ChestertonsMeme
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User ID: 1098
ChestertonsMeme
9mo ago
I'll second @huadpe's caveat about the organization possibly grifting, but what strikes me about the reviews is how much like propaganda they seem. They're all about how the wrong people like the movie and who the people involved are associated with.
Rolling Stone:
the mostly white-haired audience around me could be relied on to gasp, moan in pity, mutter condemnations, applaud, and bellow “Amen!” at moments of righteous fury
and
organization has far-right affinities
Vice:
The film [...] has been accompanied by a fusillade of laudatory statements from personalities including Mel Gibson, who Ballard claims gave OUR “valuable intelligence” that led to the group and its partners breaking up a pedophile ring in Ukraine, motivational speaker and longtime OUR backer Tony Robbins, and Matt Schlapp, the chair of the Conservative Political Action Conference. [...] It’s also getting approving write-ups from faith-based publications like Catholic World Report and The Christian Post.
There's a ton of weasely connotation-laden words as well: "ilk", "relentless", "hackneyed", the aforementioned audience's "bellow"s, etc. It's hardly worth selecting quotes because the entirety of the articles is like this.
I guess this is valuable to people who are left-aligned but didn't know they're supposed to hate this movie.
ChestertonsMeme
6mo ago
Lovely that the Democrats respond to a supply crunch by further increasing demand via these new rules.
Was the idea of raising wages discussed? Politicians tend to think of workers as a fixed number that meet the requirements but in reality the number who would be willing to work this job depends on the wage. How many "qualified" people are just doing more pleasant things with their life right now?
If there truly are not enough workers who meet the legal requirements, then maybe the law should be changed to stop limiting supply. The federal government could make a "shall issue" style law for getting qualified as a caregiver. Or leave it up to facilities and customers to negotiate the level of training they require.
Reform, secession, and revolution seem like they're a continuum rather than being distinct categories. So I'm not sure the distinction matters very much. What you've said is similar to the Chinese concept of "mandate of heaven" - the ruler has unquestioned authority until it's clear he doesn't, then it's justified to depose him. And this all basically boils down to consensus and power.
I've been contemplating this topic over the last few weeks, that it seems like there's a common thread between cultural consensus, political coalitions, and right to determination that is at the root of all conflict between groups. I'll sketch it out here:
- The right to free speech is about building consensus through common knowledge, including consensus on who is in good standing with whom.
- The right to free association is about formalizing political groups so they can act on behalf of their members.
- The right to revolution is a "safety valve" for when the rights to free speech and free association, combined with the extant political system, do not allow the coalition that should win to actually win. Either they can't form consensus (censorship), they can't formalize their coalition (suppression of political parties), or they can't enact their will because the political system doesn't make it possible (authoritarianism). It's not a real right in the sense of something the state protects; it's just a thing that happens because that's how power works.
- Secession is basically the same as revolution.
The thing that makes reasoning about right to determination so difficult is that so much of the current social organization is path-dependent and contingent on accidents. There's no objective standard for what's a legitimate government, a legitimate set of borders, a legitimate people, a legitimate set of laws, or a legitimate culture. It's all just power and coalitions. And yet each generation of bright young minds grows up swimming in the particulars of their society and believes it's all objectively legitimate.
P.S. I swear I read this post a day or two ago (with the preamble and all) - did you delete and repost?
ChestertonsMeme
11mo ago
this would be a great time for them to purge all remaining wrongthinkers from their midst, possibly using their AI to pick those who hold such “hateful” ideas as James Damore.
In my experience it's actually the opposite. Companies are laying off outspoken woke people and keeping the small-c conservative people who are just getting things done.
Two anecdotes:
-
At the tech company where I work, almost all of the outspoken woke people were laid off in the last year. The people remaining are disproportionately non-political. There's a lot of hard-working immigrants and non-political "true nerds" who just love the work.
-
Among my friends who work in different tech companies, none could be considered woke and none have been laid off. Weak evidence but it's something.
ChestertonsMeme
5mo ago
The feeling of disillusionment can happen to everyone. I can give an example unrelated to OP's beliefs but which came to mind reading the post: Caring about CO2 emissions because it poses some existential risk for humanity, and discovering that environmental groups oppose the most feasible solution: nuclear. This discovery caused me to believe most environmentalists are not serious; they're motivated by vibes.
The reasons for a "national divorce" aren't necessarily economic. Much more important are
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