BahRamYou
1mo ago
Is it not customary for parties in Germany to have a campaign platform outlining all their proposed policies? That's how it works for American elections. They don't have to fully follow it, of course, but it's nice to see it. If they're a more established party then people can just look to their track record to get a general idea, but for a party that's never held power before I think it's valid to ask what they're going to do, outside of their one signature issue (and I'm still not clear what exactly the AfD is proposing their either- limit immigration? halt it entirely? remigration? concentration camps?)
BahRamYou
1mo ago
Does the AfD actually have anything to promote "human flourishing?" Genuine question, all I know about them is that they're anti-immigration. I think they might find out what countries like Hungary found out... just because you block immigration, doesn't mean you magically fix the economy or birth rates.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
Ah, thank for adding context. Sounds like there's a real chance for AfD to win the governance of Sachsen-Anhalt, then. Still, that's (a) just one state and (b) still a slim majority that relies on a very different party to help it keep it's coalition. So would expect them not to accomplish much. Maybe this will actually cause their support to break, if they finally win power and people realize... it's still just a regular political party, they're not going to snap their fingers and magically solve everything. They probably can't even significantly affect immigration.
Satirist Martin Sonneborn has called for a reestablishment of the wall for decades (and this time it would actually be an antifaschistischer Schutzwall), and more and more I feel that reunification was a mistake. It would have been better to let them join what would become Schengen but keep them separate. An AfD running the government of East Germany would not be so different from Orban in Hungary, PiS in Poland, Haider in Austria and so on, all very tolerable from West Germany.
OK, this would be hilarious. And it opens the door for the funniest election ever. Germany wants a president who is has experience building a giant border wall along politically contraversial territory. Someone with huge name recognition, a fresh approach to politics, and no sense of shame. He's got experience, but he'll be a free agent after 2028. He even has (distant) German ancestry, making him potentially eligible for citizenship if they can dig something up. Drumpf for Deutschland, 2028!
BahRamYou
1mo ago
So... big win for AfD last night: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4zejgz3z9o. How important is this?
Since I'm not one to closely follow European politics, at first I thought this meant that they had won control of the entire national parliament. But then I noticed that, no, it's just one state election, and they're still short of a majority. In every other state, they have far less support, and every other party is still maintaining a rule to never work with them, so the AfD is still effectively shut out of power everywhere.
I suppose it's another sign of their trajectory, though. They seem to win more and more votes in every election. I remember when, not long ago, they were an extreme minority fringe party. Now they get enough votes that it's difficult for the other parties to form a coalition without them.
Is this a sign that the people of Germany are secretly longing to Nazi again? I doubt it. They seem to still be, on the whole, an extremely leftist-liberal nation. Pro-immigration, pro-welfare, anti-militarism, anti-nationalism, and anti-nuke. So I wonder how much this surge in support for AfD is driven by immigration, or how much of it is just them being the only real conservative party that gives voters an alternative to the status quo?
I also wonder what the AfD would actually do if they came into power? There's a big range between "slightly restrict immigration" and "force all the immigrants to pack up and go home." I suspect they haven't entirely figured it out themselves, since for now they're still just a protest vote. Not to mention how they'd have to figure out their policy on every single other policy issue. It's easy to make big promises when you have no actual power to deliver on them.
But I don't know! Maybe I'm wrong. I really don't know much about German politics, I just saw this and I thought it was interesting. Anyone else have thoughts?
BahRamYou
1mo ago
but how do you force jurors to listen, understand, and actually follow those instructions? Once they're behind closed doors in jury deliberation, the judge has no power anymore.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
It seems like the law, at least in the state of Massachusetts, is just riddled with contradictions when it comes to this. What is "reasonable doubt?" What is "Burden of proof?" What is "insane?" These are tough questions for even the wisest of philosophers to determine, let alone regular people in a criminal case. But that's OK, let's just throw it to 12 random people in a jury... surely they'll figure it out, right? We won't need to see the horrendous flaws in their logical because the jury deliberations are all secret.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
...do you think that people in Russia, China, and other countries had some sort of fair democratic election over whether they wanted to join the communist bloc? They didn't. It was enforced upon them.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
Right now, the secret "real system" seems to be that the both sides will make a highly emotional argument, and then the jurors go and decide however they want. Jury selection is by far the most important factor, and written legal precedent means very little. Hooray.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
I think, no matter what happens, this will just continue to add to the general schism between men and women. Men are starting to develop some of the same in-group bias that women have always had.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
It feels pretty mean-spirited to describe tech billionares as simply "nerds". Maybe they started off as humble computer nerds, but that was a long time ago and they've done a lot of other stuff since then.Now they have a lot more in common with the richest CEOs of non-tech companies than they do with the rank-and-file engineers. And like you said, theater kids can be nerds too... what about them?
Imagine if they wrote a book talking about Hollywood celebrity culture had gone too far, and for some reason the subtitle used the word "fag." I feel like that would not go over well, even if they later clarified that "oh I didn't mean all the fags in Hollywood, just the ones who run it!" But I guess it's still normal and cool to throw out slurs against people who work with computers for a living, even though that's an increasingly large and diverse part of the population.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
I think my criticism is that, even with the second type, their history didn't evolve because of any sort of deterministic, psycho-historian type play. It still seemed to rely on some individual doing a stroke of genius, like the mayor with his "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" saying. Good thing they had that genius mayor or they all would have been annihilated by their more violent neighbors, regardless of their more advanced technology.
A rough real-world analogue is Marx. He had this whole complex theory of how society would inevitably evolve into Communism, regardless of what individuals did. But revolutionaries like Lenin seemed to take matters into their own hands, and relied heavily on a few powerful men taking very specific actions, which weren't at all pre-determined!
BahRamYou
1mo ago
I enjoy those books for how weird and unique they are. They remind me of Star Trek, where great men solve problems by calmly discussing philosophy over a conference table. But I agree with you that a lot of the characters end up sounding exactly the same. (To be fair, he wrote them when he was quite young, and just trying to make some extra money on the side while going through grad school)
I do think there's a bit of a contradiction built into them. The whole premise is that humans, at the large scale, are ultimately predictable: individual decisions don't matter, and there are no great men of history. But the entire plot depends heavily on the actions of Hari Seldon, and a few other great men who think and act just like him. So... what's up with that?
BahRamYou
1mo ago
The original trilogy really is a miraculous convergence where brilliance met technological limitations in the best possible way, and he was somehow lucky enough to remove all his bad ideas while keeping all his good ones. All of the missing stuff contributed to the magical, mysterious atmosphere, while he kept just enough details to make it seem realistic. The prequels were... the opposite.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
That's interesting. I didn't know that either. I wonder why no one else wanted to do it? It seems like that would have been the dream project for a lot of up-and-coming young directors.
And yeah... I can't help but think that it would have been better off with someone else other than Lucas at the helm. Spielberg would have been amazing, I wonder why he was so against it? Maybe he was just scared that he couldn't do it justice.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
That's fair to distinguish the different types. There's definitely an increasing amount of people who are just in category 1: acknowledging real psychological differences between the sexes, but without any particular malice. But... I think there's some guys in category 2, also, who really do have some malice towards women. They usually mask it as jokes, from edgy "shock jock" pundits like Nick Fuentes, but... when they keep making the same sort of joke over and over, I get the feeling they really do believe in it to some extent.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
But most (99%) of men were just as powerless and unequal as men. Indeed, if you compared the position of a wife of a wealthy landowner with that of a coal miner in the 19th century or that of a duchess with that of a peasant, it's pretty clear that the sex-reductionist view falls apart somewhat quickly.
Sure, of course most men are going to be lower class in any society. But, relative to the women in their own social class, they still had some power. The stereotypical coal miner still had some power over his wife that would shock people today. Moreover, he could probably find a wife quite easily, because women really needed a guy like him to earn money for her, whereas now he'd be considered "low SMV" unless he was particularly handsome.
Young, childless women unequivocally and consistently do better than their male counterparts now. It is true that companies are not allowed to price in the detriments of hiring a woman (periods, sexual harassment lawsuits, pregnancy) and that the regulatory and welfare state creates and redistributes away investment and jobs towards women (HR and nursing for example, DEI), but it's wrong to say it hasn't worked.
Yeah that's fair. And I think there's a generational disconnect there. The older men, especialy the ones with long established careers, don't feel threatened and still want to help promote women. The younger men absolutely feel threatened, and feel like they need to organize to protect themselves.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
Wouldn't it be a contradiction for any woman to become a thought leader as an anti-feminist? By definition she should be trying to not lead, and simply support a man. It's the same reason women would never support a male as a feminist leader.
The female influencers who I've seen play the act best tend to just kinda... flirt with anti-feminism but then just duck any sort of serious discussion. They're entertainers first and foremost, not political pundits.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
Even hardcore chuds would laugh you out of the room/look on in stunned silence if you started quoting Edward Hammond Clarke. The actual views held by anti-suffragettes were not things that are popular with present day anti-19th amendment believers
Hmm, I've never heard of him before. Let me take a quick trip over to wikipedia to see what he believed...
He claimed that a woman's health would deteriorate as a result of higher education, and moreover that the education of women would come at the expense of their reproductive health.
hahaha, what crazy nonsense. Good thing no one believes that anymore. There's definitely no relation between women's higher education and a lower birth rate, is there...?
(There is)
BahRamYou
1mo ago
Honestly I wrote those paragraphs pretty tongue in cheek, so you and @magic9mushroom or @IdiocyInAction shouldn't take them too seriously. There's no way I can address something as broad as "all human history" in just two paragraphs, whether that's literally the entire time that Homo Sapiens have existed or "just" written history. I think I actually had that thought about whether I was referring to only written history or not, and decided I didn't really care. All I meant was that there did indeed used to be something of a patriarchy, as feminists use the term, but it has been pretty thoroughly dismantled in modern times, but perhaps is making a comeback.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
n the late 2010s -- when PewDiePie, then the most popular channel on YouTube, would tell rape jokes and debunk the wage gap to his viewers.
I never watched PewDiePie, so I can't speak to exactly what he was saying. But I will say... that was then and this is now? Back then, the internet was still a clear second place compared to newspapers and TV in actually changing people's minds. Now, I'd say the internet is the clear first place. And it's not just one channel, it's a lot of channels saying things like this.
In 2020, Ms. Magazine celebrated an all-time high of only 60% of women identifying as feminists, and as a footnote mentioned that 98% of people believed gender equality is important
That actually seems shockingly low. An explicitly feminist magazine, polling only women, could only get to 60% self-identifying as feminist? A label which doesn't really mean anything specific? That implies a lot of people are strongly running away from any sort of feminism.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
I think you're understating it. Women have been a majority of new doctors and lawyers for years.
That's fair. There are certainly some fields where feminism has worked as intended? women have caught up to, or surpassed men.
The question now is... is that a good thing? There's no longer a shortage of people willing and able to be doctors and lawyers. Instead, people fight viciously in competition to get those high-prestige jobs. I do not know if the current status quo of "give it to the teacher's pets" will hold, there. Perhaps the chuds will also take over that competition by simply banning female doctors and lawyers, instead of trying to out-study them on the exams?
Vance's beliefs aren't too far from someone like Catherine Pakaluk, does that make her a Chud?
Well, this is the first time I've heard of her, so it's hard to say. She seems quite conservative and reactionary. But I think she's still a bit too refined and intellectual to a be a proper "chud." Frankly, I'm not sure it's possible for any woman to be a chud, that's almost an oxymoron.
BahRamYou
1mo ago
Semantics. Legal precedent since Vietnam has given the president wide ranging power to use the military without an official declaration of war. Maybe that's not how the founders intended it, but that's what we've got. But he really, really doesn't have the power to re-make medicare and social security into whatever he wants, that's just college student naivete to think that a president has that kind of power.
Are we entering a new phase of the gender wars? To pull a term from Asmongold: "the age of the chud." That is to say: openly, unapologetically sexist men, who don't even try to hide it or justify it.
I can't exactly prove any of this, so I'm just going to list a bunch of anecdotes and vibes to show what I mean. You can decide for yourself if you agree or disagree.
The story thus far: for most of human history, humans had a patriarchy where men controlled most positions of power. Starting in 1919 with the 19th amendment in the US, and a similar date in most European countries, women got the right to vote and generally got legal equality with men. But certain social and institutional barriers remained, so 3rd wave feminists worked to gradually push back and get more rights and power for women. This was generally seen as a good thing by all, with only the most unashamedly reactionary men being opposed.
In the 80s and 90s, this was mostly done by trying to treat everyone the same, with the hope that taking away men's sexism would naturally create equality with men. But over time this proved insufficient, so left-leaning groups started pushing for more and more efforts to actively favor women. This was seen most acutely in corporate recruiting, where companies would heavily recruit in trying to get more women in male-leaning professions, especially engineering and management, and punish heavily anyone who was accused of making women feel "unwelcome." Male employees who wanted to fit in were forced to learn academic feminist jargon, and generally act like an "ally," regardless of their own personal views.
But has any of this actually worked? Well... no. Or at least, it's hit a wall. Engineering and the physical trades remain stubbornly male dominated. Women do a bit better in management, but only when they can sit in large meetings and avoid personal responsibility for anything. Their strong preference remains fields like nursing, HR, and marketing.
On a more personal level, I think any of us who have paid attention long enough have seen the cycle play out long enough to become jaded. Talking like a feminist might get you some kudos ("good boy points"), but it won't get you respected as a thinker- you're still expected to do your duty as an ally by following behind the female leaders. It certainly won't get you laid, which admittedly is not the fairest way to judge an ideology, but it does tend to influence the thinking of young men. It also won't get you the respect of other men, unless they're the most simptastic of feminist men who will still dislike you for being a man. It doesn't seem to get you anything at all, no matter how well you articulate the feminist talking points.
Enter: the chud. Or "C.H.U.D." if you will, since the term comes from an 80s movie where it's an acronym, but it's recently become internet slang for the sort of man who openly embraces reactionary cultural politics, without any veneer of intellectualism. They seem to have found a new way to play the game: you don't debate the feminists, you don't even try, you just do whatever the hell you want and ignore them, while openly embracing some of the worst stereotypes. Trump was probably the trailblazer here, with his total lack of shame, but lots of guys have learned this power.
At the same time, there's been a resurgance in traditional feminine behavior. Things like wearing makeup, lipstock, playing with dolls, openly crying, doing needlework, and sometimes even wearing sexy clothes. For a while these sorts of things were demonized by the more militant wing of the feminist movement, to the point where women felt a bit guilty for indulging in them, but now it seems like they're admitting that it's ok for women to have their traditional feminine interests too. And lots of chuds eat this up, too. I've also noticed a lot more games have blatant fan service in them, almost to the point where I'm numb to it, but this is a level of T&A that would have been protested if it was in old movies.
For a long time, the practical center on feminism was that it was good for the economy. Left or right, everyone agreed that we needed more women in the workforce to grow the economy. But with AI and automation, that's much less clear. So many white collar jobs are getting automated, and it's only going to get worse. Every new woman in the office is simply competition with a man for the same scarce job. The place where we actually need women is at home, having babies, and that doesn't seem to be happening nearly enough.
I think we're on the verge of rolling back a lot of feminism. I know you might say "oh, that's just internet talk, no one actually believes that in real life." But the internet is where we go to talk politics now. If you can win on the internet, you win in real life, too. We might see corporate and political groups stop trying to recruit women, and men being openly sexist again.
As an example, consider our new Secretary of War (that's war, not defense), Pete Hegseth. He opposes feminism, says that women should not be in combat roles, and has instituted mandatory testosterone testing for the military. He's also just generally blunt and aggressive in the way he talks. The left hates him but... he's still in charge. In his personal life, he is twice divorced due to having a lot of affairs.
Or consider JD Vance. He's a lot more intellectual than Hegseth, but still something of a chud. He opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, and childlessness in general. He's flirted with the idea that parents should have more voting rights than non-parents. He wants to "de-woke-ify" all federal institutions. He's saying all kinds of things that would have gotten me fired from most corporate jobs, and yet there's a strong chance that he'll become president.
On a final note, consider the voting demographics. In pretty much every election, the women trend left and the men trend right. If only men voted, the right would basically win every election easily. And that's true internationally, not just in the US. So I'm sure there are a few strategists thinking... "hmm... are we sure we can't repeal that 19th amendment? Or at least make it more difficult for women to vote?" Because that would be an instant knockout blow to the left.
I will say, I don't support any of this. I still consider myself something of a feminist, and I wouldn't fit in at all in a world of chuds. But... I see the appeal, especially for young men, and I think that might be where the world is trending, unless the world finds a more reasonable compromise in the gender wars.
BahRamYou
2mo ago
If he wanted to do something that is unpopular but has to be done, cutting entitlements or the debt would be a good place to start instead of another war.
That's not actually a thing that the president can do though. He doesn't have the power to decide budgets. He does have the power to fight wars. Obama did the same thing in his second term, he mostly gave up on trying to fix healthcare and just spent his time handling drone strikes across the middle east. But it's another reason why losing midterm elections isn't the end of the world... if Democrats win Congress, then it's on them to do the unpopular stuff and cut spending.
Isn't it proven by Godel's Theorem that any complex logical system should have an infinite number of potentially provable theorems? And no easy way to know which ones are provable? So I guess the field of mathematics will go on forever, just with AIs proving more and more abstract, ridiculously complex theorems. The "job" of human mathematicians, if you can call it that, is to simply marvel and appreciate what they've done, like an art critic.
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