Capital_Room's profile

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 1d ago

and to inspire further action from others through what 19th century Russian nihilist social revolutionaries called “Propaganda of the Deed”

Except when has this ever actually happened? My understanding, from what I've read on the topic, is that "Propaganda of the Deed" never actually worked, not like the revolutionaries hoped, and was in fact counterproductive.

(If I thought such an act would inspire others on the same side to follow suit, well…)

1

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 1d ago

Red Tribe is not only going to win, but is clearly going to win.

I will again reiterate, for our audience, that I, for one, do not think it's "clear" at all, that you have not provided sufficient evidence to back this claim, and that from what I have seen, if any tribe is "clearly going to win," it's Blue.

2

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 1d ago

This would bankrupt pretty much every non-ivy inside of a few years.

You say that like it's a bad thing

I want to burn down the system

Apparently you don't; or, at least we have very different ideas of what that means. My model for the minimum in dealing with Academia is Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries — complete with seizure of assets and the imprisonment or execution of resistant abbots and monks.

0

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 1d ago

The blues are pretty much guaranteed to lose a kinetic tribal conflict

I'd say this is a pretty strong assertion, of the sort that should really have some evidence provided to back it. For one, why don't you think the blues will be able to retain control over "kinetic" government institutions?

1

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 2d ago

Sure, which puts paid to Vox's "false flag" narrative. But it instead highlights another weakness of assassination and terrorism as political tools in this sort of modern context: the choosing of the symbolic over the effective. To borrow Max Weber's terms, it's favoring "values rationality" (Wertrationalität) over "goal rationality" (Zweckrationalität); that is, what "sends a message" or embodies a particular value over what actually achieves a concrete end.

2

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 2d ago

There’s very little you can do to prevent being murdered like this other than not be worth killing, and that’s a tall order for Inner Party members for reasons inherent to being Inner Party.

Depends on who you consider "Inner Party members." Nobody tries to assassinate, say, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, despite the IRS's unpopularity.

I remember reading a thread on Tumblr discussing how we remember the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand that launched World War I, but we forget that political assassinations were not uncommon in turn-of-the-century Europe, compared to after the World Wars, mostly of people we would consider rather "mid-level" in the government — not notable enough for the sort of fame-seeking that motivates most assassination attempts on heads of state. The question was raised of why this changed, and the general answer was that in Europe (or at least parts outside Western Europe) back then, even ministry heads and upper-level bureaucrats were members of the hereditary aristocracy — personally important beyond their government office, and not readily replaceable.

Nowadays, though, such jobs are held by interchangeable human cogs in the bureaucratic machine. Take out the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and his or her #2 will be in their office within the week, and the operation of the IRS will proceed without the slightest hiccup. Hit the J. Edgar Hoover building with a truck full of explosives*, and the rest of the FBI continues with business as usual.

This is why I disagree with our own @KulakRevolt's Substack piece "Assassination War & the Death of Bureaucracy," because, long before assassinations of IRS agents "cause a Johnstown style 2/3 flight from the profession," (which even he estimates would take "merely 100 IRS agents" being killed annually), you'll long since run out of assassins willing to die to take out utterly-replaceable human cogs, only to see the machine grind on undaunted.

Sure, the mostly-figurehead merely-elected politicians whose names and faces are known to the public might have to worry, but then, see the "mostly figurehead" part.

*Example inspired by Vox Day's claim in this post that the Oklahoma City attack was a "false flag" precisely because it was in Oklahoma City:

In other words, a real terrorist attack on the FBI isn’t going to be in some random field office; the Oklahoma City truck could have just as easily have been parked in front of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. If there is a false flag attack in London, it would probably be on some trivial, but vaguely symbolic structure that was already scheduled for demolition. An aging football stadium scheduled for replacement would make an ideal candidate.

3

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 5d ago

We should be trying to discourage unwed pregnancy, while encouraging women to have children inside of wedlock both early and often.

Agreed. (The decline of the "shotgun wedding" has probably been a net negative for society.)

I think that this is a very good take, but I would further add that I think "teen pregnancy" as a snarl phrase is a malformed or malicious meme to begin with

In support of this, I'd note that at least some of the statistics on "teen pregnancy" define "teen" in the numerical sense rather than the conventional — that is, they count any female getting pregnant before age 20 ("Nineteen is in 'the teens,' so it counts!"). Thus, a woman marrying the summer after graduating high school at 18, and expecting her first child a year later, gets counted as a "teen pregnancy."

5

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 5d ago

Thanks, that sounds the most like what I was looking for.

2

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 7d ago

So there's the phenomenon of "hate watching," where people watch a movie or show they know they'll hate, looking for things to be offended by and get angry about. But is there a term for the similar phenomenon of people watching a movie or show they know they'll hate… because it's popular with others, and thus they're afraid of social consequences for not watching?

It's not quite "peer pressure," it's not exactly "fear of missing out." More a "fear of not fitting in." This sort of media consumption habit is usually associated with teenagers (particularly teen girls), but I've also encountered it occasionally with conservative Christian commentators. The sort who will complain about how everything Hollywood makes ranges from leftist propaganda to Satanic filth, and yet watch every popular new release; and when asked if they hate it so much, why don't they just stop watching, find the idea of not being * au courant* with pop culture horrifying, because then what will people who aren't fellow conservative Christians think? (What if your liberal coworkers are discussing the latest episode of Euphoria, and they ask you what you thought? You can't just tell them you didn't watch it' or worse, that you don't watch TV at all. How can you establish yourself as a fellow smart, cultured intellectual, and not get dismissed as an ignorant Bible-thumping hick (like all the ignorant Bible-thumping hicks back home that you worked so hard to escape) if you don't force yourself to watch multiple episodes of Transparent?)

6

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 7d ago

Inspired by a Tumblr post I saw:

Is there a term for a cluster of similar, related items connected by shared traits, but where none of the traits are dispositive, nor is there a central example to which the rest are compared?

That is, for example, where one member of the group has relevant traits ABCD, another BCDE, another CDEF, and another ABEF, etc. So that none of the traits ABCDEF are present in all members of the group — so you can't characterize the group as "things with trait[s] [fill in blank]" — nor is there a "type specimen" X with all relevant traits "ABCDEF" — so you can't characterize the group as "X and things closely resembling X." Just a lot of things which resemble one another in a few important ways.

4

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 7d ago

So, I had some thoughts on this topic come up when watching the Nostalgia Critic review tv commercials from the 80s and 90s — specifically, the “baby doll” commercials. Ads for dolls that cry, and wet themselves, and such; with those all held up as selling points for the toy. In particular, the 1996 “Take Care of Me Twins,” with their burping, drooling, runny noses, etc., and how stressed out the girl in the ad looks — and this is intended to make girls want these dolls? And yet…

Which reminded me of the 2016 Australian study discussed here, about how baby simulator dolls intended for education programs discouraging teen pregnancy — replacing the old “haul around a bag of flour for a week” method they used back when I was in “health” class — actually increased a girl’s probability of having a kid by age 20 (and, interestingly, also “a 6% lower proportion of abortions, compared with the control group”). This raises a few points, starting with the fact that as family sizes have gotten smaller, society has become more atomized, birthrates have fallen, and childcare has been increasingly professionalized, the amount of exposure people — particularly young people — have to babies and infants has definitely declined.

First, like the article notes, there’s nothing that triggers “baby fever” in some woman like spending time around babies — or even just a quality simulacrum of one. But with no extended family, fewer siblings (and siblings closer together in age), no babysitting the neighbors’ toddler for a couple hours as a teen, fewer of the women in their friend group having kids and bringing the baby around for everyone to coo over, and so on, how many people these days can go most of their life with minimal exposure to cute young humans? So many women end up with their only exposure to maternal-instinct-triggering-stimuli being small animals, and then we wonder why they end up with “fur babies” instead of children? (It’s a sort of feedback loop.)

Relatedly, people have mentioned the decline of alloparenting in the context of not having Grandma around to help with the kids anymore. But go far enough back, and plenty of alloparenting used to be done by younger relatives too. Back when you could have families of five, six, or more siblings, spread out across a decade or more. You’d have the older girls as teenagers helping out with their younger siblings, and then the younger girls as teens helping their older siblings out with their nieces and nephews. Teenagers babysitting younger kids. Many more girls would end up with some level of experience in child care before becoming mothers themselves. Now, how many women have no experience whatsoever before having a kid, making parenthood a sink-or-swim prospect of plunging straight into the metaphorical deep end?

Then, of course, there’s the messages that those anti-teen pregnancy education programs mentioned above end up sending. Sure, they’re supposed to be about delaying parenthood, but the actual message ends up being pretty antenatal. A lot about waiting to have kids “until you’re ready,” but nothing about what that readiness looks like. A lot about being too young to become a parent, but nothing about ending up too old to become a parent. The message is all “BABIES ARE HORRIBLE! HAVING ONE WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE FOREVER! PARENTHOOD IS SCARY! SCARY! SCARY!” We make the prospect of motherhood terrifying, give no opportunity to prepare for it, encourage delaying it until conditions are absolutely perfect… and then wonder why people aren’t having kids. Particularly when you add in everything discussed in this thread about safetyism and allergy to responsibility.

Note that this suggests another way we can help address the birthrate issue, by addressing the education issue here. Note, to some degree it’s simply a change in emphasis. That is, go from “don’t have kids (until you’re ready)” and “(teen) parenthood is awful” to “don’t have kids until you’re ready” and “teen parenthood is awful.” And, as noted above, it used to be that we could count on families and communities to teach people parenting skills prior to becoming one (making the prospect less scary), but, as also noted, social atomization and the decline itself have deprived us of this. Hence, the need for institutions to step in to fill that gap, and provide a way for young people to be taught and given practice in basic child care.

All of this, of course, is not to say that many of the other factors people point to — housing, the modern hyper-moble job market, the two-income “trap”, safetyism, decline of religion (or even just positive visions for the future) — don’t also matter quite a lot; nor that fixing middle school sex ed will reverse it entirely. But, as the old saying goes, when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging it deeper.

19

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 7d ago

My first advice to democrats is find a vision of a future you want to build that people would actually want to live in.

What if the problem with that is the "and"? That is, what if the future Dem elites want to build is one the majority of the population wouldn't want?

3

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 7d ago

And @Capitol_Room as

It's Capital_Room, with "capital" as in letters, city, or punishment, not "capitol" as in legislative building.

And I'd agree that, yes, these do all point toward the same thing.

3

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 9d ago · Edited 9d ago

Someone needs to get this on Elons or Vivek’s radar and hope someone takes interest. It’s the only way.

Why? What would that accomplish? DoGE is a joke, powerless to accomplish anything. Malcom Kyeyune:

In truth, though, the fact that DOGE is being taken even remotely seriously is in itself a cause for concern. Trump, as part of the executive branch, has very little power to tell the legislature what it can or even should do. Whatever (minimal) authority he may enjoy leading a department named after a cryptocurrency and an online meme, Musk is at most empowered to make non-binding suggestions. Moreover, if he wants his “department” to actually receive any funding, it is Congress, not Trump, that secures it. The fact that the US state is split into three branches, each with their own remit, is something American children learn very early on. Neither Musk, nor his new boss, have the power to upend this division of power, nor fix problems outside the executive branch of government.

David A. Fahrenthold, Alan Rappeport, Theodore Schleifer and Annie Karni in the New York Times (archive link):

When Mr. Trump takes office, Mr. Musk’s group will face a daunting reality. An entire apparatus has developed over the centuries that allows the government to keep marching on in the face of economic shocks, wartime hardships, or — as in this case — political vows to diminish its size and spending.

Any effort to slash the federal government and its 2.3 million civilian workers will likely face resistance in Congress, lawsuits from activist groups and delays mandated by federal rules. Unlike in his businesses, Mr. Musk will not be the sole decider, but will have to build consensus among legislators, executive-branch staffers, his co-leader and Mr. Trump himself. And federal rules ostensibly prevent Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy from making decisions in private, unlike how many matters are handled in the business world.

…

A 1972 law says federal open-records laws apply to advisory committees. If a committee does not follow those rules, it could be sued — and a judge could order the committee to stop meeting, or order the government to disregard its advice.

…

Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy said that cutting rules would allow them to cut staff, allowing “mass head-count reductions” across the government.

Yet many of those employees have civil-service protections, meaning they generally cannot be fired without cause, or for their political beliefs. In his first term, Mr. Trump tried to shift thousands of employees into a different category, where they could be fired at will. President Biden rescinded that order, called Schedule F, when he took office.

…

Jonathan H. Adler, a professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said that many of the ideas mentioned by Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy would be ripe for legal challenges and noted that many of Mr. Trump’s previous efforts to expansively use executive powers had been struck down by courts.

…

Capitol Hill has always been the place where ambitious efforts to slash the budget — from one started by Theodore Roosevelt to the commission under Reagan run by industrialist J. Peter Grace — have run aground. Members of Congress have been reluctant to cut even small programs they think help their constituents, and the law says presidents must spend all the money that Congress allocates.

…

For now, activist groups like Public Citizen, a left-leaning advocacy group, said that there was nothing about Mr. Trump’s victory, or Mr. Musk’s role at his side, that allowed them to ignore the slow legal process set up to make — or unmake — rules.

“We will use those structures to complain — and sue, if we need to," said Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen’s co-president. “We’ll see where they start, and we’ll use every tool in our tool set to push back.”

Curtis Yarvin:

Excludes bodies that also exercise operational functions! I can’t even. But the good news is, “DOGE” will “dispense advice or recommendations.”

Let me repeat this, since it’s so funny: the “Department of Government Efficiency” is not even part of the government. It literally has no power of its own. Everything Elon will be doing now, he could have done six months ago.

The result of this exercise will be a report which suggests to various agencies how they should save money. Or something. Imagine if Elon Musk had provided “advice and guidance” to Parag Agrawal. I think he tried that first. Lol.

…

In this, DOGE perfectly echoes its 40-year-old predecessor, the Grace Commission, for which the slogan “drain the swamp” was actually coined. The Grace Commission spent $75 million to create a 47-volume report. It identified $424 billion of savings from implementing its recommendations. In the end, twelve of its recommendations were passed into law, saving somewhere between two and five billion dollars. I guess that’s a good return on a $75 million report. Let’s see if Elon and Vivek can match it.

It’s unfair, of course, to laugh. The DOGE guys understand this perfectly and have already announced that DOGE will focus on executive actions.

Executive actions are executive orders. EOs have the legal force of a tweet. You can’t go to jail for disobeying a tweet, even if the President tweeted it. Or an EO.

In real life, EOs work when they order an agency to do something it wants to do. In fact, they are generally written by the agency itself. They are certainly reviewed by the agency. EOs are not written high at 3am by Elon Musk with a sharpie on a Denny’s napkin, even if they probably should be. If you know DC, can you make something happen with an EO? Of course. Depends what, though.

…

Basically, DOGE is promising to save the government money through… bureaucratic trench warfare. If you think an executive order is in any way executive, like private sector executive, like actually executive—read about how the process works.

…

But every recommendation in the “DOGE” report, if it goes anywhere at all, will land on the desk of its natural enemy: the bureaucrat whose budget it is trying to cut. His first action will be to write a memorandum, ten times as long as the recommendation itself, about why this is a ridiculous and disastrous and impossible idea.

Getting something on Elon or Vivek's "radar" will do you no good. It's not "the only way," there's no way at all — at least, not within the system and the confines of the law. DC cannot be fixed, it can only be defeated, destroyed, and replaced.

5

Context

Capital_Room rather dementor-like 9d ago

I edited my to clarify: the people talking about a Democrat campaign to "denazify" America are referring to Trump voters as the Nazis to be dealt with, so that we don't have a repeat of our recent election. I added why I would like some sample strategies, in responding to those calling for such.

3

Context