Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
Thanks, that sounds the most like what I was looking for.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo 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?)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo 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.
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 antinatal. 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.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo 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?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo 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.
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.
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.”
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.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo 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.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
Simply put, because you can't. All you can do, and all they have done, is cause people to not speak their true thoughts under threat.
As a follow-up reply after more thought (and seeing the posts that inspired my question on the Sunday questions thread), you clearly can do more to change an electorate than just make people hide their true opinions. After all, we certainly changed the German electorate in the 40s, didn't we? Why not "denazify" the American electorate of "fascist" Trump supporters like the Allies denazified Germany of the actual NSDAP?
I've seen multiple people online call for "Nuremberg trials" of Trump, Vance, Musk, etc.… complete with subsequent executions. Why not do this to save Our Democracy™ from resurgent fascism?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
How does that significantly reduce the number of fascist supporters of the fascist Trump among the American population?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
In Putin's mind, 'denazificaton' really just means the eradication of Ukrainian national identity.
Except this isn't about Putin's use of the term, this is how Democrats correct the problem of too many sexist, racist, hateful fascists voting against their objectively correct policies, in favor of the obvious fascist Trump (because those voters want fascism, because they're hate-driven Nazis incapable of being reasoned with.) That Harris and the Democrats lost only because "there aren’t people worth “winning over,” there’s just a country overwhelmingly clogged with trash to eliminate." And further, "They chose to be fash like the supporters of every other fash machine in history. Name a single time that problem was solved by kindly talking them out of it please. At minimum they have to be driven to leave."
So how might left-wing Americans go about unclogging America by eliminating the Trump-supporting fascist trash? How do you drive them to leave… or more?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
Except that doesn't remove enough Fascist Trump voters to ensure a D victory in 2028, which is the point of "denazifying" the American electorate.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
And this is the ideal by which philosophy has attempted to conduct itself ever since
Western philosophy, sure, but I don't see the Socratic school having much influence on Confucius, Mencius, Han Fei, Laozi, Zhuangzi, or any pre-20th century Chinese philosophy. Many of them seem like the sorts who'd object to holding up a guy who trolled Athens so hard he got cancelled from life (as I once heard it put) as an example for sages to imitate.
(I've been slowly working my way through Thomas A. Metzger's * A Cloud Across the Pacific: Essays on the Clash between Chinese and Western Political Theories Today*. I also remember reading a comment on a forum thread about philosophy over a decade ago, from a Chinese individual arguing that Western philosophy went off the rails with Socrates and Plato, and has spent the last two millennia and change building airy edifices of dangerous nonsense.)
Inspired by various posts I've seen on Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit:
If the Democrats really wanted to carry out a "denazification" of the American electorate, in what ways should they go about doing it?
Edit: to clarify, I'm seeing a lot of people on the left respond to the election with things to the effect of "the Democrat party doesn't have a policy problem, the voters have a racism/sexism/Fascism problem." The party doesn't need to change anything about their policies or their candidates, or even their messaging, they need to fix our horrible electorate, and that it contains so many hateful bigots who would knowingly vote for a Fascist like Trump, over an ideal candidate like Kamala Harris. (See some here and here.) Thus, they call for a "denazification" of America.
Now, if I were to reply to these people with something like "And just how do you propose to do that?", I'd generally be dismissed. But if, in something like a parallel to Cunningham's Law, I instead ask "Do you think [Plan A] would be a good method of denazification? Or would [Plan B] be better?," it's much more likely to generate replies, and discussion, and thus likely more thought about what such a "denazification" would actually entail, how they probably can't actually do it, and maybe even get them to move on from the hysterics (I know, wishful thinking).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9mo ago
I'd rather see it all on fire than more of that kind of 'win'.
Understandable and relatable; but, in my experience, there's a lot more people on the American right who will content themselves with that kind of "win" than there are ones like us.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9mo ago
Is the alternative burning it down?
No, in this context I meant "Democrat electoral victory." I'm talking about the people who acknowledge that the most the Republican party does is slow the boiling of the proverbial frog, but consider that a "win" and a reason to keep voting GOP, because it's preferable to the faster "boiling" when the Dems are in charge. That "losing slowly" is a "win" when the game is a choice between "losing slowly" and "losing quickly."
You know, the view that's like: "Well, under the new 'bipartisan' 'compromise' on 'reasonable' gun control, a lot of us are going to have to give up some of our guns — and will likely have to give up more the next time we have to 'compromise' — but it's still a 'win' because it's not the total confiscation the Left wants, so keep voting Republican."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9mo ago
It should not be possible for a mentally sane person to simultaneously believe "owing to systemic racism, African-Americans have lower rates of educational attainment than white Americans" and "the notion that African-Americans are less educated than white Americans is a false and harmful stereotype".
Why not?
I'm reminded of a past therapist who thought it was unhealthy to care about whether your beliefs are consistent with reality, or with each other, and that "rationalists" are all mentally ill, because not only do most people believe things simply because their peer group believes them, this is how sane people are supposed to acquire all their beliefs. Don't think about it, just believe whatever's popular to believe because it's popular. As social animals, the most important thing in life is fitting in, and therefore one should choose one's beliefs entirely in line with that goal.
It's why she said I should stop being an atheist and start going to church — because atheism is "weird" and believing in God is more popular, therefore belief in God is automatically more sane.
Thus, in her view, if it's popular (and high status) to simultaneously believe "owing to systemic racism, African-Americans have lower rates of educational attainment than white Americans" and "the notion that African-Americans are less educated than white Americans is a false and harmful stereotype," then holding both beliefs is "mentally sane" despite their contradictory nature, and that even stopping to think about them enough to notice that they contradict each other is bad for your mental health, and should be avoided. "Sanity" is uncritically embracing vox populi, vox Dei.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9mo ago
We need them to break the bureaucracy
Except that this raises the question of whether elected Republicans can. I've long held that the reason past Republicans that promised action have perpetually sold out once in office — have "discovered a strange new respect for the status quo" and been "absorbed into the DC liberal borg," to quote @Supah_Schmendrick, is not because it's full of "grifters" who were lying from the start and needed weeded out, but because on arrival they found out how DC actually works. That is to say, it isn't because they never actually wanted to do these things, it's because they learned they can't. That they are mostly a figurehead, and as such, they can join in maintaining the kayfabe and enjoy the perks, or they can engage in a futile struggle that risks making a lot of enemies if it ends up threatening the illusion (since plenty of the perks of everyone's jobs depend on maintaining it).
In other words, what if the reason Republicans keep ending up "convinced that fighting is doomed and "compromise" with Blues is the only path forward" is because it's true. What if Blue control is so strong that not even the President, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court all together aren't enough to remove it? Plenty of people seem to think that if losing slowly via "compromise with Blues" is the best on offer from our electoral system, then we should take it and count it as a "win" because it's better than the alternative.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9mo ago
It doesn't matter how "competent" they are, the Justice Department will simply ignore them, along with Gaetz, and keep on as they are now. None of Trump's appointments will have any actual power over the agencies, whose personnel will prove impossible to fire. The only way the "Deep State" is getting removed is in body bags:
FBI has to be removed permanently. They are dangerous. They have committed enormous crimes, which if unpunished, will be repeated sooner or later. They have to be eliminated, or we lose.
First step is Trump’s truth commission, and RFK Junior’s gold standard science (restoring the scientific method).
First we have to expose and prove the crimes. Then it becomes possible to do what is necessary to prevent repetition. Whether Trump is able and willing to do what is necessary remains to be seen. The judges that staffed the FISA court have to die. They are too dangerous to live.
If the FBI and the rest live, Trump, Musk, and any namefag so incautious as to have spoken the truth will die.
Musk knows what the time is. Does Trump?
Once elite cooperation collapses, then it is time to win or die.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9mo ago
Well, I wasn't familiar with Gaetz before this, so I'm mostly going off the reactions of others to his appointment. There's two things I find interesting.
The first also holds for many of Trump's other appointments, it's just the most stark in the case of Gaetz and Justice. And that's the take that he'll be useless as AG because he's not an insider, he's going to try (and fail) to tell people at Justice to do things they don't want to do, and that he'll get nothing done as they refuse to obey him, since they'll only "obey" an insider who only "orders" them to do things they already want to do. Pretty much admitting to what I keep saying (as does Yarvin): that, regardless of what it says on some musty old bit of paper, the Permanent Bureaucracy doesn't actually answer to their appointed "heads," nor the elected politicians that appoint them; that they set their own policies, and maintain them regardless of how the votes go, and that Our Democracy™ is mostly a sham. (Again, my only hope for the second Trump term is that the utter uselessness of even a Republican "trifecta" finally convinces enough right-wing Americans that no amount of voting can halt the leftward slide, and thus the only things to do are either give up, accept defeat, and lie down to rot; or else grab their friends, grab their guns, and march on DC to put bullets into Swamp Creature heads.)
Second, that Thomas G. Moukawsher at Newsweek and the Dreaded Jim have both compared Gaetz to Caligula's horse Incitatus, albeit with opposite valences of approval, and very different predictions of outcome:
If Senate confirmation still matters, all is lost. I don’t think it matters any more, but to maintain the pretence of still mattering, the Senate will confirm him, so that they can continue to pretend to matter.
Matt Gaetz has been compared to Caligula’s horse, in that he is wildly unpalatable to the Senate. The difference being that Caligula’s horse was unpalatable because incapable of functioning as a Consul, while Matt Gaetz is unpalatable because far too capable of functioning as Attorney General.
Our Senate will confirm him, as the Roman Senate confirmed Caligula’s horse.
and?
Take a look at Matt’s many Youtube videos of his finest moments. When the senate votes “confirm” despite all that, it will be a lot more amusing than Caligula’s horse.
and:
FBI has to be removed permanently. They are dangerous. They have committed enormous crimes, which if unpunished, will be repeated sooner or later. They have to be eliminated, or we lose.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9mo ago
East Asian fertility. Taiwan, the PRC, Monaco, Hong Kong, Singapore
Why is Monaco, a European state, in the middle of this list of East Asian locales?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9mo ago
but the American legal system often assigns huge legal damages that are not warranted.
It sounds like that's the real problem here. Maybe instead of defending a specific carve-out patch for vaccines in particular, people should be pursuing tort reform instead.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9mo ago
I mean, I live in a neighborhood where I won't have to go first, and I find that a very minor benefit towards expanding my house over moving.
And we were talking about "parents in the city" — if you lived in such a place, instead of where you do now, would you still take such a risk? If, in that scenario, a bunch of busybody Karens call CPS on you for "neglect" by insufficient helicopter parenting, what then?
mine own parents were among them, once upon a time, for letting me bike to 7/11 or the library on mine own far younger than the other children in the neighborhood.
That, of course, was a different time, when people — especially cat-lady "karens" — were less likely to report people to the government for being more permissive than the norm. This is the age of "see something, say something (caveat: unless "seeing" would be racist)."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9mo ago
I suspect that if all the parents in the city decided to send their kids on mile long walks into main street, something similar would happen, and no one would think about calling in to report it.
I think you'd be horribly, horribly disappointed. And do you want to be the one who goes first, and risks having CPS remove your kids because some childless cat lady keeps reporting you for "neglect"?
Agreed. (The decline of the "shotgun wedding" has probably been a net negative for society.)
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."
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