Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
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User ID: 1864
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
12d ago
Will they tire of being NATO's cat's paw? Ukrainian men are getting a raw deal in an effort to reconquer lost territory, whose residents probably want to be part of Russia anyway. Why should Ukrainians fight and die for some abstract geopolitical goal of NATO?
Are you suggesting that the existence of Ukraine is an abstract geopolitical goal of NATO? The fighting today may center around the east, but the Russian invasion was clearly aimed at decapitating the Ukrainian regime and either installing a puppet government or annexing it outright. If the Ukrainian army crumbles, is there any doubt that Russia would roll into Kyiv and Ukraine would functionally stop existing as an independent nation?
Since you seem concerned about the right to self-determination of Ukrainians, let me ask you which course of action better serves that goal - arming them so they can defend themselves, or paternalistically telling them 'Sorry, we've all decided your cause is hopeless, now you have to take peace on whatever terms you can get it. Good luck!' People below have argued that Boris Johnson (and presumably the US was on the same page at the time) sabotaged early peace talks - I'd agree with them that this was bad, and Ukraine should be able to choose for themselves - but others have linked polls showing strong support among the Ukrainian public for the war.
As for your language about Ukrainians just being our hapless puppets that we carelessly throw into the meatgrinder, I feel like you've fallen for Putin's narrative. The west has a propensity to believe that they are the only actors on the world stage with any kind of agency; see the oceans of ink spilled about how the west is solely responsible for every conflict and humanitarian crisis in the past 100 years whether they've been directly involved or not. The one actor responsible for this war is Putin, and all the kvetching about NATO expansion and Euromaidan elides the fact that Putin singlehandedly launched an expansionary war of aggression to conquer territory, massage his ego and restore the glory of the Russian empire. Putin was under no personal threat from the west, nor was Russia.
Lastly, for those complaining about the atrophied defense production capacity of the west and shipping money off to Ukraine: two thirds of the 60 billion is earmarked to be spent with American defense manufacturers. If your goal is increasing defense manufacturing capacity in the west, how would you do it if not spending money on domestic defense manufacturing?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
Much of the core messaging on the right is explicitly 'anti-agency,' for lack of a better word. You're unemployed because the government shipped your jobs overseas, you're addicted to fentanyl because of corrupt doctors and politicians in bed with Chinese companies flooding the country, men are depressed and committing suicide because of feminism/hostile society/subversion of traditional gender roles, you're poor because immigrants are driving down your wages.
When is the last time a politician or right-wing influencer told someone from West Virginia that they have the power to improve their life by relocating, retraining or abstaining from drugs? I can accept that even if they did believe that, saying so publicly would be political suicide...but do you think that they believe it? Do you yourself believe that, or do you agree with most of the statements I made above?
But what's the point? Seriously, why even talk about this just to get gaslit by the people who are celebrating it at the same time as denying it's happening? You could spend your entire life writing tens of thousands of words explaining and analyzing this insanity, and all it does it give the perpetrators the satisfaction of gloating about getting away with it.
What are we even doing here? Are we just going to keep doing it forever as the country goes completely insane? Why? What possible good will it do? Is this whole place just a safety release valve to stop any pressure building up against the overton window slamming left faster than the eye can see?
Consider that in writing mindkilled screeds about how terrible everything is, you're probably part of the problem. Maybe engage in a bit of self-reflection. Consider compromise. Read the aspirational text at the top of the culture war thread. Do something that makes you happy. Touch grass?
More realistically, Trump gets elected, Republicans suddenly stop caring about deficit spending and cut taxes and voila - all of your problems are magically solved. Instead of crying about how bad everything is you'll be crowing about the liberal snowflakes losing their minds over Orange Man Bad and TDS.
Does anyone actually get any pleasure out of this? Does anyone think it's doing any good?
I used to. When the people like you were diluted by those who were well-meaning, who wanted to have actual conversations and maybe learn a thing or two from someone with a different perspective.
How about this? If you can manage to write a measured and polite post about any of the topics above, I'll respond in kind. If the though of trying to do that is so abhorrent, then maybe this isn't the place for you.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
2mo ago
Genetic modification seems so obviously to be progress but I am starting to expect it to face a great deal of political backlash.
Did you miss GATTACA? Beggars in Spain? Hysteria around designer babies when Dolly was cloned, or the human genome draft was published?
change the genetic code so that they create Shaquille O’Neill physical traits plus 250 IQ.
That's just not anywhere close to realistic with our current level of technology and understanding. You could try cloning Shaq or whoever you think is smart, but we're laughably far away from editing your fertilized embryos for traits in that way. Like, it wouldn't happen in your lifetime even if the FDA were nuked tonight and we just did whatever we want to embryos for the next couple decades, ethics be damned.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
11mo ago
I don’t know why gun rights advocates don’t just admit that yes, if all guns were confiscated and a very strict licensing regime was put in place gun homicides would likely drop substantially.
Because 'We're the baddies but there's so many of us we'll make it politically impossible for you to take our guns' is a lot less inspirational than 'We're martyrs watering the tree of liberty and defending ourselves from a tyrannical government.'
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
8mo ago
Cynical read is that you're always talking about Hunter Biden. Breitbart has written 134,000 articles mentioning Hunter Biden and pumps out like 5 or 6 a day. Fox News has written 260,000 articles about Hunter Biden between January 1st, 2020 and today. You'd be saying this if it had dropped last month, last week, or next year. When, exactly, should the indictment have been unsealed to satisfy you?
Ah, right. The answer is never, isn't it?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
12d 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
1mo ago
Trans/queer; the new punk
A plague is corrupting the youth of Athens. Men dress like women, sport long, dyed hair and refuse to wrestle in the coliseum or participate in polite society. Women dress like men. Both mutilate their bodies to the consternation of their elders and abscond from their parents homes in droves.
I am, of course, talking about punks. And emos, goths and metalheads if I can lump everyone into the same bucket to make my life easier.
Having a fluorescent blue footlong mohawk, tattoos, piercings and a leather jacket made you eminently unemployable outside of menial service jobs and was the fashion equivalent of telling the world to go fuck itself. ‘Posers’ would get a tiny tattoo on their ankle or something and listen to the wrong music, then cover it up for their day job. Plenty of people will be nonbinary on the weekend and just pass as whatever gender they were assigned at birth Monday-Friday. 15 years ago, the mainstream was sharing cringe videos of emos and goths instead of the ‘it is ma’am’ person.
I believe that there are genuine trans people in the world who have always felt uncomfortable in their body. Numerous posts here have already described the rapid rise in trans youth so I won’t belabor the point, but my thesis (which will no doubt tank my career when this account is doxxed) is that a large fraction of these youth are protesting the gender binary and heteronormativity rather than experiencing a true, deep-seated gender identity different from what they were assigned at birth. A man wearing a dress, long hair or makeup is rebelling against arbitrary norms around clothing/fashion that evolved for a vastly different society with different needs. Spend some time on Feeld, okcupid or other dating apps (especially within the poly community), and you’ll see many people who identify as trans or queer and aren’t so much trying to pass as telling the system to go fuck itself by refusing to conform to gender norms.
Boomers and Gen Xers decrying trans youth and trans culture are Barbara Streisanding the phenomenon; the fact that you hate it is what makes it appealing to many kids in the first place! In the same way that being a punk is a nonissue today, the future of trans is becoming a minority of the population who wear the clothes that they want, use the bathrooms they want and nobody cares. Meanwhile, we’ll all be losing our minds about otherkin or pluralkin. Or maybe this guy. This isn’t to dismiss the harms that punks and anarchists may have caused in their time; I can think of a couple small-scale riots and businesses burned in my hometown during Mostly Peaceful demonstrations that got out of hand. The trans movement undoubtedly isn’t an unalloyed good and criticism will likely be valuable to reign in the excesses as it evolves into whatever the endgame is.
History may rhyme, but it’s true that it never directly repeats itself. The punk community, obviously, placed a large emphasis on music and art. While queercore is a thing, as was PWR BTTM pre-cancellation, the trans movement clearly isn’t centered on music in the same way. This could just be a shift in protest/underground culture, as neither punk nor metal carry the same bite that they used to - I saw Rancid about 10-15 years ago and even then no amount of cocaine could give them the energy they had in the 90s. Napalm Death was a hell of a time, but it hits a bit different when the entire crowd is in their 30s-50s instead of their teens. Kids are on their phones instead of listening to the radio, hanging out at the skate park and going to punk shows - as a result, protest culture just looks different than it used to, but I believe the trans movement are the ideological inheritors of the punk movement.
The other major difference, and one place where I expect the most pushback, is that punk was anti-authoritarian, anarchist and explicitly ungovernable. On the other hand, major media outlets, schools and ‘The Cathedral’ are explicitly pro-trans. I would argue that while the progressive activists are genuine they are vastly in the minority, and opposed by an equally loud minority with inverted views if not quite the same institutional reach. The majority in the center make pro-trans noises, but at the end of the day they aren’t going to date a trans person or wear clothes that don’t match their gender.
As an aside, if I can ramble for a bit - the corollary to Cthulhu swimming left is that youth crave rebellion and transgression, only to grow up and normalize whatever was shocking to their elders. Septum piercings and tattoos were ‘big deals’ growing up, whereas I have friends who are academics in good standing with visible tattoos and piercings. Going way back, lindy hop in the Savoy ballroom 12 was viewed as scandalous, whereas now it’s largely practiced by white retirees in their 60s-70s and millenial STEMlords who like dancing predetermined patterns. Elvis shocked the nation with gyrating hips in a performance tamer than 99% of the content on instagram. Punk and metal have vastly less appeal for Zoomers in the same way that the Beatniks and Hippies held no sway over the Millenials; each generation of youth pushes for progress and wants to do something transgressive. I’ll leave it to someone smarter than I to make the case that this freedom and spirit of rebellion is core to what makes America and the West great, but I do genuinely believe it.
Anyways. I, for one, can’t wait to see 60-70 year old millennials trying to dance like this. See you all grinding on the nursing home stripper poles in a couple decades.
Obligatory statement to head off some remarks: minors being able to medically transition against the wishes of their parents makes me deeply uncomfortable. I don’t support public school children being forced to attend drag queen story hour, but have no problem with people who want to bring their own children. Most other trans-associated culture war topics (pronouns, bathrooms, clothes, whatever) I'm fine with.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
2mo ago
It says "Moms for Liberty" right on the tin
And yet, most of their advocacy revolves around banning books and curricula discussing LGBT, trans and civil rights issues:
Accompanying that letter is an 11-page spreadsheet with complaints about books on the district’s curriculum, ranging from popular books on civil rights heroes to books about poisonous animals (“text speaks of horned lizard squirting blood out of its eyes”), Johnny Appleseed (“story is sad and dark”), and Greek and Roman mythology (“illustration of the goddess Venus naked coming out of the ocean...story of Tantalus and how he cooks up, serves, and eats his son.”) A book about hurricanes is no good (“1st grade is too young to hear about possible devastating effects of hurricanes”) and a book about owls is designated as a downer. (“It’s a sad book, but turns out ok. Not a book I would want to read for fun,” an adult wrote of the owl book in the spreadsheet.)
...
At one juncture, the group implores the school district to include more charitable descriptions of the Catholic Church when teaching a book about astronomer Galileo Galilei, who was persecuted by said church for suggesting that Earth revolves around the sun. “Where is the HERO of the church?” the group’s spreadsheet asks, “to contrast with their mistakes? There are so many opportunities to teach children the truth of our history as a nation. The Church has a huge and lasting influence on American culture. Both good and bad should be represented. The Christian church is responsible for the genesis of Hospitals, Orphanages, Social Work, Charity, to name a few.” MFL’s Williamson County chapter also takes issue with a picture book about seahorses, in part because it depicted “mating seahorses with pictures of postions [sic] and discussion of the male carrying the eggs.”
So painting them as being about Liberty in any meaningful sense of the word, other than Liberty being a red-tribe codeword, seems patently dishonest. Their objections to content are often explicitly political and coded red-tribe. Some of the shit that was banned in Florida schools a few years ago was hilariously inoffensive.
As for the OP, whatever. I don't really care. But if people bothered to look at the context, I'd expect most to at least get a chuckle out of the fact that people clutching their pearls at the idea of their child being exposed to the idea that gay people exist then get schwasted with them on the weekend in between threesomes.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
I haven't read much about the code of conduct in particular, just that there is one, but in general I think it's a cudgel to be used against the conservative justices, because that's how its implementation has been characterized.
You don't explicitly lay out how a code of conduct that applies to everyone equally is biased against Conservative justices. Is it because you think conservative media outlets are incapable of doing investigative journalism? That only Conservative justices are likely to violate said code of conduct? That everyone is corrupt, but the public/congress will selectively pressure corrupt Conservative justices?
If it came out that, say, Soros was buying houses and fancy vacations for some of the liberal justices I'd anticipate Fox News, talk radio and the Matt Gaetz' of the world would convulse in a collective orgasm and talk about it nonstop for the next three months. Do you disagree?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
9mo ago
I'm unaware of any other demographic whose existence is only made possible by pharmaceutical companies stepping in to stop 16-50% of the population and its subgroups from dying in the streets due to self-inflicted pathogens.
The infant mortality rate was 46% a scant 200 years ago. Presumably it would reach that again in the absence of modern medicine and sanitation. Literally every demographic is heavily dependent on government and corporate spending.
Conclusion: US security is as big shitshow as it had always been.
I'd be interested for someone much more qualified than myself to make the steelman for US intelligence being quite competent, actually. We rarely hear about the successes, failures are isolated incidents that cause major scandals and garner a lot of news coverage. It's 'common knowledge' that the US government is massively incompetent. All of which leaves me itching to make a contrarian take.
US intelligence publicly told everyone that Russia was about to invade Ukraine weeks before it happened. My recollection is that people on this very board laughed at their stupidity and incompetence. Early in the conflict, the Russian military was so riddled with American spies that we knew exactly when and where they were going to strike. We had a spy so close to Putin he was sending photos of the papers on Putin's desk, which we extracted in 2017. We used to have major sources high up in the CCP, although I have no idea what the current situation is like.
This is just the stuff that gets leaked to news orgs. Who knows what goes on behind the scenes? And how can you expect to make an accurate assessment of their capabilities by looking at the tip of the iceberg that's visible to the public?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
8mo ago
If you'll forgive the blatant whataboutism (though given that I'm swimming in whataboutisms it seems like that's just the way the game is played 'round here these days), do you feel the same way about Kushner taking 2 billion dollars from Saudi Arabia months after playing a major role managing US relations in the middle east in Trump's white house?
Joe Biden's net worth is something like 9 million dollars. His tax filings are public. He isn't taking millions of dollars worth of bribes from foreign officials. At best you could argue that Hunter Biden (net worth 250 mil) is doing the dirty work of selling influence on Biden senior's policy choices, as others have in this thread, although that doesn't square very well with the '10 held by H for the big guy' narrative.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
10mo ago
Apologies for the naive question, but I'm largely ignorant of the nuts and bolts of AI/ML.
Many data formats in biology are just giant arrays, with each row representing a biological cell and columns representing a gene (RNA-Seq), parameter (flow cytometry). Sometimes rows are genetic variants and columns are various characteristics of said variant (minor allele frequency, predicted impact on protein function, etc).
Is there a way to feed this kind of data to LLMs? It seems trivial for chatGPT to parse 'This is an experiment looking at activation of CD8+ T cells, generate me a series of scatterplots and gates showcasing the data' but less trivial to parse the giant 500,000x15 (flow) or 10,000x20,000 (scRNA-Seq) arrays. Or is there a way for LLMs to interact with existing software?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
12d ago
Are we pretending Yanukovych wasn't overthrown?
Indeed; the automaton peasants (who lack agency) of Ukraine were told by their CIA handlers (who have agency) to riot and oust the hapless Yanukovych (who lacks agency) and was replaced by American puppet Zelensky (who has agency and should use it to sue for peace). This led noble leader Putin (who lacks agency; anyone in his shoes would do the same) to regretfully declare war.
"Presidents come and go but the policies remain the same." - Vladimir Putin
Makes sense. As you say, they're beset by the same scenario and conditions. Anyone in their shoes would do the same.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo 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
5mo ago
Economy aside, Joe Biden aside, whatever personal animosity you might have for me aside - my man, what are you doing spending 6.75$/lb for chicken at Costco as 'cheap meat?' Just checked and I spend 1.79$/lb on chicken thighs, something like 2.99$/lb for the organic/ethical stuff at the cheapest supermarket nearby. Chicken breast is still something like 4$/lb for the cheap stuff. For 6.75$ I'm pretty sure I could get a rotisserie chicken. I don't live in Manhattan but I am in a probably top 5 or top 10 CoL area. Costco isn't cheap anymore, it's only good if you want the brand name stuff for slightly less than elsewhere. Local discount chains with store brands or Chinese/ethnic markets are cheaper.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
6mo ago
Interesting, thanks for the writeup on a world i think most of us would otherwise never be exposed to. Based on the comment about the tip of the spear being very fine indeed, do you think it abnormally so for the post-korean and/or Vietnam war era? And is the implication that you think the US military is particularly impotent at the moment?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
11mo ago
Advice seems highly contextual based on the type of person you and she are, so it seems like a bit of a fool's game to try and give you specific tips. I personally wouldn't worry about 'things' like the cooler, etc - I think you're already ahead of the game if you're at that level of detail. It's probably going to be more about the conversation and who you are - be self-confident without being domineering, try and ask questions until she's talking about something she's passionate about and be interested in it, don't come on too strongly. The classical FORD (Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams) don't RAPE (Religion, Abortion, Politics, Economics) worked well for me once upon a time.
Just relax and enjoy yourself, you got this :)
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
5d ago
This is the same problem America had in the occupation of Afganistan. A true occupation and social change would need significant more support and time than what the American politics around. It would probably need a full generation to be educated as well as an extreme prejudice to crackdown on Islamic extremism for Afganistan to actually significantly change, maybe 40-60 years.
This is a feature, not a bug. The problem was that we tried to occupy Afghanistan in the first place.
The strength of our system is it's inherent antipathy towards totalitarian control or abuse of human rights in the service of some end, however well-intentioned we think that end may be. The fact that American fails at empire is a good thing, both for us and for the world. The fact that the American people doesn't have the stomach for re-education camps, massive censorship and generational occupations of foreign countries is again a strength rather than a weakness. We shouldn't try, and we should actively prevent other nations from trying where the realities on the ground allow.
The problem America is currently facing is not entirely related to HBD, which is a low hanging fruit for discussing antisocial behavior. Rather, it is the culmination of various American policies which have created an underclass which sucks endless resources and only returns crime. It is plenty possible to gainfully employ low intelligence people into socially acceptable positions even as technology improves and our AI overlords come near. In fact, it would probably significantly increase the quality of life of many jobs having lower intelligence people working menial tasks to the best of their ability alongside more trained and capable individuals. The problem is that we have created a society in which there is not enough incentive or will to create the stability necessary to turn around these neighborhoods and communities.
What you're describing seems unlikely to work without resorting to heavy-handed authoritarian policies like forced labor - what will you do when you offer subsidies to Amazon to hire people from low-income households, and nobody takes you up on the deal? Not to mention in some ways your program already exists considering that many low-wage workers are already heavily subsidized by the government.
I won't pretend to know the solution to poverty, but sacrificing the ideals the West was built on to become China-lite is not worth it.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
12d 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
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?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
No, there is a code of conduct. A conservative judge could have an absolutely egregious conflict of interest and fox news, conservative talk radio and boomer facebook would carry water for them.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
8mo ago
Sure, and how many articles have CNN, MSNBC, Et Al written about Trump?
That might be relevant if I had been complaining about the latest Hunter Biden hearing being planned to distract from a damaging Trump story. Moreover, Trump was a sitting president while Hunter Biden is the son of one, so a better analogy would be Jared Kushner.
The crux of the issue is that the DNC has explicitly rejected the principle of equality before the law in favor of "rules for thee and not for me" and I don't think they realize just how dangerous a game they are playing.
The crux of the issue is that Trump pushed the envelope on all of those issues farther than any of the examples you gave. Clinton conceded the election peacefully the morning after:
“Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country,” Clinton said. “I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans. This is not the outcome that we wanted or worked so hard for, and I’m sorry that we did not win this election…. But I feel pride and gratitude for this wonderful campaign that we built together. This vast, diverse, creative, unruly and energized campaign. You represent the best of America, and being your candidate has been one of the greatest honors of my life.” Fighting back tears at times, Clinton acknowledged the crowd’s disappointment, saying she — “and tens of millions of Americans” — felt it, too. “This is painful, and it will be for a long time,” Clinton said. “We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America, and I always will.”
I'm still unaware of any concrete evidence that Joe pushed policy X or Y as a party to foreign influence either to enrich his family or otherwise. The closest I've seen has been pushing for the resignation of the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma, but a Republican-controlled senate investigation apparently turned up nothing years ago. While Hunter apparently illegally bought a gun, smoked a lot of crack, fucked a lot of hookers and enriched himself on his father's name it's still not clear to me how Biden harmed the interests of the United States to rake in the corruption money.
There's probably no point rehashing similar arguments from the other side; Jared Kushner receiving 2 billion from the Saudis after being staunchly pro-Saudi Arabia while directly serving in Trump's white house, Trump delaying hundreds of millions of aid to Ukraine while pressuring Zelenskyy to investigate the Biden's, so on and so forth.
I'm out of time, so you'll undoubtedly be devastated that we don't get to rehash the Clinton email saga again although I'll admit you're maybe closest to the mark here given that, if I remember correctly, she instructed her lawyer to destroy evidence.
What comes next?
Tl;dr - Assuming Fukuyama is wrong and it isn’t American-flavored liberal democracy until the heat death of the universe. What comes next, either probabilistically or from a perspective of the ‘next’ thing?
If you’ll let me indulge in some whig history and half-baked, poorly-researched ideas, I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts. Say that modern liberal democratic states represent some form of linear progress over the monarchies of the middle ages, the city states of antiquity and hunter-gatherer tribes that came before that. I will say that they at least represent progress along the axes of complexity and ability to project power; I’d rather sidestep the question of whether they represent true ‘progress’ at the risk of getting bogged down in discussions about what the purpose of human existence is. I’m also more interested in speculating on what the political system/civilization of the future looks like than AI doomerism or ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’ style takes, but if you truly believe that’s what’s in the cards for us, I suppose I can’t begrudge you your pessimism.
I confess that my knowledge of history is severely deficient so I’d welcome any corrections here, but essentially: modern elections couldn’t be run without at least writing and widespread literacy, nor could the modern nation-state. It was much harder for London to project power to America in the 18th century when communication involved a round-trip on a sailing vessel than it is for Washington to project power over San Francisco with instantaneous telecom in the 21st. In this vein, I’d contend that western liberal democracies are software written for the hardware of the 18th century. Sea changes of the last two centuries include:
Huge increase in the amount of data available
Massive decrease in the amount of time required to transmit information, and the barriers to doing so given the universality of internet access and smartphones
Significant increases in education levels
AI
Insert your thoughts here, not trying to make an exhaustive list
All that preamble to ask, what is the next ‘step’ in the evolution of the political tradition and/or civilization? Sooner or later, some country will develop a system leveraging the above much more effectively than us and we’ll be outcompeted.
For example, if we wanted to, we could relatively easily hold a referendum for every major political decision for truly radical democracy - just have some kind of app on your smartphone connected to your SSN (fraud avoidance strategy TBD), vote on the questions of the day over breakfast. Maybe the mob becomes the fourth branch of congress and new legislation requires a majority vote. Perhaps (and I shudder to think of the logistics or reception this would receive in the current climate) issues are categorized by topic and people are sorted by expertise, but policy is still decided by a much broader group than congress.
The nation-state itself could become obsolete. Many have remarked how the cosmopolitan product manager/twitterati of New York, Toronto and Paris are much more similar to each other than they are to the Freedom Convoy, Gilets Jaunes or Dutch farmers dropping manure in highways and vice-versa. How can the nation-state survive man having more camaraderie for his tribal in-group over his fellow countrymen? The hive system outlined in Too like the Lightning seems interesting if the logistics could ever be worked out.
Contrary to what some think, I don’t have a self-referential fetish for democracy. Maybe the Culture mythos predicted the future and competitive nations in the future will turn all import decisions over to AIs, or else get wrecked by their neighbors. Maybe all the technological progress I’ve discussed is orthogonal to politics, and we could just as easily have a liberal democracy as a Yarvinesque monarcho-corporatism as an authoritarian regime exploit AI/big data and outcompete the rest of us independently of how enfranchised the populace is.
What do you all think?
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