Monday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Unanimous ruling by SCOTUS" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The title refers to a decision by the US Supreme Court regarding a ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court that removed former President Donald Trump from Colorado's presidential primary ballot. As the original poster states, the decision to keep Trump on the ballot was unanimous, but that is only part of the story. As is so often the case with the US legal system, the details of this decision are important and not necessarily what one might think at first glance. While all justices agreed that Trump should remain on the ballot, four justices disagreed with the majority opinon that only Congress can remove a federal candidate. Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the three liberals on this issue. As the minority concurrence pointed out, the Fourteenth Amendment says that if a candidate is disqualified under that amendment, "Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability." The suggestion here is not that Congress would be undoing its own action, as the Court majority would have it, but rather removing a disqualification enacted by another body. By ignoring this, the majority has created a contradictory and confusing situation. The three liberal justices went even further in their disagreement, arguing that the ruling was far too broad and effectively meant that no candidate would ever be disqualified from holding the presidency under the Fourteenth Amendment. Another point that should be emphasized is that the Court did not rule on the topic of whether Trump participated in or instigated an insurrection. The ruling was very much not an exoneration of the former President. As so often happens in the political forum, many posters were less interested in the facts and more interested in scoring political points. Several posters claimed that this ruling meant that Trump could no longer be accused of being an insurrectionist. In fact, as noted, the Court was silent on this issue. A number of posters criticized President Joe Biden for attempting to defeat Trump in the courts rather than the ballot box. However, this case was originally brought by Colorado Republicans and Biden had no involvement. Nevertheless, posters spent a considerable part of this thread trying to tie Biden to various legal actions involving Trump. It is clear that many have bought into Trump's allegations that Democrats have weaponized the court system. What really is apparent is how Republicans have attempted to neuter all avenues for holding Trump to account. Republicans stymied two impeachment efforts because they claimed the matters were better settled in court rather than by Congress. This ruling says that the issue lies with Congress rather than the courts. Basically, Trump is a hot potato that keeps getting passed back and forth.

Next was a thread posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. Titled, "Sad about no longer being attracted to DW", the original poster says that he loves his wife and has tremendous respect for her. However, he claims that after having their last child, she let herself go and has gained weight, frequently looking frumpy. He says that he would never say anything about this to her and, as a result, an anonymous forum is the only place in which he can admit this. In a follow-up post, the original poster clarified that his wife does exercise regularly and that he thinks she just eats too much. The poster, clearly understanding that he was not going to receive a sympathetic reception in our female-dominated forum, encouraged posters to "flame away". But while, as expected, most posters took issue with the original poster, not all of them were hostile. Several posters attempted to explain how childbearing, hormonal changes, and simple genetics can make weight loss an almost insurmountable challenge for many women. The original poster's wife's regular exercise contradicts the allegation that she has let herself go. Basically, these posters argue, the original poster is complaining about something outside his wife's control. A number of posters are sympathetic to the extent that they say that they feel the same way about their husbands who have not aged well, also gaining significant weight. When it comes to weight issues, DCUM posters frequently take extreme positions. Several posters in this thread seem to be even more bothered than the original poster by his wife's weight gain. They argue that she should be eating better or exercising more. This provokes a huge debate about the effectiveness of such advice. After his single follow-up post, the original poster appears to have abandoned the thread and the discussion lost most relevance to his original post anyway. Posters debated a host of issues such as attractiveness and the importance of physical appearance in marriages. One diversion was discussion of various beauty standards beyond the European standards popular in the US. This led to a discussion of how individuals are socialized into appreciating specific beauty standards. As is common in such threads, many posters discussed their own personal experiences which, depending on those experiences, either supported the idea that the original poster's wife could do more to be attractive or argued against that suggestion and, instead, highlighted the potential obstacles.

The next most active thread was titled, "Any other moms out just not order when you eat with your family?" and posted in the "General Parenting Discussion" forum. The original poster says that when her family goes out to eat, her kids rarely finish their food. The original poster cannot tolerate either the waste or the expense, so she does not order food herself but finishes the leftovers. She wonders if there are other moms who do the same. To say that posters have strong feelings about this scenario would be a vast understatement. The thread is currently 21 pages long. Posters are all over the place about what specifically bothers them with this behavior. Some see it as "disordered eating", or a misguided attempt to lose weight. The orignal poster denies this by repeating that she finishes the kids leftovers and also tends to order a side salad for herself. Other posters think that it is unfair to the restaurant and staff and don't think the original poster should go out to eat if her family cannot afford it. Some posters suggest ordering kids meals for the children but the original poster says most of the restaurants to which they go don't offer such options. Another suggestion is to simply bring leftovers home. Other posters say that they commonly order one dish that is split between two people which is almost the same thing. Therefore, they have no problem with the original poster's behavior. In some cases, this practice is not limited to moms. One poster describes her husband who orders salads but then picks fries off of everyone else's plate. He refuses desserts, but then expects to split any dessert ordered by another family member. All the while he congratulates himself for not ordering fries or dessert. Another poster's husband orders so much food that it embarrasses the poster. Therefore, she orders less in an effort to balance things out. She is depriving herself in an effort to hide her husband's gluttony. This thread managed to generate some insane reactions. For instance, one poster described going to Ben's Chili Bowl at the airport and only getting chicken fingers for her child, some of which she also ate. This provoked a poster to accuse her of choosing Ben's only to get a photo for Instagram of herself frequenting a Black-owned DC landmark. How all of that was divined from the fact that the poster's child was hungry but unable to eat an entire order of chicken fingers is beyond me. As one poster summed things up, "this seemingly innocuous thread has somehow flushed out some absolute crazies."

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. Titled, "Study of elite college Admissions", the original poster described a study analyzing the impact of wealth on college admissions. For some reason, the original poster ignored the main focus of the study and, instead concentrated on specific findings regarding which universities had the most wealthy applicants and which had the highest percentages of wealthy students actually attending. The primary conclusions of the report align almost completely with a number of other articles or analyses of college admissions that have been discussed recently in the college forum. Like this thread, a number of those threads have been among the most active and, hence, I have discussed several of them. As such, I am going over pretty well-trodden ground in this post. What the researchers found is that:

Children from families in the top 1% are more than twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college (Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, and Chicago) as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT/ACT scores.

The advantage is attributed to three factors: 1) legacy preferences; 2) non-academic credentials (e.g. extracurricular activities that tend to be stronger for high-income families); and 3) athletic recruitment. The report claims that two-thirds of the admissions gap between high and middle income applicants is due to those advantages. The final third is due to "differences in rates of application and matriculation". The report also finds that these advantages for the very wealthy do not exist at flagship public colleges. Posters react in this thread pretty much as they have in other threads on similar topics. They complain about the "barbell" nature of elite college admissions that favor the very wealthy and the poor, leaving out the "donut hole" families in the middle. Many posters argue that this is why state flagship universities are becoming more popular as these highly-qualified but not extremely wealthy students choose them over the traditional elite colleges. Some posters in this thread are comfortable with the situation described in the report. They believe that those who cannot afford elite universities shouldn't expect to attend such institutions. They should go to public universities that they can afford instead. One ramification of advantage for the wealthy outlined in the report is that graduates of elite schools disproportionately hold leadership positions in the US. Therefore, leadership positions are not necessarily being filled with the most capable — many less wealthy but equally qualified students are refused admissions by elite colleges — but by those whose achievements are primarily owed to their wealth.