domain:questioner.substack.com
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
7m ago
The big one, as I see it, is the migration of the abortion debate from "pro-choice / pro-life" to various terms like "reproductive rights", "reproductive freedom", "family planning", and, most eye-rolling of all, "right to choose."
It's a sleight of linguist hand that moves the subject of debate from the issue of terminating a pregnancy to the much more broad concept of individual liberties and choice. This is effective because, in the most whishy-washy general sense, very few people in America vote for less "choice" and / or less "freedom."
The apoplectic left doesn't actually have a very specific reason why they hate Trump. Ask them. In real life. Most will, first, engage that classic cosmopolitan liberal snide sense of humor and begin with something like "I mean, where do I even start? lolol!" Keep pushing. Get past the "literally Hitler's" and eventually you'll probably get to some version of "He's trying to take away our rights?" Which ones? Specifically And then you'll get to some real meat - maybe. The Dobbs decision will probably make an appearance. This is when you can calmly inform your counterparty that Dobbs didn't "make abortion illegal" or anything close to it.
But the vibes will remain. "He's made the country feel so much worse!" Has he? Or does this linguistic shift mean that anything short of ear-splitting affirmation of everyone's "lived truth" default to Nazi level oppression?
GBRK
12m ago
taking the easy way out
If it's the easy way out, that must be because of either or both of these factors:
- The demand (A.K.A. economic need, a.k.a. potential gains due to specialization and trade) for migrants is so large that we would be shooting ourselves in the foot to keep them out.
- The welfare state of the receiving country is too generous
If we fix #2 (which to be real, we should be doing regardless of the immigrant question) then there isn't any problem.
mostly in such societies that offer the most no-strings-attached public welfare.
That's a europe problem. Luckily, america is better than europe: we get way more illegal immigrants, which are the best kind, because they're ineligible for the most expensive forms of public welfare (in the non-stupid states) and therefore prove themselves to be the motivated kind by working hard for low pay.
America isn't the only country that sees immigrants.
You're right. Unfortunately, the whole world isn't america. That's their problem, and they should fix that. They can start by adopting our hyper-assimilationist culture and laws if they're leery of direct annexation, but I wouldn't hesitate to make the UK airstrip one if asked.
GBRK
18m ago
I'd want some sort of mechanism to directly help him out over and above just me giving him cash
What if giving him cash is just mathematically the most effective option? I occasionally donate to GiveDirectly because I believe in their premise: that the administrative efficiency of just distributing cash directly is so high that enabling the occasional bad behavior is outweighed by all the good behavior it promotes and bureaucratic behavior it avoids. I'd concede that not every individual would benefit from the cash-- I don't give money to homeless people directly because I reasonably suspect they would misuse it-- but that's a rule-proving exception. Deciding which particular individual you want to give cash to re-introduces the hated administrative burden; better to do something like a UBI or the libertarian negative tax rate.
I think I agree, morally, that no amount of government spending can ever replace charity... but some amount of government spending is just sensible economics.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
28m ago
Most people don't buy most things in advertisements they see. The way it works financially is through scale: advertisements are shown to thousands or millions of people for relatively cheap (like $2 per thousand impressions).
Even if it doesn't prompt a direct sale, advertisement at least gets the word out. Raid: Shadow Legends is just a shitty mobile game like any other, but it's practically a household name on Youtube due to their aggressive sponsorship policy.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
34m ago
The ideal Mummy State makes the badly-behaved retarded kid its problem, not the healthy siblings' problem.
But that's the rub and where the analogy falls short.
The State's problem IS my problem because of how taxes work. In the mommy/sibling/bad sibling framing, the mommy who takes on the burden of the bad kid is paying out of her own pocket. She isn't demanding the good kid get a job and then bring home 25% of his or her wages to immediately be wasted on indulging the bad kid's emotional needs.
People who decry the Nanny State concept, in my mind, aren't going far enough. There is no such thing as a Nanny State. There is only confiscation of the abundance that the responsible and capable have produce on their own to be redistributed for .... reasons?
Direct, socially network charity is what I want. If I see that there's a guy in my town struggling because of some legitimate bad luck, I'd want some sort of mechanism to directly help him out over and above just me giving him cash. Local level, socially networked welfare.
Some of the counterarguments I see are:
-
Some communities, as a whole, don't have the resources to do this. Response: Then that's a broken community. They should all move. Yes, I am serious.
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Smaller communities don't have the "resources" to "administer" such benefits. Response: This is just a thinly veiled argument for bureaucracy and PMC jobs. GoFundMes can be setup in a matter of minutes with all the necessary reporting and compliance. There's no reason Anytown, USA couldn't have their municipal government set these up - and then instantly fund them - just as easily. The not-conspiracy conspiracy is that government technology implementation is so awful party because of naked job preservation instincts by bureaucrats.
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"What, so you want people to BEG their neighbors for money!? How despicable!" Response: "Beg" is hyperbole. Asking for an receiving charity is a pro-social act (Christians even call it Saintly). I'd rather have this be open and explicit than what we have now - covert signaling, counter-signaling, and assumptions of who is on what kind of government assistance. Furthermore, because government assistance is secured through faceless paperwork, people do not feel the same sense of humility and become, eventually, entitled.
Again, a Nanny State doesn't exist. The reality is far worse. We could solve these problems by admitting that PMC'ism is rampant and that individual emotional self-preservation, currently, outweighs pro-social society wide benefit. That's liberal, "humanist" individualism for you.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
42m ago
It's because postmodernism is wrong and language and frame do not create reality, but only model it.
Defacing every clock so that it only shows the number 9 is a good way to make sure it's always 9, but it does not change the underlying reality that the sun will raise and set. All it is is intellectual vandalism in the name of incredulity.
You can see most of the activism pursued by this philosophy as a similar retreat into language.
Rather than confront the ideas of nations and peoples, every such concept is anathemized as racist, and yet people still hold in-group preference.
Rather than confront mental illness as a phenomenon, all of society must be queered so as to reflect that even the most abject forms of existence are "valid". And yet they remain abject.
Adam Curtis explained this phenomenon and the birth of such ideas with brio in HyperNormalization. Reality is hard, complex, messy, difficult. But we crave a simple moral tale of good and evil. So we just stopped looking reality in the face and decided to be content to just experience things.
As the world shrinks into ruins, this cool detachment becomes harder and harder to sustain.
Tree
51m ago
If you define leftism as forced economic redistribution, there’s a good case to be made for the nazis. It fits in the pattern of liquidating a minority’s assets for the benefit of the majority. In other places, leftists liquidated aristocrats or kulaks, hitler picked the jews.
Some medieval kings, once they were deeply in debt to jews, suddenly discovered that they were enemies of christ after all, and in fact, they should leave his kingdom; not their assets though, these could, and should, stay, he insisted. Philipp IV famously liquidated the Knights Templar with this simple trick.
The german working class lived large under the nazis, largely from stolen money, first from jews, then from conquered euro countries. Many of their welfare laws are still on the books. The reason why this isn’t commented on more is that everyone else at the time was also turning hard left. With FDR’s new deal, and Leon Blum’s government in france, both laying the groundwork for their countries respective welfare states.
Lizzardspawn
58m ago
Has anyone of you ever bought/subscribed to anything from youtube sponsorships? To me everything looks like crap or scam. So I wonder - who buys it, for them to make any money.
Lizzardspawn
1hr ago
And if a prosecutor wants to show radicalization? Like following a lot of trans accounts and listening all day about the trans genocide?
SnapDragon
1hr ago
Thanks for the reply, you clearly know more about the process than I do. I definitely lean more towards @Jiro's sensibilities, where the system should work by not criminalizing normal behaviour rather than not convicting normal behaviour (kinda, usually, unless we don't like you). But we live in a complex world, and I'm not a hardcore libertarian. I do understand that there are sometimes tradeoffs, and going after both producers AND consumers of child porn leads to less child abuse than the alternative.
Mind you, we're now in a world where AI can produce child porn without any victimization at all. So there's much less reason to criminalize certain patterns of bits. Will the laws adjust? I doubt it. The ratchet only goes one way. Even Rand Paul probably doesn't want his name on the "Free the Pedophiles" bill.
nomenym
1hr ago
The chat log doesn't read genuine. It feels off, staged. Rumor has it the roommate was no shrinking violet but quite vocal in their extremist politics.
My guess is that you have a local trantifa group, mostly online, immersed in far left ideology but veiled in ironic internet meme culture. They talk about assassinating Kirk and egg each other using innuendo and cryptic memes and such. They make plans, but there is no mastermind. One or more of them say they are going to do it. The others encourage the assassination but are unsure whether they'll follow through, because such discussions about violent action happen often in these circles but rarely does anyone actually do it. A few people in this group post suggestive messages that something big is about to happen for internet clout. The shooter and his roommate, meanwhile, agree to obscure the roommate's role in the planning by staging exonnerating chat logs.
While thrilled with the assassination, the other trantifa are genuinely surprised that the shooter actually did it. Usually people chicken out. They might not have posted those suggestive messages if they knew, so now they scramble to scrub the internet of any evidence of their complicity or foreknowledge. The roommate "cooperates" with the police as part of their plan to obscure their role in the murder.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
1hr ago
A lot of people cheered on his death or supported the killer, but the tradeoff of LWOP or death penalty to exact political revenge, is a poor one. Hence why the incidence of these situations is very low, and most people do not have a agency to pull it off even if they wanted to.
So let's say .03% willing to take extreme lengths in support of political violence, .3% immediately visibly excited by political violence. As a percentage that's low. It's a really, low, comforting percentage. Except when you see it happen in real life. Then it's not so comforting.
That is why statistics is useful. otherwise there is no way to quantify the risk. Seeing someone win the lottery does not make it more likely you will win. Even if there is a correlation between killings instead of being purely statistically independent events, the odds are still tiny.
roystgnr
1hr ago
Long ago; I loved it! It really was the epitome of "Modern" Anglish, where words with no non-Romance-descended English equivalents get rederived from old Germanic-English roots, as opposed to texts which merely use existing but antiquated non-Romance English words.
To be clear, though, I love this stuff in a for-entertainment-purposes-only way; one of the best things about English is how, after it "has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary", we've ended up in a state where every concept has three times as many ways to express it, each subtly different in meanings, connotations, formality, rhythm and rhyme, etc. Adding new Anglish formations to English would be fun (though if I was the Emperor of English I'd prioritize it way below things like universally-phonetic spelling), but actually replacing and removing non-Anglish words would be silly.
For that matter, I'm happy to have new Anglish formations remain reminiscent of but not actually part of English. I bookmarked that Anglish dictionary for use as an RPG game master, to draw words from when players roll a Linguistics check that's almost but not quite successful at translating a dead language their characters only partially understand.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
Many believed that United had such regulatory capture and lobbying capacity that they were above the law, and so the victims of their injustices couldn’t plausibly seek justice against the company. Many believed that there were hundreds or thousands of victims of United and that their victimhood was especially heinous because (to simplify) they had purchased medicine but were withheld the medicine they purchased and were promised while they actively dying. Doctors, patients, academics, and those in the industry came forward after the event to talk about this. Something outside the law is treated according to the traditional norms regarding outlaws, as that’s just what means. None of this applies to Kirk, who was firmly within the law.
DoctorMonarch
♬We're so happy that we live in 1800's Alabama 'cause it's sunny and there is no crime!♬
1hr ago
Appreciate that, could you link me to where you found that?
FarmReadyElephants
1hr ago
Imagine that kind of attention span from a zoomer
07mk
1hr ago
This is complicated by the fact that the younger child is also dead certain that they need this sort of nurturing and said child is sometimes clearly worse off .
I don't think this complicates things at all, actually. One can listen to the younger child being dead certain* in this while also spending exactly as much time and effort as required to seriously consider the older child's complaint that she's being abused (with exactly as verifiable and commonly-found examples of the older child being clearly worse off, of course). One can consider either argument and still reject them; it's very possible that it is actually true that the older child being abused by her own perception is what's required for justice to be done and for the younger child not to be abused. But it's incumbent on the parent to credibly come to this conclusion by demonstrating a willingness to seriously consider the possibility that the older child has a point. Which is where, in this analogy, this didn't happen.
* The analogy breaks down even more here due to comparing populations with individuals - whatever population analogue of the younger child is, they certainly weren't "dead certain" that the type of zero-sum-style oppression-Olympics "progressive" politics pushed by center-left politicians were actually preferable the alternative of an egalitarian politics based around equal rights and free speech. At most, a small majority of some subgroups were "dead certain" of this sort of thinking, but also there has always been a sizable portion - often a majority, depending on the subgroup - who were "dead certain" of the opposite. Making this analogy work would be tough, but it might be like if the child, like many children, goes to different moods and beliefs, and half the time he's dead certain that abusing his older sister is the only way he can feel like justice has been served and another half the time he's apologizing for getting into that mood.
Of course, we should also apply this to the older sibling; sometimes, she's insisting that the abuse she claims other times is actually not abuse, but justice that she deserves, to make the family better, to make her better, and to make her little brother better off. Other times; she's insisting that that's actually abuse. If we continue this analogy like the above, I'd wager the ratio of times of those would be quite skewed in favor of the latter, relative to ratios of what the younger child is saying.
But the analogy is probably stretched beyond use at this point, and it's moot anyway; even presuming that the younger child was "dead certain," this doesn't really add complication.
One might even grant that you're making the better off child slightly worse off and still believe the trade off is not only worth it but fair.
Absolutely. Not only fair, but morally obligated. It's very possible that this is the case. It's also very possible that this isn't the case. The only person worth trusting with the power to make such a judgment call is someone who has demonstrated a willingness to, in good faith, listen to arguments in favor of both. And, I'd add, a willingness to listen more to people who disagree with oneself; e.g. if the parent has been told by others that he's playing favorites by favoring child A over child B, he should be extra receptive and welcoming of criticisms from child B (or on behalf of child B, though that has many more points of possible failure) relative to criticisms from child A. That doesn't mean being convinced by the former over the latter; it means prioritizing the truth over one's own biases.
Bartender_Venator
1hr ago
At this point we do have very good archaeogenetic evidence for an elite caste of steppe riders taking over settled societies and maintaining distance from the agrarian population for a very long time. It's still visible, albeit highly diluted, in the Indian caste system, for instance. The reason people still talk about Nordicism in this context, apart from the WWII resonance, is because there aren't many people around from the Pontic/North Caspian steppe to crow about their Yamnaya forebears. I did say to the author that it would be more historically accurate to put a steppe on Tidus rather than just islands, for that reason.
Third, progressives have to organize around a single morality, centered on empathy, both personal and social responsibility and excellence – being the best person you can be, not just for your own sake, but for the sake of you family, community and nation. All politics is moral; it is about the right things to do. Get your morality straight, learn to talk about it, then work on policy. It is patriotic to be progressive.
If this was published in 2011, it was a year away or less from being shattered by Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind", which, among other things, explain very convincingly why western liberal morality fails to resonate with most people outside of western urban centers. Spoiler alert: it is the western liberals that are the moral mutants, with a narrower understanding of morality than pretty much every other human being on earth that ever lived. Doubling down on narrow morality is not going to help progressives communicate better to the masses, on the contrary.
But I guess if you define progressivism as that narrow morality, and everything else is conservatism then yeah, tautologically you can't really argue that expanding it is not letting in filthy conservative values into people's brains. But it's not driven by understanding the world, but by being blind to the idea that other concepts of morality exist and no, they're not all inherently conservative.
*EDIT: And I include myself very much in the western liberals here, even though I disgree with them more often than not, it's how I grew up, and having been made aware of and understand them intellectually, I still struggle to link the feeling of the violations of those moralities to intellectual condemnation of them.
Jiro
1hr ago
If that was true, I could call trans people by any pronoun I want and face no problems for it.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
It's a great example of what Red Tribe enthusiastically celebrating a killing looks like, which we can use as a measure for the scale of Blue Tribe celebration of Kirk, and Red Tribe celebration of other killings.
If we can accurately say that Blues are celebrating the death of Kirk the way Reds celebrated the death of OBL, that's an interesting data point about how Blues as a tribe see the world.
If we're going to look at claims of Reds celebrating the deaths of other people, it should be reasonable to examine the scale and intensity of that celebration. Is it "a couple people made mean tweets", or is it "the entire internet lights up with celebration, which spills over into the real world in numerous cases"?
Tanista
2hr ago
By this analogy, it's pretty clear that these center-left politicians in question were mothers who were being told both by their older child and by tons of independent observers that she was being abusive and refused to entertain the possibility, because by their model of parenting, what appeared to the child and to independent observers as "abusive" was actually "nurture." Perhaps they're correct that it is actually "nurture;" however, the lack of concern for the possibility that it might not be is a reflection of an utter lack of motivation to actually nurture that older child
This is complicated by the fact that the younger child is also dead certain that they need this sort of nurturing and said child is sometimes clearly worse off . One might even grant that you're making the better off child slightly worse off and still believe the trade off is not only worth it but fair.
And there are, of course, observers and experts on both sides. There are plenty of others who will insist that the problem is that they haven't directed enough attention and effort to an underperforming child.
Imagine a mother steeped in a certain ideology, she reads only so many books a year but the ones on parenting involve figures with impressive degrees egging her on. She has some reason to continue.
Quantumfreakonomics
2hr ago
Good find. The author was quite prescient. One could make the argument that the Woke Era was brought about by progressives grabbing hold of the language we (or at least PMC types and elites) use and subtly shifting it into a worldview more favorable to them. The real question is why this tactic eventually failed.
Raycons
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