ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
I suppose I count as defending Hanania - I don't particularly like him, but I think hate for him here is absurdly overblown.
The hate he gets is just a result of people putting him on a pedestal. If it wasn't for that, he'd be indistinguishable from the blur of faceless Substackers that no one cares about. I wouldn't even care that he's calling himself "elite human capital", it's the fact that others agree with his self-image that is absurd, and warrants the reaction to him.
What corruption were the past few Democratic administrations engaged in that exceeded the level of magnitude and blatantness that Trump is now engaged in?
You really don't know? How can you claim Trump is worse if you can't even list a few things off the top of your head. I even gave an example in the other comment (though you did remove it when quoting it, so maybe there's some gaze-averting going on).
Even if you can list examples, why is your response to imply that makes Republicans immune from criticism now
This is why I originally said you're dismissing the argument that Trump doing better. Criticize him all you want, just don't act like MAGAs should be more outraged than they were about the previous administration. At least not without evidence.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
Yes, but if they reverse his policy, the responsibility for that is on them. If the non-MAGA politicians want to act like "adults in the room" they need to stop blaming the parents for not hiding the cookie jar out of their reach.
I'm happy to talk about it, but I'm not willing to grant the assunption that Trump is obviously worse. I think we'd need some sort of standard to judge each administration's excesses, before we can decide which one is actually worse, and we don't even have that.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
What you're saying is that it continuing long-term is entirely up to the next administration. If they want to return to open borders that will be their decision, not Trump's.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
It specifically contrasted against Hunter Biden that Republicans spent years fishing for evidence against.
Are you talking about this paragraph?
Congressional Republicans spent years investigating Hunter Biden, the son of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., for trading on his family name to make millions of dollars, even labeling the clan the “Biden Crime Family.” But while Hunter Biden’s cash flow was a tiny fraction of that of Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, Republicans have shown no appetite for looking into the current presidential family’s finances.
That's not a comparative analysis. Even assuming their conclusion is correct, I don't know how they made their comparison, and have no way of reproducing their result. Be my guest if you think Trump is more corrupt than Biden, but nothing you posted here can be a basis for discussion. You're just venting.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
Well, hell, I'd at least think about voting for him if I thought he could or would carry out some of his grand promises.
He did actually stop immigration, though...
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
That's... what the NYT article was about?
I've only skimmed it, but I didn't see any sort of comparative analysis to the previous administrations, so it cannot back your argument.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
What? My position is that Trump is far worse in terms of corruption
I think you need something to back that argument, rather than assuming everyone agrees with you, and that anyone who doesn't is obviously wrong.
MAGA will never care about Trump doing bad things
Is MAGA worse than you in that regard? I don't recall you criticizing Biden (or his family / administration) much. Even about obvious things like hiding his cognitive decline.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
or otherwise claims something Biden did was somehow worse
(...)
Scandals and corruption used to be a thing that allowed the other party to come in and try to do better, but now they're used as a justification for the other side becoming even worse.
How can you dismiss the argument that he's doing better, just before complaining that people don't care enough about him doing better?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
I think I recall either a bug report on github, or Zorba mentioning a glitch like this in the comments here. I might have even taken a look at solving it, but with no clear way to reproduce the issue, I think I'd rather do something more enjoyable, like repeatedly slamming my balls with a hammer.
Wildlife trafficking into Wuhan from places where bat coronaviruses occur naturally was very common and very poorly regulated, meaning even though these bat species weren't local, the market supply chains were.
Last I heard, the closest relative of COVID was found in a bat cave in Laos. Unless new info came out since, I find it hard to believe that the bats made it all the way to Wuhan without sparking the pandemic anywhere else prior. Coincidentally, I believe I heard that bats from that area were studied in the laboratory, so one plausible way that could salvage the wet market theory, is that a lab assistant was making some extra money on the side, and sold the bats at the market. But that is still a lab leak.
Studies from 2022 show early case clusters centering around the Huanan Seafood Market with positive environmental samples
Chinese studies don't have a good reputation at the best of times, even on non-political issues. It's extremely naive to believe a study on something so controversial would be done by the book, and with no pressure to come to the politically correct conclusion.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
What intelligence did the Germans have and bury?
The report you cite yourself? The point being made isn't that there was some evidence hidden from the public, it's that the available evidence favors the lab leak theory, which was dismissed as an insane conspiracy theory by the entire establishment.
Nor do I see what their motive for a coverup would be
Why does that matter? We know for a fact that it was not revealed to the public until 2025, as you say yourself.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
His point about the low caliber of right-wing discourse stands.
The discourse I'm familiar with is pretty high caliber, while Hanania is there throwing schoolyard insults, and crying when anyone returns fire. He is wrong, and a hypocrite.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
My point is that far-right people once looked up to them.
If it makes you feel better, anyone who ever hyped Hanania up took a massive hit to their credibility from me, it was clear from the start he has nothing interesting to say. But you're clearly not making that point, as you have a track record of putting him forward as someone worth looking up to yourself.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
Richard Hanania, Anatoly Karlin, David Cole, along with of course the liberals, never Trump conservatives, etc., regard the populist right readership as a giant lump of aggregate stupidity has something to do with said readership.
It's hard to take the criticism seriously, when you propose any of these people are supposed to be barometers warning against aggregate stupidity.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
Well, I got myself into a bit of a pickle. To avoid paralysis by analysis, I powered through with just coding until I have something working, and figured I'd optimize later, which is what I've been doing for the last few weeks.
I managed to get te number of mysql queries from absolutely insane to merely retarded, but I have to keep chipping away at it. My tinkering time was pretty limited, so I didn't get very far.
How are you doing @Southkraut?
If you burn billions of dollars trying to deliver something no one even bothers trying to make, then it can very easily prove fatal. It doesn' matter that the competition didn't try to beat him to the Cybertruck, or Semi, or Optimus, if these things are nothing but massive money sinkholes. Also, pretty sure that strictly speaking, Waymo beat him to the Cybercab / Robotaxi.
If you mess it up bad enough, it can even overturn your prior success. If Starship doesn't work out, and the competitors catch up to Falcon in the meantime, that's still pretty fatal for SpaceX.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
I don't know what more you'd want.
He told you: an acknowledgment that lab leak was the likely origin of COVID according to various western governments' own assesments. We're not talking about virologist speculations in the early stages of the pandemic. The passage you quoted is a perfect example of Scott doing exactly of what he's being accused of.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
I understand not remembering who specifically said it, but why are you acting like the idea is out there that you're literally unable to come up with a motive for it?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
they're saying they use the same illiberal tactics as the woke
Do the illiberal tactics include trying to scare away Joe Rogan and other people with big platforms from having conversations with certain people? Do they include lumping in people you don't like with nazis? Do they include complaints about online abuse when people start commenting on how you're being ridiculous?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
This is the meaning of "woke" that is then applied to "the woke right" when it begins engaging in similar anti-free-speech behavior for partisan gains.
There's a slight problem here, because from my point of view the Jedi are evil "anti-woke" are the ones doing this. Trivially: who's the one whinging to Joe Rogan that he shouldn't have so many people with [insert opinion] on?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
"Matt Walsh posts Swastika on Timeline" is not a controversy that someone generally wants to be involved in.
On the other hand, if the sharks smell blood, they'll rip you to shreds. "Never apologize" has been the standard advice by people who observed these controversies with any amount of care, right-wing or otherwise.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2mo ago
The problem here is that the definition of Fascism is functionally non-liberal, Right Wing.
In the broad popular imagination, it might be, but fascism is a distinctly modernist/progressive ideology, and vast swathes of the Dissident Right have no love for modernity.
But the point is that poking the eye of the Boomer Consensus with edgy stuff like does not mean Walsh is arguing for Nazism.
A distinctly shortsighted tactic, that ruins the discourse for anyone trying to take things seriously, including those on the DR.
It's just flaunting a disrespect for norms enforced by Conservatives and Woke alike.
Why not just make jokes about cheddar cheese like other normies?
In fact that would be my criticism of Walsh, he's trying to have a foot in both camps.
I'd imagine that someone as high up on the influencer ladder as he is, would know it's not a game that you can play sustainably.
He had a debt to pay off to Elon, I doubt that Trump will be in any hurry to work with Musk again. If nothing else, two people with such massive egos don't tend work well with each other.
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