Bartender_Venator
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User ID: 2349
Bartender_Venator
7hr ago
Apologies for being unclear - standing a terrible candidate, then realizing it and trying to hide them, was what I meant by a disaster-class that might be a one-off (because it doesn't generalize to races with better candidates). I can't speak to the mechanics of the campaign.
Bartender_Venator
11hr ago
I agree with your critique of the OP, good to have the Manchester context in there. I would strongly caveat the Makersfield point: besides Burnham being a good campaigner and having the party apparatus focused on it, voters just really really like having the PM be their MP. Wouldn't you like it if your House rep was the President? Reform also ran a disaster-class of a campaign (possibly a sign of the future, possibly a one-off).
Re: a working Burnhamism, I think the London class are a problem for him in a different way than pure opposition. A working Burnhamism would be purely pragmatic, but the London types are already surrounding him with a "brain trust" that will try to make some ideology out of it, and that ideology will always happen to favour the status quo and the QUANGO/NGO/Civil Service/media blob who provide the "brains". I doubt that Burnham has the ability to bulldoze through court politics like that.
Andy Burnham is 100% a "vibes" politician, and it's worked well for him. He's very popular as the Mayor of Manchester, heading up a flagship bipartisan project (devolution to the North), and his absence from Westminster has left him untainted by both the bitterness of internal feuding and the failure of Starmer's government. He hearkens back to an older Labour that working-class voters felt cared about them. It's nostalgic anti-Thatcherism, but with a sense that if you took him round yer nan's for a cuppa she'd like him. "What a nice lad!" I wouldn't underestimate how sticky this could be with the elderly voters who dominate UK politics. If he can avoid substantive disasters like the one that sank Truss, he's Labour's best candidate to fight Reform. "Aw listen luv, it was always that Thatcher, it's like we're back in the old days, Nigel wants to bring 'er back 'e does..."
He does have a basic problem with governing, though. Well, two. The only critically important issues in British politics are the economy and immigration (healthcare and housing being downstream of economics). Burnham wants to be, and sells himself as, different from Starmer on economics. Lots of soft-soap pieces in the New Statesman about him bringing back "communalism". But British economic policy is hitting the hard constraints of the bond markets. Burnham's voters and MPs won't accept anything less than more spending, he's committed to following Starmer's fiscal rules limiting borrowing - rating agencies are saying things which, translated from econspeak, are serious warnings not to break those rules - and there's just not much fiscal room to squeeze the rich without hitting boomer homeowners and thereby committing electoral suicide. Many ways this can go wrong and few ways it can go right. On immigration, I'm sure Burnham is a true believer, but so was Starmer, and organized mobs burning down buildings tends to scare the hell out of politicians. I actually suspect he's more likely to keep tacking softly to the right on immigration, to avoid being on the unpopular side of both issues and to give himself breathing room on economic policy.
This comes to a broader, more speculative point: the UK (not just the YooKay) has become structurally ungovernable. In order to get elected, you have to match the other party's wildly unrealistic promises. When you get elected, you can't deliver, because your room to carry on down the safe path of procrastination is running out, there's no room to give the voters what you promised, and any path that would deliver real growth in the long run carries electorally unacceptable short-term pain (maybe an advantage of a Presidential system which at least gives you two years to act without an immediate leadership challenge). As 2010's outgoing chief secretary to the Treasury wrote to his successor, "Dear chief secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left." In taking the Blairite road, where perception management is the chief tool of government, and all that matters is the next news cycle, for 29 years, the UK is coming to the end of that road. We're seeing the harbingers: every PM since Cameron's followed the same trajectory, where they get elected, popularity bump, polls crash faster than a shitcoin. I see no way out except slamming into whatever reckoning is at the end of it.
Andy Burnham: “I want to rejoin. I hope in my lifetime, I want to rejoin the European Union. I believe in the unions of all kinds. The union of the UK. The EU benefitted this country. Trade unions. People prosper more when they’re part of unions.”
That is absolutely hilarious. The Thick of It is a documentary, proven again.
Bartender_Venator
4d ago
The other aspect is the issue of holding an entire world's worth of players to anglo-american HR standards. Hence the controversies about South American players calling each other "negrito" or similar as a nickname. Generally, in soccer, intentional racial slurs from players are as vanishingly rare as they are in the US, but very common from randos in comment sections or occasionally in the stands.
Bartender_Venator
4d ago
They don't show it on TV, but I was at a world cup game, and the whole stadium was booing the hell out of the "hydration breaks".
Bartender_Venator
4d ago
Here's another way to think of it: Ahnold had small wrists. If you lift seriously and consistently, and keep a good diet, a slim bone structure makes you look bigger and more sculpted by comparison to the points on the body that don't grow. Aesthetics is about contrast. In many ways harder than hoping for a magic pill, but there's no replacement for iron and chicken.
Bartender_Venator
4d ago
If I give a tl;dr, nobody will read the actual article, so I'll just give a killshot passage here:
It is a necessary feature of consequentialism that it is a shallow philosophy. For there are always borderline cases in ethics. Now if you are either an Aristotelian, or a believer in divine law, you will deal with a borderline case by considering whether doing such-and-such in such-and-such circumstances is, say, murder, or is an act of injustice; and according as you decide it is or it isn't, you judge it to be a thing to do or not. This would be the method of casuistry; and while it may lead you to stretch a point on the circumference, it will not permit you to destroy the centre. But if you are a consequentialist, the question "What is it right to do in such-and-such circumstances?" is a stupid one to raise. The casuist raises such a question only to ask "Would it be permissible to do so-and-so?" or "Would it be permissible not to do so-and-so?" Only if it would not be permissible not to do so-and-so could he say "This would be the thing to do." Otherwise though he may speak against some action, he cannot prescribe any— for in an actual case, the circumstances (beyond the ones imagined) might suggest all sorts of possibilities, and you can't know in advance what the possibilities are going to be. Now the consequentialist has no footing on which to say "This would be permissible, this not"; because by his own hypothesis, it is the consequences that are to decide, and he has no business to pretend that he can lay it down what possible twists a man could give doing this or that; the most he can say is: a man must not bring about this or that; he has no right to say he will, in an actual case, bring about such-and-such unless he does so-and-so. Further, the consequentialist, in order to be imagining borderline cases at all, has of course to assume some sort of law or standard according to which this is a borderline case, Where then does he get the standard from? In practice the answer invariably is: from the standards current in his society or his circle. And it has in fact been the mark of all these philosophers that they have been extremely conventional; they have nothing in them by which to revolt against the conventional standards of their sort of people; it is impossible that they should be profound. But the chance that a whole range of conventional standards will be decent is small.
Bartender_Venator
4d ago
Bruh I'm going to Syria in three weeks. Loved my time in Iraq and Ukraine. You don't need to tell me about how libtard boomer/consoomer "wow they're just like us but they have the same food I can get in a restaurant at home" travel sucks, I'd rather blow my brains out than set foot on a cruise ship or take instagram stories in Bali. But if you have a serious interest in history, or in adventure, there's no substitute for travel. And usually countries off the beaten path are the nicest ones, or at least they're bad in interesting and likeable ways. Protip: if you're going to an otherwise boring country, dip through dive bars until you find an extroverted local who speaks English and roll from there.
Bartender_Venator
4d ago
Didn't realize the Israelis had finally started doing that, good for them. I haven't been there in a very long time. And yes, many countries which are perfectly safe and pleasant to visit have visa-free travel for fellow thirdies while putting annoying/extractive requirements on westerners. It's often through regional associations like CARICOM, but also a general rule of thumb that their relevant government personnel see Americans as suckers to be fleeced and annoyed, whereas an exotic passport is "who is this guy? Best leave him alone." Particularly if you have local government contacts.
the bureaucratic hassle of obtaining a second passport is probably going to dwarf any bureaucratic hassle you save by having a second passport.
True objectively. But one kind of bureaucratic hassle can be done at your leisure when you have lots of time at your disposal, the other often happens when you're time-crunched, sleep-deprived, and have very limited recourse to outside bureaucracies.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
You would enjoy Anscombe's Modern Moral Philosophy a lot, even if she's on the wrong side of the Schism.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
Crazy shit, huh?
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
It makes travel significantly more convenient depending on where you're going. A proper third-world passport is actually more useful than EU for this, since countries who have beef with one tend to have beef with both. And even if you're purely a US citizen you need two passports to travel to both Israel and much of the Middle East. Also worth doing if you're wealthy and have a second home outside the US, tourist visa limits can get inconvenient and citizenship can make dealing with homeownership bureaucracy easier.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
Complaining about the weather as small talk.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
Lol yes, though generally it's used as "Master [full version of first name]", so little Billy Bates is "Master William". It's an old hangover from the British class system that's still used, as far as I can tell, because it's cute to formally address little kids like that.
Bartender_Venator
6d ago
Took me a long time to get that off my default name for airline bookings. Gets you some funny looks in the States.
Bartender_Venator
7d ago
If you're an Arsenal fan I have your man right here.
Bartender_Venator
8d ago
Yeah that's correct. What makes a soccer game exciting before you get to the penalty box is largely illegible unless you're the sort of fan who makes the effort to learn about the tactics. Like if you don't know what a passing triangle is and how to spot it you're going to zone out until the ball comes near the goal and then you might as well be watching American football. Still, the game is the easiest to learn it's ever been now that you have substack tactics guys breaking down gifs and so on.
Bartender_Venator
9d ago
I think he's referring to the occasional 20-to-30-second intervals where American sports happen.
Bartender_Venator
9d ago
The sentiment among a lot of young Tory types in London during the Scottish independence referendum was: "Good riddance, we can stop paying for you and we'll have a Tory England for a generation."
Bartender_Venator
10d ago
Mencken is the funniest writer in American history, Mark Twain doesn't come close. His book "The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche" is very interesting, but written very early in his career. Mostly useful as a corrective to modern attempts to make Nietzsche a safe lib. The place to start is A Mencken Chrestomathy, which is his own selection of his best writings. It'll teach you a ton about culture and politics in 20s/30s America while making you laugh the whole time.
Bartender_Venator
10d ago
Heidegger + 4chan
predator_handshake.gif
edit: messed up the reddit spacing, which I think counts as proof
Bartender_Venator
12d ago
Communism is a hell simulator, but at least you get to die (sometimes pretty quickly).
Bartender_Venator
12d ago
Would you like to discuss actual crime rates? Crime statistics? Because I've got a lot of them. Did you know that people from non-Western backgrounds commit one-third of all rapes in Denmark? I wouldn't recommend looking up the statistics on stranger/assault rape, that might send you to His Majesty's Posting Gaol. We can go through the stats on grooming gangs, if you like, or discuss the exact relationship between the numbers 13 and 52. The man on the street might not know the exact numbers, but if you do know them, it's clear that his folk-knowledge understanding of them is basically correct (modulo a couple esoteric race science aspects he may not know, like certain otherwise indistinguishable Balkan varietals being significantly different from each other).
Bartender_Venator
12d ago
TLP's definition of narcissism overlaps like 90% with "masochistic personality".
lol that was the other clip I debated linking.
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