Botond173
11mo ago
Vibes alone don't explain what's happening. In this case, both sides seem to be willing to turn this into a culture war issue because - for different reasons - they think social circumstances favor them, and their messaging will be well-received as a result. If this condition weren't met, one or both sides would drop the issue, and there'd be no culture war over it.
Botond173
11mo ago
These are just beliefs, and beliefs alone do not guide the culture war. Those who wage it take other considerations into account as well.
Botond173
11mo ago
The problem is, if your argument starts with "no, she's not a man, although she isn't exactly a woman either", chances are you'll instantly lose the normies.
Botond173
11mo ago
It should. But it still leaves you having to explain why you let that individual compete in female boxing, in the Olympics.
Botond173
11mo ago
I think it makes sense to differentiate between personal beliefs that are held as self-evident for whatever emotional inclination, and deductions/assumptions made about the outside world that encourage you to engage in culture-warring.
Botond173
11mo ago
Unfortunately the fact is that not ever even having to think about LGBTQ-related matters is a luxury not affordable to the rightist normalfag griller demographic in a society that bends to the will of the LGBTQ lobby every time. If they want to see pride parades discretely removed from Main street and trans celebs removed from prime-time TV, they'll have to politically act accordingly. I'll agree though that devoting too much time and energy to this issue isn't a good idea politically, but you can say the same thing about any other issue as well.
I know some definite positive contributors from Haiti.
Huh?
Edit: see below.
Botond173
11mo ago
She's a typically annoying Democrat lipstick feminist and pretty much a grifter with rather effective cash-grabbing methods. I'd say her huge popularity among single women of her age (mostly) largely stems from her singing about a lived experience they can strongly relate to, namely serial monogamy, which I'd define as promiscuity as preferred by women (as opposed to harem-building and plate-spinning, which is promiscuity as preferred by men). This surely makes her annoying to many young men.
Botond173
11mo ago
All when you could just have held a vigil, pretended to care while still saying "don't look back in anger" and bought yourself space to actually move the needle politically instead of having to handle chaos and international embarrassment.
The media could also have contributed to this by factually mentioning that he's a second-generation immigrant (so not a "refugee" or even an immigrant) and his ancestors are from Rwanda (i.e. not Muslims). It'd have also been possible from the beginning to make the whole issue about his mental illness.
Botond173
11mo ago
Implicit in all the supportive arguments about the incursion is the assumption that the Ukrainian forces cannot break through the enemy defenses anywhere inside official Ukrainian territory, or that they shouldn't try it because it'd be wasteful or something. After all the Atlanticist propaganda I've read about the orc hordes in the last two years, this just strikes me as 100% pathetic.
Botond173
11mo ago
I misread your comment as "positive contributions", my bad. I'll also point out that the OP was specifically referring to net contributors.
Botond173
11mo ago
What is pathetic is that the same people are praising this incursion as a good idea who have been trying to convince everyone for many months that the war will definitely be won in a short time by the Ukrainians liberating all their territories by force, without negotiating anything with the orc vermin, advancing to their post-1954 borders.
Botond173
11mo ago
It's a rather bad idea to give wide masses of average people the impression that society will be harsh towards them should they simply have bad fortune. The view that society is merciless and unforgiving incentivizes drug addiction, crime and all sorts of social degeneracy.
Botond173
11mo ago
Were that simply the case, they would just get paired up with average hard-working provider betas early, stay committed to them and elicit commitment from them. But the information we have doesn't really bear this out.
Botond173
10mo ago
What I disagree with is the proposition that "harsh views about people who are merely unfortunate is a necessity of having a functional society".
Botond173
10mo ago
I’m increasingly aware of just how much suffering and sin is caused by our belief that the world is hard and merciless. This belief—which can express itself as despair, or as the fearful drive to protect oneself above all else—makes it impossible to trust others. It makes social solidarity and even marriage extraordinarily difficult. The belief that we will be brutally punished if we set a foot out of line, that nobody will look out for us or help us or try to understand where we’re coming from, promotes abortion. It fuels addiction, by making us unwilling to admit where we’re needy, weak, or at fault.
Botond173
10mo ago
Is it just me, or is there a rather obvious historical parallel between Gorbachev and the impending Kamala Presidency?
Botond173
10mo ago
Yes, basically. She's relatively new in the sense that she's much younger than either Biden, Trump or many senators and political bosses. Assuming that she wins the election one way or another, which does seem likely to me, she'll probably be promoted in the mainstream as a youthful (again, relatively speaking) reformer and the nation's new hope (but not an outsider by any means) after a long era of political gerontocracy (when the political class showed a clear unwillingness to entrust anyone under 65 or so with any significant responsibility on a national level), economic stagnation, vibecession and social anomie. And if Soviet history is anything to go by, she'll be a spectacular failure.
Botond173
10mo ago
See my reply to @stuckinbathroom above.
Botond173
10mo ago
And your conclusion from all that is that there's no parallel at al???
The one part we could really nitpick about is the one concerning the educated classes, but I'm confident to say that whatever level of trust they have in the current American system is a function of their trust in the Democratic Party's ability to assert itself as the long-term political hegemon on a national level. Most of this trust would evaporate in an instant should Trump win another election.
As far as I know, knife crime of any sort in the UK is disproportionately committed by non-Muslim black youths, but that's such a pure hatefact that not even the local "extreme right-wing" wants to mention it.
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