Armin
2yr ago
Inspired by a comment from Twitter;
Everyone is talking about the US relative decline, but they are really flexing his power in a way that we have not seen from Iraq
In one year they;
-
Destroyed every possible reconciliation between Europe and Russia
-
Became a next exporter of natural resources and the ones from who a lot of allies depend
-
They basically sent a fuck off to Germany, and the Germans not only are not complaining, but are applauding
-
They strongly limited the military of power of Russia with few money.
-
China is slowing her growth, and they created a ring of allies in the Pacific
-
The cultural grip on the West is becoming stronger, and the US successfully fused Neoliberalism and Leftism in a zombie ideology who is, against all odds, successfully working
-
The pro-Atlantist view have never been so strong.
I doubt that these strategies will work or be healthy in the long term, but it is incredible to see how an ill and polarized country can still do whatever it wants without any reaction.
Armin
1yr ago
FRENCH PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS
Another win imho for the faction "Nothing ever happens"
Win for the NFP and the left, Macron's party recedes but still resists, RN did not win ad expected. Tactical voting and a surge in participation did it, the "1945 Front" keep winning.
The huge banner that says "France is a nation of immigrants" says everything.
Armin
2yr ago
The first month of the new Italian Government and Parliament has passed, and we had a bit of small culture wars that were in majority very amusing;
The first African-born and black member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Aboubakar Soumahoro, was elected for the Italian Left and Green Alliance. Soumahoro is know as a farming trade unionist, fighting for the rights of African-born illegal farmers working in the Italian, especially southern, fields. He was elected in an iron-granted center-left coalition college, and was one of the star of the Left, entering the Parliament with dirty boots, symbolizing his struggle for farmers. Ensuring elegies by left-wing journals, anti-racism as a flag, and promising a lot of progressive/left reforms etc
After less than 15 days, one center-left newspaper drop the bomb: Soumahoro's wife, chief of one of the immigration NGO that were part of this left-wing affiliated network of NGO and trade unions, stole millions of euros in public money destined for illegal immigrants, using them to buy property, dresses, Gucci handbags etcetera. While the immigrants and ex-collaborators of Soumahoro denunced, immediately after, that Africans were left without heating, food and water, and obliged to work in the fields under terrible conditions.
Immediately there is a storm, the Italian Left MPs denounce him, and other newspapers let know that there were a lot of doubt from many people in the coalition when Soumahoro was candidated, and at the end it was a forced decision from the top. Soumahoro first says that he does not know anything, than he published a video where he cries on camera. He went then to a TV transmission, saying that he does not know anything, and that his wife is autonomus. After a bit he suspended himself.
Way to go, I guess.
Another minor war was on credit card payments. The government permitted private business to not accept electronic pament under a certain sum, and the entire cadrè of center-of-left journalist began a 20 days straight, that is still going on, campaign of how much they hate cash and how much they use only credit and debit cards when they pay, and how much they hate people using cash.
Useless to say, this was not a very good tactic when a good chunk of your population or does not have a credit card at all, or struggle to mantain their small business in front of high taxes and high cost of energy.
Fratelli d'Italia reached 32% of popularity in the last polls.
Armin
1yr ago
If all of this is true, the trick is simply understanding how to switch these masses of women to your side, and let them enforce whatever policy you create. The problem here is, imho, that the entrenchment of female power and powerful media has created a block that is too strong to destroy.
Armin
1yr ago
Two questions about The Motte;
- Is the site growing or stagnant?
- If it is stagnant or decaying in popularity, do we have any tool or method to attract new people?
Communities like this have the problem of attracting fresh meat.
Armin
1yr ago
In my opinion the difference between pre-modern and modern retelling are the following;
- Retelling now is mainly born from corporate request based on ideology and not from the necessity of adapting a foreign work to the local audience.
- But at least 19th century nationalist retelling are good because people that were doing that were good in the arts. The retelling now comes from the contemporary anglo-saxon woke tradition, that is simply not as good at telling stories.
- And if the retelling come from non-corporate sources, it means that it came from some black or minority ressentement-obsessed person in the West. The Unknown author that rewrote the Myth of Orpheus for sure did not despised the Greeks. I am sure that the modern poc reteller actually despise the Europeans very much.
Armin
1yr ago
I watched the video you linked. Nothing, at this point, will change my idea that American Leftism is only the left-wing version of libertarianism
"Are the drug dealers and homeless bothering you? Why do you bother?" is a complete abdication of any social responsability towards the others and the fellow man.
Armin
1yr ago
The surge of normie family women and Moral Foundation Theory
A lot has been written on how marriage and long term relationships, at least in the Anglo-saxon contest, move women right from the left. While I think this assessment is generally correct, anecdotic evidence that I gathered around tell me that is not exactly right.
Context: Every month I begin to see some of my female friends and acquaintances, generally middle-upper class women, getting married and having children (age=27 - 32). After the birth their social profiles become typical of a mother with a child; continuous social media posts of their children, mom's initiatives, kindergardens, lovely picture with their newly wed husbands etc But it was very curious to see that this sudden change of social media posting have not changed their past habit of "left-wing posting" about Palestine, gay marriage, feminism etc. Instead, it accelerated a lot.
Sometimes ago, someone here was talking about Moral Foundation Theory and how left and right (and men and women) are different from each other, and how mainstream marriage culture follows more the conservative moral framework than the leftists framework.
But I would like to add that, in my opinion, we are seeing a shift of moral mainstream and normie society going from following the Authority/Sanctity/Loyalty to the Care/Fairness framework. If this happen, the consequence is that people following the rightists moral framework will never find refuge in mainstream family-making society, because this society is becoming morally Leftists. I do not think that we have ever seen, in the history of humanity, a shift like this.
Armin
2yr ago
I am reading the first book of 1632, the Isekai/historical novel by Eric Flint.
Basically, a West Virginia fictional town is teleported in the year 1632, during the Thirty Years War, and the usual scenario happen, technology triumph on the less advanced, the future breeds social and economical innovation, a cast of character is attracted to the colonists from the future etc
What is very odd is the sentiment that lives in the novel, published in 2000.
Resuming it in bullet points;
-
The protagonist is a WASP, no-nonsense ex-coal miner, who has the dream of rebuilding a new USA in Germany, with a Constitution, a Bill of Rights etc. He marries a Sephardic Jew girl.
-
His political enemy is another WASP, but this time from the East Coast, rich guy with a pretty wife, xenophobic and anti-immigration, but that is constantly criticised for being a de-facto "globalist". ("He is not from this town, he is a rich dude who lived in London and Canada and everywhere else without stopping!")
-
The heroes of the story are the local members of the UMWA union, a mix of WASP and Italian and Irish coal miners, who defend the town first and are the major supporters of the protagonist's agenda.
-
There is a character in the protagonist ruling council, who is a 50s WASP feminist woman famous for being an ex-radical Ivy-League student who tossed Molotovs around and turned high-school teacher. She is one of the main supporters of the protagonist, always bickering with him or the UMWA, but in the end she is always supported by them.
-
There are a bunch of female characters who during the story demonstrate intelligence, combat attitudes etc, and the protagonist, despite having some small moral problems at the beginning, supports them in their actions and dreams.
The oddness is reading a novel, written by a Liberal with in mind the liberalism of the late 90s. The white coal miners are all union supporters and pro-immigration, the feminists like them, and the very-white West Virginian town is lauded as an impoverished but proud and tight community hostile to the rich bastards from the big cities. Diversity is not nominated apart from two or three times. The greatest oddity, by the way, is the lingering anti-Catholic sentiment, where the majority of the Catholics are closed-minded, and anti-freedom of religion, while the Protestants are essentially the good guy.
What an odd time machine.
Armin
2yr ago
The war between the future Italian Government and the EU is beginning.
After a question by a student, the Commission President von Der Leyen, said that the EU will use "all their instruments, as happened against Hungary and Poland" against Italy in the case of "democratic backsliding".
As always, after this, accusation from every part came, with the Left defending it and the Right attacking it. Notice that von Der Leyen is part of the CDU(PPE), but their policies have always been center-left.
Apart from this phrase (von Der Leyen is not new at speaking too much with the wrong words at the wrong time), it will be noteworthy to see what will happen if Italy enter the bad boy group with Poland and Hungary, especially when also Sweden and Spain will probably see governments with the hard-right inside or at the helm.
The instrument of "follow liberal human rights or sanctions" can work against Warsaw and Budapest, but against all these countries?
What will happen will define how democracy will function in the EU, and if parties that are not part of the PPE-PSE-Liberal-Green megagroup will bow and assimilate to the center-right, or will follow the Orban line.
For now, it looks like the Italian Goverment will follow a moderate line, considering that economic recession is behind the corner and the debt is exploding again.
Armin
1yr ago
Thanks for the poem and the translation.
Yes, it looks like something that we as civilization have not yet understood, and maybe we knew but we have forgotten, is the different moral framework of women in comparison to men. We notice it now way more because women has enormous political power, and this translates to a change in ethics in our political and cultural class.
From a political perspective, it makes very hard to dislodsge young women and the left, because, by nature, the modern left is based on the oppressor/oppressed moral framework. The only thing you can use it to introduce another oppressor/oppressed moral framework that is stronger.
It also make me think how the liberal civilization will fare in the future if we adopt women's moral framework, especially on foreign policy. And I think here there is a case of "wokes more correct than the mainstream" when they say that Imperialism is born from the Patriarchy.
Armin
1yr ago
Imho; Nothing will ever change and nothing will ever happen. EPP is way more ideologically similar to the Greens than the other right wing groups, it will signal to the Left that maybe they will cooperate with the Right to acquire a bit more influence in the coalition, than it will form another big tent coalition and we will have for other 5 years to follow the policies of the Greens and the Socialists.
Armin
1yr ago
As in the past, I still not believe that it will exist any anti-refugee movement started and staffed by women, also on the basis of intrasexual competition. There was none when the rape indexes went up in European countries that received immigrants, and as a consequence I believe that, if there will be any sort of "sexual tension" in the future, there will be no reaction from women at all.
Armin
1yr ago
Braverman out for having said that the police is way harder on right-wing groups than on pro-palestinians David Cameron in as a Foreign Minister
I really would like to understand how leftists can think that the tories are a right-wing party. I think it is clear which direction they are taking. The point is, do they have any strategy or it is a reflection of what the upper-cadrè of the tories think?
Armin
2yr ago
I am not an English Native, and in my language male-female is a normal thing to say or write.
Armin
2yr ago
I agree with your main thesis, and I have nothing to add. The only anecdote I can add is that I have taken public transit for all my life in one of the most dangerous European cities, with still their majority group as natives, without any problem at almost any hour.
I came to the US, in NYC, for a trip, and at the first public transport trip a black woman spit on the face of my mother, withouth any reason, before fleeing while laughing.
I have no idea how you guys can tolerate that.
Armin
1yr ago
Just for context,Zuppi is the Archbishop of Bologna, president of the CEI and friend of the left-wing regional and local government in Emilia-Romagna.
His main policy is facilitating immigration from Africa, and political help for the Left/Greens.
Armin
1yr ago
I only want to say that the conclave of German cardinals and political allies is too much fun. Germans are something else, menacing a split if the Pope do not accept trans rights.
Armin
2yr ago
Early Soviet and communist education, for how much it was insane, was founded on the idea that Socialism was superior because it was more rational, and that maths and logic could improve the capitalistic education system.
A good chunk of it was tossed away with Stalin, but at least they produced a very good STEM system.
This is beyond communism or left-wingism, is purely emotional-based policy made by emotional people and women.
It is not Lenin, it is the insane Church Lady with mental ilness.
Armin
2yr ago
It is simply pure Conflict Theory.
The transgender movement is, at heart, a radical leftist ideology, and so they work to identify enemies, isolate and smear them, promising to be tolerant, and then smashing them.
Armin
2yr ago
You are following the free-market fallacy.
In the ideal world where the market of the ideas is completely free and inefficient, that would be a great idea; join the nation that you want to live in depending on what you believe.
But, as in academia and in the economy, real life is different; the result of demolition of nationalism and national belonging in the upper-middle class and intellighenzia had the effect of ensuring monopolism.
There are no tens or hundreds of states with different ideas, but an overbearing assimilation to a stronger ideology who does not tolerate deviation from the standard, and assimilate everything in her path.
We have a world under a Monopoly of ideas, not freedom.
Your thesis would be compelling if we ignore the natural tendency of the human to create conflict and to have a sense of belonging.
Armin
2yr ago
Because the radical left operates on pure Conflict Theory.
Why they should concede that the enemy does something right, if this does not help the inevitable march of progress?
The only times someone should concede something is when it helps the cause. Saying that the right is sometimes right does not help the left.
Armin
1yr ago
I read a bit about this Deirdre on the wikipedia page, and saw the failed cancellation campaign in 2003. I mean, probably it is true that this is not what defined her, but still I can see the germs of cancel culture in it.
Armin
1yr ago
I completely agree with you.
What i was saying is that indeed there have been a replacement of the moral framework, and in order to change ideas, you need to change the moral framework of women again, making the "persuade them on the market of ideas" less useful.
And I am talking from a country where, still last election at least, women still vote right as the men.
As certain as the Sun that daws in the Morning, with the new Italian Right-wing government there is a new refugee scandalous crisis.
A NGO ship full of immigrants, after picking them in the front of the Libyan Coast, came in front of Italian coasts asking for a safe port. Crisis ensures.
Considering that only in the last 30 days over 10.000 immigrants came illegaly in Italy, it is not like it is the first time. As always, the NGO ship menaced that all the people on board are basically dying, that the government should take them and if they are not they are complicit in killing hundreds.
Now the ship came to the port after an agreement where they could let disembark only children and ill people before leaving... and after the first thing happened the ship refused to leave the port. To add to the confusion, a newly elected MP from the left-wing opposition, born in the Ivory Coast, is right now aboard the ship.
Another mess in the Mediterranean migratory crisis, who has no end in sight and has a lot of very powerful forces that try to obstacolate every immigration control.
More options
Context Copy link