Aapje58
28d ago
GG offended sensibilities by applying the same level of catastrophic scrutiny to folks that most would consider 'normal people', names you've never heard of who don't own a vacation home and don't have much real-world influence.
Yes, like Eron Gjoni, who was an abuse victim, abused further by anti-GG.
Aapje58
1mo ago
So a conspiracy of 3 people only needs 9 friends and family willing to turn a blind eye to anything suspicious and give the occasional alibi.
This assumes that the people who are part of the conspiracy tell their friends and family, but there are many possible reasons why they would not. For example, some organizations that deal a lot with secret things have a shared culture of not telling even their life partners about it. Another example is that the conspiracy can be very damning to the people involved, so they have a strong incentive to hush it up to everyone. Like a conspiracy that involves 'disappearing' a dead body or one where well-meaning researchers caused immense suffering and damage.
Aapje58
1mo ago
I don't agree with that. The goal of becoming an adult is to fulfill your potential, which can be more, equal or less than that of your father.
In the relationship with God, one can never equal or better, but the crucial part is fulfilling your potential, which is possible.
Aapje58
2mo ago
The point of the ad is not "you should do this". The point of the ad is "this is who we are."
So:
- We are people who cannot translate archaic examples to match the modern world
- We don't understand the bible
- We are no different from leftists, except for being a bit weirder
Because it seems to me that those are the messages being sent.
The point seems to be to peel back some of the enculturated dismissal of Christians as hateful bigots that the world
Is submitting really sending that message, or would it have made more sense to show Christians doing good works. Because in the modern context, washing people's feet are not good works, but seem more like either weird virtue-signalling or a foot-fetish.
Aapje58
2mo ago
Instead he found frightening, awe-full power beyond his understanding, which worked to compel his faith despite heroic tragedy.
Yes, Christianity is deeply patriarchal. The children do not understand the wisdom of the father, and they don't want to get their vaccines, because the needle hurts, and they do not comprehend the suffering they are being saved from. So they need to trust in the wisdom of the father, and trust that he loves them, even if they don't understand why he asks the things he asks.
Yet this is a very hard sell in a deeply individualized society that rejects patriarchy.
Aapje58
2mo ago
But I don't care about abolishing pain. Pain is part of the normal range of feelings that animals, including humans, all experience. It is often necessary and arguably, a full life lived, includes pain.
Feeling pain does not equal suffering, which is something that you seem to be unable to understand. Plenty of pain doesn't rank as suffering in my book, and suffering can exist without physical pain.
Aapje58
3mo ago
I agree with Andrew Breitbart entirely when he said politics is downstream from culture.
But is it downstream from the culture of the people or the culture of the elites? These are two very different things.
Arguably, democracy is merely a way for people to have some influence on which elites are in power.
Aapje58
3mo ago
In modern times we still see that prostitutes tend to concentrate in cities and that rural men will travel to cities to use their services. So the percentage of prostitutes among the rural populace was likely far lower than in the city.
Everyone in this discussion seems to ignore the social issues with prostitutes in small communities, where people are much more aware of the behavior of people in the community than in the city.
Aapje58
3mo ago
But what a revealing statement. Things were so bad that women who might have wanted to resort to prostitution couldn't because there weren't enough clients with means to pay!
It just shows that rich men were concentrated in cities, and their extra wealth was greater than the higher cost of living of the city.
What do you find revealing about this? Is the idea that there were huge wealth disparities in the past a revelation to you?
Aapje58
3mo ago
The revealed behavior by women seems to show that they prefer single motherhood over marrying below their station of at least, the station they believe they have.
Aapje58
3mo ago
Yes, because polling shows that even with the 'rally round the flag'-effect of the attacks by Israel, a minority of Palestinians support Hamas. Polling does show support for a fictional attack by Hamas without war crimes, but they seem to be mostly misinformed on that front.
So I don't see any evidence that the majority supports Hamas or the actual way in which the attack was executed.
Also, having a positive opinion of Hamas is not the same thing as being part of Hamas, which are two dissimilar things that you seem to equivocate. From a legal and IMO moral perspective, soldiers cannot start executing people who have the wrong opinion, but are not actually combatants.
Aapje58
3mo ago
You're reading into the actions of the people who tear down the posters and providing your own explanation for their behavior
You were the one claiming that only your singular explanation was possible. I'm not claiming that my explanation is right, just that is another viable explanation.
I still don't consider it a believable explanation. Memorials have a fairly standard ritual, involving a shrine in a public space where people can go to light candles, leave flowers, wreaths, leave pictures, put up signs, etc. Very often, the shrine is placed at the place of death or a park. I'm sure that you've seen that kind of thing often enough in the news or real life.
very similar to the "missing" posters of 9/11 victims.
It seems pretty clear to me that those aren't memorials, but attempts to find missing people. That is why you put up posters all over the place, or on milk cartons, to find missing people.
There is no indication that the posters could ever help recover a 9/11 victim from the rubble, but they're likely put up as a way to remember someone lost, and maybe remind the public of the significance of the event.
I disagree and believe that these were genuine attempts (aside from the handwritten sentence on the wall, which seems more like a prayer to god, and the actual shrine in the last picture that probably had no call to find the person, although the entire shrine is not visible). It seems very common for people to have trouble accepting a sudden death without a body as proof. Denial is one of the stages of grief after all. Arguing that people could not feel this way due to rational fact ignores that feelings do not obey reason.
The common cliche in Hollywood where a supposed death where it is not beyond any doubt that the person actually died, is typically a fake out, may also influence how people react.
If someone claimed posters of Israelis posted in Brooklyn somehow helped rescue efforts, I would agree with you that they're dishonest. But if they claimed it was to bring attention to an issue, then I don't see the dishonesty.
The link you gave tells us that one such poster stated: "Please help bring them home alive." So the poster seems to match your criteria for dishonesty, because there apparently was an expectation that people would spring into action to help the rescue efforts. The only plausible way in which Americans could do this are all highly political, one way or the other (pushing for continuing the war, to trade prisoners, to make peace, to abolish Israel, or praying for Jesus coming back to earth, etc). I suspect that the people tearing down the posters make assumptions about what the desired means is of liberating the Israeli kidnappees, if only by what is left off from the posters, which is any mention of Palestinian victims.
At the very least, I consider it unsurprising that if a conflict involves Palestinian and Israeli victims, and someone sufficiently cares about Palestinian victims, they get upset over posters that only name Israeli victims. It can be true that this means that they don't care about Israeli victims, but it can for example also mean that they consider each life equally valuable, especially if they can count. It is not necessarily bias against Israelis when one considers the ongoing killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians of more importance than saving up to 240 people (depending on when the posters went up, the number may be considerably lower). And people can of course also be upset by a disparity in attention in general and it may thus trigger an already existing dissatisfaction with perceived unfairness. I'm sure that as a member of this forum you are familiar with people upset over biases in (sub)cultures or in the media, and perhaps becoming rather eager to interpret new evidence in that light.
In any case, I remain of the belief that your statement that the only plausible explanation for anger at the posters is a Manichean view specifically involving an oppressor/oppressed dynamic, does not speak well about your epistemology, at least on this topic.
Aapje58
3mo ago
He’s a young, relatively well-informed recent college grad, which just goes to show how effective the Hamas propaganda machine is.
The chance that he's seen Hamas propaganda seems negligible. There are many far more likely explanations, such that he's ignorant of news in general and is concerned with charming the ladies, or is part of a bubble that doesn't signal boost these things (which doesn't mean that it signal boosts Hamas' propaganda).
I consider it rather extremist and leaning towards false or at least unproven conspiracy beliefs to simply assume that beliefs like this are caused by Hamas' propaganda. It also completely denies people any agency. Using the same logic you can explain all kinds of things as being caused directly by propaganda, like your beliefs about Israel being caused by propaganda from Israel, people who have doubt about the elections because controlled by Putin, conservative Catholics being controlled by the Pope, etc.
Aapje58
3mo ago
The dishonesty I'm referring to is the denial in the article that there is a political element to it and that it is the same as the kids on milk cartons. It is simply a lie to claim that they expect Californians to assist in the recovery efforts by helping a kidnapped Israeli that they encounter in SF or such.
And I do believe that a lot of what people communicate about 'issues' is biased and is intended to advance an agenda, even if they do not consciously see it as propaganda, but just believe (or 'believe'*) that their very biased views are just correct.
* Lots of people seem to suddenly believe different things than what they initially say, or put on posters, if you question them a little.
Aapje58
3mo ago
That may be tolerable for someone who wasn't Netanyahu. Netanyahu built his image on being the Great Defender
If he actually was a great leader, he first of all wouldn't have gotten into this situation in the first place, but he would have sacrificed his reputation and his political career for the benefit of Israel once he did end up in this situation.
Aapje58
3mo ago
The default conclusion of this conflict has always been that the Arabs eventually win.
This is exactly why I consider Israel's continuous move towards an ever Greater Israel to be very short sighted. It may strengthen them in the short term by getting them a bit more land and resources, but they have been squandering the chance to create acceptance for Israel from the Arab civilians around them from a position of strength.
If a large number of those Arab civilians come to believe that it's fine or even beneficial to them for Israel to exist, then even if Israel loses its immense position of power (in large part due to having the US back them), they will still be safe, like France is safe from Germany now.
Aapje58
3mo ago
Changing the internal policy or training that led to actively killing those trying to surrender to you (whether Jews or Hamas)
I want to point out that Palestinians who are not part of Hamas but do end up in the war zone may also want to surrender.
To be honest, I'm getting a bit tired of the frequent implications that all Palestinians are part of Hamas. Even if it is not intended, the lack of distinction that is being made so often does speak volumes to me about how people frame the issue in their mind.
Aapje58
3mo ago
"Punching Richard Spencer will only create a thousand Richard Spencers ready to rise up behind him" is never advanced by leftists as a reason not to punch Richard Spencer.
Of course not, because they have the delusion that their own side is near perfect and won't cause a ton of collateral damage. For example, by having extremists going around punching everyone to the left of Stalin, for being a fascist.
On the right you have people with the same delusions, who think that Israel is surgically hitting Hamas, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Aapje58
3mo ago
bombing Nazi Germany didn't make it stronger,
This statement completely ignores the actual debate at the time, which was the choice between bombing military targets or attacking civilians. Both types of bombings happened during WW II. The available evidence does strongly suggest that attacking civilians creates desires of revenge and thus support for politicians who advocate for the war, rather than making people surrender.
In actual reality, the civilian population of Germany never forced their government to surrender to make the bombings stop, and neither did the people of England, despite the V1 and V2 attacks. And even the Japanese surrender after the nukes didn't result from a lack of support from the people, but the leaders deciding themselves that dying to a nuke was not a sufficiently heroic death for their populace unlike running into a machine gun fire with a bamboo spear in your hands.
So do you want to argue that Hamas can be persuaded to surrender by bombing civilians? My judgment of their ideology, which is different from that of the WW II Japanese, is that this will not happen.
Note that one famous case where the populace did force an end to the war, which is Russia during WW I, didn't involve attacks of the Russian population.
Now maybe there's some advanced theoretical reason why certain targets get stronger when you smash their shit up, but I don't see this articulated
I do, so I guess that you are just in a bubble where you don't read these things?
if they believe that bombing Hamas will only strengthen them?
Well, if you believe that every bomb is hitting Hamas and no civilians are being killed, then it makes perfect sense that you would disbelieve that the bombings can turn neutral civilians into supporters of Hamas, because they want revenge.
I prefer the facts over falsehood, though.
Aapje58
3mo ago
Again, I do not want to be right about this, but I have encountered no other plausible explanation why for example posters of kidnapped Israelis has whipped up so many into a frothy rage.
They are utterly dishonest war propaganda, pretending not to be. For instance, in the link you posted, one such campaign is said to have the name 'Let the World Know.' But who doesn't know about the kidnapped people? It is utterly disingenuous to pretend that this is just to inform people. Your link furthermore claims:
"There is no Israeli flag on these posters. There is no mention of politics. They are as anodyne as the missing children that used to appear on the side of American milk cartons."
This is again utterly dishonest. The choice to put these people on posters, rather than the people put in prison without trial by Israel, which to me is kidnapping as well, is a political choice. The choice to not put pictures of killed Palestinian civilians on the posters (as well) is a political choice. The choice to put these posters up in Western nations across the world is a political choice, just like it would be a different political choice to put these posters up in front of the Knesset, or in front of a Hamas building in Qatar.
As another poster said, the milk carton kids are intended to allow people to recognize these kids in the streets or whatever, but there is no plausible way that a person will run into a kidnapped Israeli in SF and will then be able to help them by running to the police.
Unless you are willing to seriously discuss the real goal of these posters, and the dishonesty behind the refusal to openly state those goals, I don't see how you can get to a correct analysis.
Aapje58
3mo ago
They have literally never noticed that most of the best sprinters are ethnically African.
They obviously notice. A sprinter like Dafne Schippers got a lot more attention because she won despite being 'different.'
Aapje58
4mo ago
If a gay person loses the court of public opinion in some sort of conflict with a Hispanic person, people on here will ask questions like 'Does this mean gay people are lower on the progressive stack now?'.
I think that the progressive stack is not so much about who wins, but how strong certain arguments are considered to be and in what situations they can be used. For example, a black person can use "I'm being discriminated against" even in some situations where they themselves messed up and are simply held accountable, while a white person who is actually being discriminated against, can't use that same argument unless the discrimination is very extreme indeed.
In social combat between woke people, you can expect them to use arguments that work for their identity in the situation. But that still doesn't mean that a black person can always just defeat a white person in social combat. The former just has more options.
Why do you think that the right sort of women would not apply? Would they prefer to be among themselves for that kind of banter?
More options
Context Copy link