Arnaud
1yr ago
The US presidents security needs only to deal with threats from sub-state level actors, lone nutters, small terrorist cells and the like.
For everyone else, having the full wrath of the United States government mobilised against them outweighs whatever they might hope to achieve by assassinating the US president. Also it does help that Israel actually does have a military of its own and is probably quite eager to not get caught flat footed again.
Arnaud
1yr ago
I really need to get around to reading some Jeeves and Wooster, I've been a fan of the tv series ever since I was a lad and my Dad has always gone to great lengths to impress upon me just how good the books are.
Arnaud
1yr ago
Frankly I'm more surprised that more women aren't frightened of childbirth, everything I've heard about it makes it seem incredibly unpleasant.
Arnaud
1yr ago
Feelings of inferiority
By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits; low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.
Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.
From Industrial Society and Its Future.
Arnaud
1yr ago
I find it pretty funny that nobody else has apparently thought of the actual term, tomboys and have instead fallen into the age old argument of "which form of gay is less gay".
Arnaud
1yr ago
I am completely indifferent to if you look good or bad, if you have an agenda or are simply asking questions. My post was nothing more than a stream of consciousness in response to a prompt.
the end of slavery
For the record, slavery is still very much present in the world today and probably won't be going anywhere any time soon.
It seems to me, Hamas just did a YOLO attack for really no long term gain
The future is uncertain, by preventing recognition of Israel today, they are effectively buying another roll of the dice tomorrow and hoping for more favourable conditions to emerge that can then be exploited. Superficially this sounds like YOLO'ing it, but it's a more considered strategy.
I felt like Israel was really starting to lose support in the West
Reminding people that these are the kinds of people Israel has to deal with will garner them a lot of support and they also stupidly filmed their atrocities and put it on social media
You're thinking like a westerner and focusing far too much on a peripheral audience. Filming atrocities energises their arab/islamic base and will push Israel into pursuing a harder line and probably killing a bunch of Palestinian civilians to boot, which makes for useful propaganda. It's a win/win for Hamas on the PR front as far as they're concerned.
At this point the ball is very much in Israels court, it'll be interesting to see what tack Israel takes in this next phase of the war.
Arnaud
1yr ago
Ideally I would live in a world where nobody felt the need to sell their dignity.
Arnaud
1yr ago
Ted Kaczynski is not only a good emissary for antitechnological thought, he is the greatest emissary by a vast margin. You can turn up your nose at his terrorist campaign, but the fact is that it achieved its objective of spreading his manifesto into the wider world and is the only reason anybody outside of academia has even considered these ideas.
Which ignores that Kaczynski's ur-father, Jacques Ellul (and Ellul's own ur-mother Simone Weil) was an ardent and committed pacifist.
Which is why nobody has ever heard of him outside of niche academic circles and why I am less inclined to take his work seriously compared to Kaczynski, who has demonstrated a far greater practical understanding of how things work in the real world.
I'm partial to a nice game of chess myself, provided neither of you is a Kasparov or other chess savant, it should provide a good way to pass some time together.
Chess is a great man activity like that, it provides something for you both to focus on and lets you bond without having to do anything so gay as talking about each other.
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