Huell kills em all!

Except badger, who goes to Hollywood with skinny pete to write a science fiction tv show about a high school teacher on pluto who comes down with the venusian flu and starts cooking space meth to pay his robot doctor bills.

It's like anything else-"Christian" can encompass everything from 'love thy neighbor' to Fred Phelps

I probably shouldn't try on the specifics of "Feminism", for obvious reasons, except to reiterate that I identify as one, and for what I believe are the most broadly, commonly accepted goals and definitions of that label, namely things like reproductive freedom, equal pay, equal rights, etc. I do think there is broad support.

It's a real question, and not so easily answered; are these perceived "pr problems"- are they the fault of reactionary propaganda? Are they the fault of extreme ideological hard-liners inside the movement? Both? Neither?

Let's take environmentalism, since that's probably an easier one for me to opine on without setting off "alarm bells" with some here, and certainly when i self-identify as an environmentalist one would think it wont, at least, trigger a fusillade of eyerolls.

Broadly, one could say environmentalism encompasses wanting to protect the Earth, keep the environment clean. Broad goals which most support. Do the actions of, say, the people who blow up SUV dealerships speak for all "environmentalists"? I dont think they do, but interestingly enough it is those sorts of extremists who are most invested in keeping the label "environmentalist" or real environmentalist, to themselves.

I strongly support action on global warming, but Ive also held that real change is going to come primarily through technological breakthroughs in finding clean ways to power our shit. That's the hail mary pass. Telling people they need to give up their cars- it is just not going to sell, and anyone who claims it is, is deluded. Good, bad, it's just a fact. Maybe that means there is no hope for the planet, but the human animal, I think. Is always going to break in the direction of freedom. Long term.

This is why civil rights has succeeded, why LGBT rights are succeeding. People want to be free, they want to run their own lives, they want to make their own decisions. They simply don't like scolds and authoritarians, much to the perpetual chagrin of the scolds and authoritarians.

Decidedly Un-Wholesome! and Wholly Inappropriate!

Harummph!

The bottom line is NO ONE HAS ANY RIGHTS AT ALL as long as cops think pot smoking may be involved.

I mean, let's cut to the chase. That's what all these roadside cavity searches in Texas are about. "Got a bag of weeeeeed in there, dontcha"

It's the drug war, and it's been turned into a blank check for Law Enforcement to do whatever the fuck they want, whenever they want.

The woman in the Family Court who was assaulted and the Family Court judge didn't give a shit? She "needed" a "drug search". No reason, she just did. Gotta CHECK FER DRUGZ!

The fundamental conceit of the drug war is that the government owns your body and can tell you what you can or can't do with it. So of course they can probe every inch of it to check for prohibited psycho-alterants.

To paraphrase the Immortal Dr. Seuss:

As a general rule, I don't take advice from anyone whose motto is "I Feel Like Shit and Want To Die"

I love 'tang.

That's it.

I'm taking "R Jeezy" off my twitter feed.

because there's a popular Democratic President on his 2nd Term in the White House

and no blow job for the Republican Party to waste the next 4 years investigating.

I would support such an idea, tentatively, and also echoing what Posteritatis said;

First off, like Buckminster Fuller, I am fundamentally an optimist.

Please note I said optimist, not idiot. And they are not synonymous, as much as some on DU may tirelessly argue that they are. I believe humanity faces huge- perhaps even, yes, insurmountable- problems... but I also look at the miracles around us that science and knowledge have brought, and I think the potential for the future is way wide-fucking-open.

And that makes me glad. That, among other things, makes me optimistic, even with the many problems and challenges we face.

Plus life is too short to spend the whole time grumbling "bleeehhh meehhhh warrrggglll but everything sucks blah" like Eeyore all the damn time.

As you can imagine, this is not always a terribly popular position to take on DU. Frankly, too much of DU these days seems absolutely obsessed with telling the rest of DU how much everything sucks, when we're not taking each others' moral inventory and lecturing our online "friends" about their seemingly endless myriad shortcomings.

People forget, I think, that this is a place we choose to be; very few of us are here by court order, I should think. That doesn't mean I need to be and be surrounded by Pollyanna Gladtidings all the time, but it sure as shit means I'm not going to waste the majority of my time with the humanity haters and negativity pushers.. Life is, again, far too short, and if we're really doomed, it doesn't make a difference either way.

So: Short answer (If I am capable of such a thing) I would support such a group and enthusiastically participate in it; however, no matter how hip or cool dystopian apocalypticism may have been made between 1970 and the 1990s, I do believe there can and should be room for optimism and positivity. I would hope this group would reflect that.