, because theater sound systems are awfully loud?"

Please, whatever entity controls medical reactions, let this one be a fluke...

[Rinel]

@Ghost

Without knowing more about the laws of your state, all I can say is that she should get a legal consultation. I'm not comfortable giving any advice that would give you or her the belief that she does or does not have a claim, because I just don't know.

It sounds awful, though. Is there any way she can have it replaced?

[Ghost]

@Rinel Yeah, she would still get a consultation from her own lawyer, I was just wondering if there was any known precedent or standard, so thank you and @faraday for your responses.

As for my mom, she's 68 and a good amount of bone was removed last time. So the jury is still out as to whether or not the current implant could be removed and replaced with a plastic-type alternative without taking too much of her natural body material. So I think she's questioning right now her age vs quality of life. Personally, I hope they can fix it; she shouldn't be taking as much pain medication as she is for so prolonged amount of time.

She'd also be willing to try medicinal marijuana, but won't (right decision) because her pain management doctors would shun her for it.

[faraday]

@Ghost Yeah, like Rinel said - definitely get a local pro's opinion. (Which I see from your latest that she's already doing, but I already had this typed, so...) Even if it's not currently standard practice to perform such testing ahead of time, there is something to be said for saying it should have been given the severity of the impact of getting it wrong. Or it may be standard practice in a specific hospital. Who knows.