A gratuity is just a postdated bribe, and everybody including the Supreme Court knows it.

There’s another whole aspect to the recurring pushes to remove the dams that’s pretty much always left out too.

Likely the biggest beneficiaries if the dams were removed would be power companies, who, even with the dams generally operating at a tiny fraction of capacity, are stuck having to sell cheap hydroelectric power at low rates.

If the dams were removed, they’d be able to justify contracting (often with their own subsidiaries) for the construction of expensive new power plants with lower capacity and higher operating costs and would then be able to convince the PUCs to grant them massive rate increases.

Ah, but I’m sure that has nothing to do with the mysteriously well-funded campaigns to remove the dams that get a new round of publicity every few years…

Your orgional comment reads

Toxic man: doing something toxic

No it doesn’t.

It’s literally right there, just a couple of posts up from this one. There’s no excuse for misrepresenting it.

Here’s what I actually said:

The left: “The patriarchy and toxic masculinity are evil and destructive!”

Young men: “Okay. What should I do instead then?”

l>The left: “Fuck off!”

I didn’t stipulate “young” men by accident - that’s the central point. I’m not talking about adults who have already developed a set of behaviors (which makes your first sentence entirely and completely wrong). I’m talking about young people - people who are lost and confused and casting about for guidance, as virtually all young people are (and not coincidentally, that’s also what the linked article is talking about).

And ironically enough, you actually provide an example of the problem insofar as you don’t even acknowledge the distinction - you just lump them in with overtly misogynistic and toxic adults and condemn them each and all. You not only refuse to provide them with the guidance they want and need, but bristle self-righteously at the very thought that there might be any expectation that you should.

And meanwhile, people like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate go out of their way to recognize them and cultivate them. And it works not least because you’ve already written them off.

Which is pretty much exactly my point, and the point of the linked article. We need to do more than simply assume that young men are automatically misogynists and therefore condemn them. We need to provide them with something positive - an actual path that they can follow that leads to a better way of living. They’re right there, right now - at the crossroads in their lives, wondering how they should go about growing into adults, and Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate and their ilk are right there, right now, telling them a bunch of toxic bullshit.

And meanwhile, what are we offering them? Just what you said here - the presumption that they’re already toxic, and a bland command to knock it the fuck off.

Self-evidently, that’s not enough.

And in turn, I don’t understand this comment. You seem to be saying that young people should just figure things out for themselves, and asking why it should be someone else’s responsibility to provide them with guidance.

Is that what you actually believe?

It’s about goddamned time.

This has been what’s happened for the last 20 years or so:

The left: “The patriarchy and toxic masculinity are evil and destructive!”

Young men: “Okay. What should I do instead then?”

The left: “Fuck off!”

So, entirely predictably, they’ve fucked off. Right into the welcoming embrace of the toxically masculine and patriarchal right.