Botond173
11mo ago
This assumption probably won’t count as anything new, but it seems to me that the overall leftist strategy in the current culture war over (in essence) MtF transsexual boxers in the Olympic games hinges entirely on the following unstated assumptions: a) TV viewers generally aren’t that interested in women’s sports in the first place b) the sort of sports where these particular MtF athletes seem to predominantly want to excel at are generally seen as low-status in the eyes of suburban middle-class Blue Tribe normies c) the relative number of cissexual women genuinely interested in such sports is insignificantly low.
Botond173
24d ago
If one considers the same overall phenomenon from what I assume is women’s usual perspective, I’m sure one can’t help but roll the eyes at the recent discussion on Aella’s degeneracy, for example. Shaming and punishing e-thots can only work when alternative life paths are broadly accessible for average women.
The norm of enforced monogamy (heh) in the old days of Christian patriarchy (heh) basically functioned as a life insurance policy for women. Someone was surely going to marry each woman, with a few extreme exceptions, no matter how stupid, ugly or fat she was. The same path for heterosexual women today, on the other hand, is largely up to chance and luck, something that is pretty much optional – it may happen and may work out well, but there’s a significant probability that it won’t. Just listen to women’s usual complaint about men, which is usually that attractive men refuse to commit to an exclusive relationship. Of course we see the massive proliferation of e-thotting, sugar-mommying, gold-digging etc. when the social consensus is that a happy marriage is by and large off the table.
Botond173
10mo ago
You're aware that the male attributes that gain the respect of other men and those that sexually attract women are normally rather different, aren't you?
Botond173
4mo ago
I think it's fairly realistic to assume that many (maybe most?) of the civilian dead in Bucha who were shown on Western media were killed by Ukrainian units who reentered the town in retribution.
Botond173
9mo ago
It's not merely that she's relatively young, it's that she's much younger than the two presidents who'll have preceded her.
What issues can be her Perestroika, her Glasnost, her liquor ban?
You can also name about a dozen potential issues, can't you? The college debt bubble, the NIMBY vs. YIMBY struggle, the opioid crisis, economic stagnation, the housing bubble, Medicare, women's rights etc.
Botond173
10mo ago
blessed with good weather, natural resources
That's a bit of a stretch.
Botond173
11mo ago
In the literal sense of the word, they aren't trans. But that doesn't really matter. In a practical sense, in the context of the culture war, they are.
Botond173
1mo ago
It’s also true though that the existing Russian political system collapsed in a rather bloodless manner in 1917 and also 1991.
Botond173
6mo ago
How exactly does affirmative action make black women fatter? I'm not sure it's about food prices.
Botond173
7mo ago
Rhetoric is one thing, actions are another. Altogether I find it a bit of a stretch to say that Chinese foreign policy was markedly aggressive during Mao, either compared to that of the USSR or the Qing Dynasty for that matter.
Botond173
8mo ago
But conservatism is already doing tons of work toward extincting itself
Huh?
Botond173
9mo ago
About a month age I made the argument that essentially, future historians will draw parallels between Gorbachev and the Kamala Harris presidency, which at this point seems to be rather likely to come around next year. I can understand why it was downvoted because I made it deliberately vague, thinking that spelling my assumption all out in detail would narrow the discussion down too much and derail it at the start. Anyway, I recently read the New York Magazine article titled The Joyous Plot to elect Kamala Harris... by Rebecca Traister, and while I wouldn't say that it strengthens my argument to the full, it certainly doesn't include anything that would contradict it, I think. She's being lauded as a champion of both Democrat party leaders and grassroots organizers (mainly of female ones, that is), ushering in a new era of hope and political change after long and disheartening years dominated by old farts in leadership positions.
Botond173
9mo ago
so long as it wasn't in the relatively small subset of things which were censored
So basically cat videos, baby pictures and other content if approved by the Blue Tribe.
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
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
8d ago
It’s a bit of a mischaracterization to argue that ‘Germany and Russia gave up [Polish] territory between them’, isn’t it? It wasn’t exactly a matter of choice in either case, especially not in the case of czarist (or Soviet) Russia. I’ll concede that Wilson probably had a significant role in the creation of Poland as well, although this is not a subject I’m familiar with.
Anyway, I agree with your point in the sense that Hungary did in fact have a bicameral parliamentary system as the member state of a dualist monarchy before and during WW1, and was as such exposed to Western concepts of rule of law, civil rights, freedom of the press etc. although to a limited extent indeed. The transitional period of 1918-21 in contrast was characterized by wars, unrest, socio-economic collapse, internment, pogroms, terror and the general brutalization of the population, which hardly constitute a breeding ground for democratization. The regime that ended up consolidating itself was clearly right-wing and authoritarian, but the bicameral parliament and the multi-party system remained, which was still something. In the case of Bulgaria and Romania, I imagine whatever political role their parliamentary system was equally or even more limited.
Botond173
19d ago
LOL...is this what you unironically associate late-stage capitalism and existing cyberpunk conditions with? "good conditions, decent income, nice job"? Do you think this is the lived experience of South Korean normies, for example? People who cannot even reproduce themselves?
"mostly functioning nations"
I meant "mostly well-functioning Asian nation". English isn't my mother tongue. Either way, I think Vietnam, as unified through force of arms, represents an overall outcome that is clearly preferable to both those of all other former COMECON member states and that of the partitioned Korean nation.
Is it just me, or is there a rather obvious historical parallel between Gorbachev and the impending Kamala Presidency?
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