Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
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User ID: 1864
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
Thanks for taking the time to explain.
It is both moderate and right wing to think that white people have legitimate ethnic communities too. But in terms of identification, it tends to attract people who identify more as right wingers in certain countries. But is in fact the moderate position.
What, concretely, do you mean when you say white people have legitimate ethnic communities? As in, there are physical communities in the USA that should be able to exclude non-whites? Or even non-physical communities/cultural...events, or what-have-you that are necessarily white rather than race-blind mainstream American?
To lay some cards on the table, what you're arguing seems to be that most conservatives are some flavor of white nationalist. I assume at the mild end of the spectrum you describe, this is less blood and soil rhetoric and more 'it's okay that my tabletop game club is made up entirely of white men' or 'the president should be white as the USA is a majoritarian white country.'
While to oppose nationalism only for white people should count as the extreme far left. No matter how many people who identify with this want to frame their perspective as moderation.
I just don't think it is true that progressives or liberals oppose nationalism specifically for white people. Japan may be a fargroup for progressives in the US and as such doesn't receive much attention, but I've certainly heard people express discomfort at their attitude towards foreigners/non-Japanese and a national identity built on race. Any kind of nationalism built on race makes progressives and liberals deeply uncomfortable.
Furthermore, I don't believe that conservatives writ large support carveouts and national-identity/community building based on race. Perhaps I'm typical minding, perhaps my mental model is wrong and you're right - I'd honestly encourage you to tighten up your argument to something more concise and write a top-level post to see what people think so we can get more data.
If most conservatives do explicitly believe in nation and community building based on race, would you agree with progressives that call them white nationalists? And your argument is simply that being a white nationalist isn't a bad thing, because to you progressives are black/asian/hispanic nationalists?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
5mo ago
That was their screwup.
If the foundation of your worldview is that liberal Jewish elites run the show/elections are just Kayfabe (insert your favorite variant here so we don't end up quibbling over your beliefs) and you work your way out from there, interpreting data as you go, I can guarantee that you'll find a lot of data that supports your worldview. Flat Earthers have long chains of logic where no individual link is completely bonkers, but it's built on a rotten foundation.
From my perspective, Hillary Clinton was a fairly strong candidate who was done dirty by a combination of conservative media (proto-Qanon cheese pizza/adrenochrome/comet ping pong beliefs? Collapsing like a sack of meat showing that she was on death's door?), email server bullshit, bad feelings around the Bernie Sanders saga (were the Kochs involved???) and genuine dissatisfaction amongst working class whites towards the system and elites. With this framing, conservative media isn't so worthless after all.
There's this odd dichotomy in Conservative circles; Trump will rant about how the media hates him and he's the underdog, then turn around and brag about how Fox News is the most watched channel while CNN and the failing New York Times are hemorrhaging viewers because the General Public is on our side and hate being lectured about trannies. Dan Crenshaw is some Alpha Male soldier bro who releases ads of him obliterating the libs, but everyone in DC is a feckless RINO who drops their trousers and bends over anytime the White House comes knocking for more funding. The libs are a bunch of soyboy faggot snowflakes who REEEEEE at our dank memes, but they're also shadowy elites pulling the strings in Davos that we're on a righteous crusade against.
Just because they screwed up doesn't mean they don't have power. (And of course the Supreme Court and abortion are downstream of that mistake.)
Just because they have power, doesn't mean they're omnipotent or even (apparently) that they get what they want most of the time. Furthermore, blaming shadowy elites for all your problems is usually (1) cope and (2) easier to confront than the fact that tens of millions of your countrypeople genuinely believe what they say they believe and they aren't just being manipulated by the media or George Soros or whatever else you want.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
9mo ago
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or still playing the bit, but if the latter you've pushed it far enough that I'm officially confused.
The system is fine; much as there are changes I'd like to make, I'm not so naive to think that they'd genuinely solve our problems. A large enough group of people acting in bad faith will tank any political system you try to build.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
9mo ago
The system isnt failing the people, the people are failing the system.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
29d ago
If it wasn't Putin, any other Russian leader would be beset with the same scenario and conditions.
If it wasn't Zelensky, any other Ukrainian leader would be beset with the same scenario and conditions.
If it wasn't Biden, any other American leader would be beset by the same scenario and conditions.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
2mo ago
Boston isn’t a shithole; Back Bay is probably second only to Greenwich Village / Lower Manhattan in terms of quality walkable neighborhoods in the US.
You literally said:
The financial district seemed fine enough, and in general the hobo problem, while worse than Manhattan, was no worse than Boston was late last year, and I thought Boston was still liveable, probably.
So Boston is only 'probably livable' and equivalent to San Francisco, in your eyes. You said this about San Francisco:
Not that it wasn't a dump, because it was, but it didn't really appear worse than it was before 2020. SF was (laughably) considered a "Tier 1" city (and had a weirdly cheap Four Seasons), so I stayed in the FS by Union Square, famous for shithole status and close proximity to the Tenderloin.
So you say San Francisco is a dump (and by extension, Boston is the same). I assume now you'll try and wriggle out of having used the word shithole by saying you were only talking about Union Square, so whatever.
I was willing to suspend disbelief, never having been to Seattle or Portland myself. But when you start going off on cities I've lived in and indeed bike commute through everyday and call them 'barely livable' I know you're either so snobbish and rich as to be out of touch with the reality the rest of us live in or playing it up to try and make an argument about how we're all ugly people leaving in ugly cities. Granted, I'm not a (presumably) 5 foot something Jewish woman but I can't deny what my lying eyes see every day.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
3mo ago
But the content they object to is often political in its aims and coded blue-tribe. I don’t see how you can position your side as apolitical, when they proudly proclaim political aims for their own changes, endlessly purging curricula on grounds of sexism, racism, hetero-and-cisnormativity, etc .
I wouldn't claim it as apolitical, and I wish you wouldn't call it my side.
In some cases I'd agree with you, in others I would disagree. In still others we would get bogged down by semantics about 'making things political.' I could argue that children sitting at desks is a weapon of the white supremacist state to keep down PoC and that they need to go, and MFL would fervently oppose that. In this example I'd argue that the MFL position isn't political at all, it's just...keeping desks in school. The same way that for some of these books, I don't think it should be controversial at all that they're available in the library.
But all of that is somewhat beside the point. The comment I replied to was describing MFL as if they're some objective and principled group that supports liberty and freedom of choice. The reality is that they're anything but.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
The daycare situation is a perfect example of what is wrong with Canada.
What system are you contrasting it with, the United States? I'm curious if you know what the situation there is like.
Sure, the supply is (mostly) there. In my corner of the US, I was on waitlists at somewhere between a half dozen and a dozen places and I started inquiring about 8 months before I'd need it. I was offered a spot at maybe three of them, and two were larger corporate style ones that were significantly more expensive. So definitely not close to Quebec tier where people wait years, but it's still non-trivial to find a spot.
Meanwhile, the prices per month that were quoted to me are 2500$-4000$. On the one hand, it's great that labor women have been doing forever is finally recognized as being valuable - a modern SAH parent of two is essentially providing labor worth ~70k per year. On the flip side, small comfort to the laborer making 50-75k a year and trying to raise a family who would probably appreciate Canadian daycare prices (if they could get them).
Similarly, you could make a parallel argument to the one that you made in your OP that the public Canadian healthcare system incentivizes risky behavior and overconsumption of resources because what the heck, it's free. And yet, somehow Canadians have longer life expectancies. People broadly agree that the American healthcare system is broken, although it seems likely to me that there are just different tradeoffs.
All this to say that most (all?) Western nations struggle with the things you describe. Or if they don't, I'd be fascinated to hear your counterexample of a developed nation with a functioning and cheap childcare system as well as an explanation of how they achieved it. Someone smarter than me will have to explain why this is the case; I'd assume much higher labor costs/CoL in general and higher standards. Modern daycares are strictly regulated in terms of capacity (teacher/child ratio) and safety whereas in the past (I assume) we just had gaggles of near-feral children roaming the streets.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
9mo ago
Trump was indicted in New York for business record falsification, Florida for the documents case and DC/Georgia for election interference, denial, conspiracy, whatever. Replace those with whatever words you like so we don't have to haggle over how to describe those indictments.
Trump was impeached by the house, but not the senate, for the Ukraine dealings. Setting aside the absurd way zeke is describing those events (the burisma investigation was reportedly dormant at the time, there were compelling reasons to push for the ouster of the prosecutor completely unrelated to Burisma, everyone who testified to the senate claimed there was no connection between the Bidens nor was Joe influenced by his son's business interests - all this despite the best efforts of a Republican controlled investigation), do you agree that Trump was not indicted for those reasons?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
10mo ago
Consider instead that they don't arrest him with the information they have. Six months later, he blows himself up in a mall and takes a dozen people with him. Headlines scream: 'Mall Jihadist on FBI radar and they did NOTHING,' whichever political party not in control of congress spins up an investigation and media frenzy to score points in the next election, people hate the FBI anyways.
It's easy to just say the spooks are doing shady things again, but probably harder and more valuable to think about the systemic incentives we've given them to behave that way.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
13d ago
We'll see. Cell culture media isn't cheap though. For the time being, I suggest exercising a lot of skepticism about what the financial inputs for lab-grown tissue are if someone claims that it's actually quite cheap.
If you buy the individual components and formulate you own media, it's some like 1-2OOMs cheaper than what they sell you commercially. I looked into this awhile ago.
You run into problems (currently) with growth factors like IGF/FGF which is where the 50$ burgers come from. From what I've read in the literature though, fermentation of these would scale well once the demand is there and we could make them very cheaply in bioreactors. What I haven't seen a solution for yet is (surprisingly, to me at least) Albumin which increases the yields very significantly but seems to be hard to produce at scale. I'm curious whether people can break down the various functions of albumin into separate, easy to ferment at scale proteins or whether we need to find better production methods there as well. At least that's what I've been able to glean without having an insider's perspective into the industry.
More broadly, keeping the government out of many of these industries does seem ideal. At the same time, our car companies are about to get fucked by subsidized Chinese EVs (and, to be fair, often flat out superior products) without government intervention. America's rise to power in the late 19th and 20th centuries was hugely influenced by oil; if solar panels do indeed end up being 'the next oil,' well, Chinese government intervention has given them a near monopoly there too. In essence, they learned the lessons of the tech industry on a national scale - absorbing losses for a few years/decades is fine if you end up with a monopoly. It's not clear to me that we can compete without doing the same. Perhaps the winning move is subsidizing some of these growth factors for a few years and giving out some grants for replacing albumin and seeing if we can build some American (or Western/'friendshored') companies that can dominate the space.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
30d ago
I freely profess my ignorance of Russian politics. To clarify, do you think if Putin had not wanted to invade Ukraine in 2022, it would have happened regardless? Or if Putin had wanted to invade and his advisors had not, it would not have happened? Or is your position some bailey that Strelkov's actions set in motion a series of events that made Putin's decision to invade inevitable?
Because option 3 still sounds like Putin had plenty of agency to me.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
To your mind, is there no difference between the various flavors of social democracy and communism? Because:
Intellectuals think Communism is great (though many are smart enough nowadays to not call it that).
simply isn't true. Most leftist intellectuals would support various levels of welfare, various levels of socialization of the healthcare system and so on but aren't interested in a centrally-planned economy, one-party rule, state-run media, etc.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
2mo ago
This, right here, is exactly the thing I was talking about.
Ah. Was I 'gaslighting you while celebrating it at the same time as denying it's happening?' Slamming the Overton window leftwards on you? Or something else you edited out of your post?
I don't think my post was particularly celebratory, nor do I think I made any comment on the object level issues you raised in your post. But whatever, the one leftish leaning person who bothered to reply to your post managed to perfectly demonstrate all the problems you were complaining about. Bravo.
My friend is feeding his new daughter on the free expired baby food he gets from his grocery store job, while this instagram play-farmer writes grants for more money than he makes in a year.
Alright. Forget about the black person who got taxpayer money for a moment (we can go back to it later if you like). Imagine that I'm an actual human being and I want to help your friend and people like them - what should I do? What set of policies do you think would be most helpful to your friend? Was he significantly better off when he was stocking shelves five or ten years ago? And do you think grocery store workers had it better in 1990, 2005, or 2020ish?
I don't believe your motivation for engaging is to discuss the culture war. I think you're waging it by manipulating people into passive acceptance.
Hello, pot. Kettle here. You're black.
But then, give me some advice. How could I reply to your post in a way that wouldn't be 1) denying these are problems or 2) manipulating people into passive acceptance, short of agreeing with you on every point and accepting that leftists are evil? I'd invite you to sketch out a very brief outline of what such a post might look like such that you think you could have a productive conversation.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
2mo ago
Wat? In my timeline he was coherent enough to complain onair about 'you people' who won't wear a poppy on Remembrance day, resulting in rapid cancellation due to 'anti-immigrant dogwhistling'.
I don't know man. Things were pretty grim there at the end (the whole channel recommends itself). But man, was it great television.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
Thanks for the recommendations!
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
8mo ago
I apologize that personal circumstances don't allow me to get back to this promptly, or as extensively as I'd like.
You see my moral objectivism is more like: "committing atrocities in general is wrong, for any ends whatsoever, whoever uses those means is evil."
So what then, a Kantian categorical imperative against 'atrocities?'
The people ranting in this thread about a Great Enemy are hopefully not evil, but I'm sure some of them are.
Oh, I doubt very much that they are. The person in question (if memory serves) posts fairly regular wholesome updates about their woodworking, book reading and other hobbies. If they didn't realize I was a Great Enemy we could likely share a few beers without issue.
I'm not sure we understand each other very well - can you clarify your arguments against moral objectivism?
1 - I'd likely agree that an objective 'truth' exists, I'm just pessimistic that it is knowable by you/I/anyone short of God. Some cases are egregious enough that it doesn't take much beyond a fifth grader, let alone God, to label something as wrong, but the vast majority of the issues we wrangle don't fall into this bucket. We've built such horribly complex social, economic and political structures that understanding them in a meaningful way to influence policy is virtually impossible. What is the objective truth of the CHIPS act? Even beyond that, should we compete with China at all or give them their sphere of influence? I could list a hundred other policy questions from the last decade that I lack the answer to, and I'd argue anyone trying to sell you an 'objective' answer is lying.
You might argue that I'm agreeing with you and simply think that most moral questions are hard, but my rejoinder would be that if we're making all our decisions based on vibes, values and feelings isn't that a lot of subjective bullshit that exists in relation to our cultural norms?
To be clear - this doesn't mean I think we should throw up our hands and abandon trying to base our decisions on evidence. I'm just mighty suspicious of the folks who claim to be doing so objectively, and doubly so of people who have strong convictions when it comes to complex issues.
2 - The moral relativists have strong arguments of their own without having to lean too much on criticisms of objectivism. A decade or so ago, some areas of Canada were debating banning burqas. I read an op-ed written by an immigrant from the middle east who'd worn a burqa her whole life and argued she felt naked and vulnerable without one even when given the choice. The public wasn't particularly swayed, and Quebec ended up banning public servants from wearing certain clothes.
On the flip side, I had a friend tell me about her experience in the Peace Corps. She was stationed in a country where women weren't allowed to wear shirts or bras and felt profoundly uncomfortable for the entirety of her stay. Not to mention her pale skin did really poorly with the tropical climate.
As an objectivist, what's your judgment here? Are Middle Easterners brutal oppressors, or are we? Is the objective truth that everyone should be free to choose their own garb without judgment from their peers? But how would you enforce the latter without some brutally oppressive state banning wrongthink/speech?
3 - I'm running very short on time, so this won't be particularly well fleshed out. Many, including our resident theocratic fascist, argue that people are happier with these social norms and restrictions on their behavior. And while I don't share his utopian vision where the gays get thrown in prison, it is clear that there is something to the idea that people require these social structures to be happy, and furthermore, that they are often built in such a way that not everyone can be happy. I also wonder how much of this is biologically hardwired.
What would your prescription be in that scenario?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
9mo ago
I had the same realization the other day as I was comparing Xi Jinping (1.2 billion) and Putin (200 billion) to Biden's 9 million, before idly checking Hunter's net worth. It's lamentable how much more talented the autocrats are compared to our feckless western leaders.
But, why do you think Hunter is so useless? Drugs and guns aside, he has a law degree from Yale. He was a consultant and VP at a banking company, a lobbyist, tapped by Clinton and Bush for various roles and a hedge fund manager all before Joe was veep. It's not an unimpressive CV, or at least it wasn't before all the drugs and congressional investigations caught up to him.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
9mo ago
Maybe I misread it. I initially parsed it as Hunter holding '10' temporarily with the intention of passing it off to Joe. I suppose the more likely reading is that he just holds it...although I don't know why you would make that reference at all in that case.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
29d ago
This is not to say that Russia's aggression is justified. But the notion that the West is just minding it's own business is ridiculous.
I wouldn't say the West is minding it's own business - there seems to be a tit for tat in terms of proxies, espionage, fraud, hacking, etc. I would say that I've seen no evidence of attempts on Putin's life nor anything that could remotely be construed as NATO showing any interest in invading Russia or violating Russian territorial integrity. Would you disagree with that?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
29d ago
It beat's not existing at all. Which is where Ukraine's demographics are heading after sending most of their men off to die in trenches and their women are finding new lives abroad. But I guess Zelensky can pat himself on the back, king of the ashes, when the TFR of native Ukrainians is 0.21 ten years after his "victory".
While I share some of your concerns around TFR, it isn't the sole measure of worth of a nation. Somalia has a TFR of 6.3, mid-19th century Ireland had a TFR of 4 while illiterate peasants slaved on increasingly small plots of land and starved. Continuity is important, but so is the right to self-determination. If the Ukrainians had rolled over and collapsed, I expect there would have been a lot of finger wagging and recriminations but we wouldn't be having this conversation. If they choose to fight and are willing to die for their country, if they choose to risk their country being reduced to rubble and their TFR being reduced to some arbitrarily low number you pulled out of your ass, I don't think it's your place to lecture them.
Or when their political future is now determined by the flood of migrants which repopulates the region, as opposed to their coethnics in Moscow.
Somehow I suspect Ukrainian affection for their 'coethnics' in Moscow is experiencing a bit of a dip at the moment.
But sure, "Ukraine" would still be an independent nation, even if no Ukrainians are left in it. Not sure why a Ukrainian today should fight for that future though, being cut out of it completely.
Again, that's not really your or my determination to make, is it? I'm not supporting pressuring them into fighting a war, I'm strongly against NATO troops ever fighting in Ukraine, but revitalizing our defense manufacturing infrastructure while arming Ukrainians to fight for independence strikes me as the best action we could take at the moment.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
I see. Despite being on hiatus though, you managed to dig up a pretty obscure post.
Hope you're doing well!
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
And who can forget the dogpill?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
2mo ago
Do you think you're better than him?
Nope.
The point in your favor for suggesting moderation is balanced by your politely-phrased smug tone.
As someone who supports some of the causes he decries to varying degrees, how do you think I'm supposed to participate in this conversation exactly? I could respond in kind and we could fling feces at each other while you tut tut and enjoy the show. Or more realistically I'm buried in feces by the largely right-leaning commentariat.
I could craft a thoughtful response to some of his individual points, but what kind of conversation do you think he and I will have?
I could be the apologetic, liberal whipping boy who takes his lumps for That Bad Thing The People I Don't Like Did This Week.
I've done enough of all three. At a certain point a spade is a spade, and a bad post is a bad post. I can link you to massive exchanges I've had extending weeks and tens of thousands of words with FcfromSSC, gattsuru, professorgerm (now desolation, I believe?) and others so clearly I'm capable of having a decent conversation with people who hold very different beliefs. The process certainly changed my worldview.
That hasn't happened in...upwards of a year, I don't think? I'm sure you could make the argument that I changed rather than the space, but then I'd challenge you to show me any interesting and civil back-and-forth between a real liberal and conservative here that's happened recently. At a certain point, what exactly am I supposed to do with OP?
Brother, you can ask me all the questions you want. Generally I don't volunteer my opinions that often as they rub people the wrong way, but if you're polite I'll probably answer anything.
I don't believe that progressives are calling for white genocide. You can probably find some people on twitter making jokes about how they hope all white people die in a fire, which I frown upon, but I don't think it's the same thing. Assuming you mean something along the lines of demographic trends and immigration meaning that white people will be a minority in America at some point this century, I don't believe it's an explicit agenda a la Great Replacement Theory. I agree that some people would cheer at those trends which I also find distasteful.
The phrase 'anti-white racist supremacy' doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But sure, if you come up with some other negative term to describe people cheering on white people dying or being outbred then I would likely agree with using said term.
No, I don't think they are 'Black nationalist' in a meaningful way. As far as I'm aware, the vast majority are not advocating for an exclusive 'Black America' based on race, they are advocating for equality of outcomes in (what they see as) a biased system. I also would dispute the language you use to describe them, although without examples (beyond the ADL) it's difficult for me to say.
But yes, I would denounce someone who supported the black equivalent of the KKK or stormfront.
The word 'faggot' was a pejorative for a long time, until it was reclaimed. Whether progressives consider it a pejorative is orthogonal to the actual definition of the word and whether you think it accurately describes the worldview you're describing. If you think 'white nationalism' doesn't accurately describe your views, then what view would constitute white nationalism and what would you call your views instead? But I assume you do agree with the accuracy and just object to the fact that most people think white nationalism is a bad thing based on:
I had always been skeptical when progressives called conservatives and the MAGA crowd white nationalists, but here you are, espousing views that I think broad, bipartisan swathes of America would call white nationalist. I suspect that the vast majority of American conservatives disagree with your worldview, and in the old place, when this topic was discussed, the defense was invariably that 'no, conservatives don't actually believe those things.'
I disagree with the base assumptions of this statement on multiple levels, as well as most of the rest of your post, but this is already getting too long for both of us.
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