Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
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User ID: 1864
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
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?
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
In context I'd defend it as 'freedom not to have one's children indoctrinated into the state religion'
Indeed; mask mandates are also pro-liberty as they give people the freedom to not worry about getting COVID in the train. Censorship gives LGBT and minorities freedom from hate speech. Jailing Donald Trump will give us freedom from fascism and neo-nazism.
Censorship is inherently illiberal however you try and dress it up. That doesn't make it bad. There's such an aversion to censorship that when we actually decide we want to engage in it we have to lie to ourselves and dress it up as some freedom or another.
school is mandatory and funded by all sides of the political spectrum after all.
Better argument for the curriculum. Bad argument for book bans. Nobody is forcing your child to look at those books any more than anyone was forcing the other high school kids to go to that party.
I don't think it's unreasonable to demand a neutral curriculum
Whew. Good luck with that one, man.
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
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
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
1mo ago
When the government takes half your paycheck and gives it to a swarm of party-aligned parasites that live off grant money, the government is denying you agency.
Hey man, I don't like that the government is subsidizing traditionally red tribe occupations either, but you should really pressure your elected officials if you want it to stop.
Not to mention the income tax rate tops out at 37%, so it's not half your paycheck, and even if you are in the top tax bracket...you really don't have anything to be complaining about because you're making over half a mil per year.
When politicians coordinate with megacorporations to enrich themselves by impoverishing american workers, they are denying you agency.
Based. How do you want to bust the megacorps, comrade?
When your child isn't allowed to take algebra in school because a leftist "education consultant" got paid $5000/hr to call math racist while sending her children to a private school, they are denying you agency.
That's an impressive 10,000,000$ per year. Do you have any idea how I could become an education consultant?
Anyways, I'll ask you the same question as last time. I largely agree with you about the problems in the country. Do you have any realistic, well-thought out plans to address them? We could zero out budgets for all the education consultants, all the minority-owned business subsidies, most of the other stuff you complain about as woke, and your buddy would still be struggling to feed his family stocking shelves. If you want to cut taxes, we probably need to cut medicare and social security (I'm assuming you don't want to touch the military), so your shelf-stocking friend will age into being a senior who both can't afford healthcare and has to keep stocking shelves until he keels over and dies.
But seriously, I'm listening. I'm open to having my mind changed. What do you actually want? What's your positive vision for the future?
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
4mo ago
I thought I was clear
I'm sure you do.
the only reason anyone cares about a code of ethics is because of politicized reporting smearing conservative justices. Therefore, the code of ethics itself is but a cudgel to be used against said justices.
And the only reason we care about the Hatch act is that we might someday use it to coerce conservative congress members to resign. Just look at George Santos! We should probably do away with ethics rules in the House. No doubt the IRS is just going to be used to go after conservatives citizens, so we probably ought to dissolve that. The printing press has just been used as a cudgel against conservatives since the 16th century, and the rule of law has fucked conservatives since Hammurabi so we should probably do away with those as well.
I guess the cops are okay. They probably won't go after conservatives.
What you're being unclear about is any kind of broader position beyond being salty that a conservative justice is catching heat for something that, were the shoe on the other foot, you'd be just as happy to complain about. Are you just against any kind of neutral rules so long as what you think of as a biased media could leverage it against a prominent conservative? Are you specifically against any kind of code of ethics for the Supreme court, and if so, how is that different from any other example of ethics/rules that (at least on paper) apply equally to everyone? Is there some kind of underlying principle, or again, are you just salty that your ox got gored?
Yeah, but it won't come out, because that's not the media landscape that exists in reality. In reality, the Hunter Biden laptop full of incriminating evidence is pre-bunked as a non-story and literally every single major media enterprise gets with the program in lockstep fashion.
You say it wouldn't come out, and then give an example that...everyone knows about. The Hunter Biden laptop story was happily trumpeted through conservative talk radio, breitbart, Fox news, boomer facebook and wherever else conservatives get their news. It was broadly discussed in the NYT and plenty of other mainstream outlets as well.
No major media would cover it seriously, instead the story would be how Republicans are melting down over racist conspiracy theories.
Fox News, literally the most-watched news channel would cover it. As would conservative talk radio, which is how Trump supporters get their news. Randos in rural Idaho aren't getting the Times delivered to their doorsteps.
Walter Cronkite
Who's that, like, a tiktok influencer?
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
9d ago
Permananned for being naughty while arguing with the HBD people.
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
So let's build a wall says the right-winger.
No you can't do that says the left-winger, you just can't. You really can't says the left-winger, so the right-winger says, ok we'll jan6 then
You mean the wall I was promised Mexico would pay for (oops), the wall that was actually built by Trump after refusing compromises offered by Democrats and instead built by appropriating funds from the military? The wall that, as far as I can tell, has had virtually no effect on the number of illegal immigrants showing up at the border? That wall?
Leaving aside the fact that your implied definition of 'having agency' means 'getting whatever policy you want at the federal level.' By that definition, you're denying me agency every time you vote for a Republican. Nobody has agency.
So let's gather all the gang-members says the El Salvadoran President. But at what cost??? Asks the NYT.
Sure, we could crack down on crime in the US as well if we instituted a police state. This is diametrically opposed to what most conservatives want. When is the last time you saw a conservative cheering on NSA wiretappings or the FBI?
How's 'relocating' working as a strategy generally? Plenty of 'relocated' Americans homeless on the streets of blue cities, not sure what good it does them.
You do understand that homeless make up a minute portion of a state's population (~90k for New York out of a population of 19 million), and the number of them that were shipped there from red states is a fraction of them? Meanwhile, there are plenty of kids who leave West Virginia for college, work, etc and never come back - and they do just fine. People typically refer to this as a negative as the talented are leaving West Virginia, exacerbating the problem. Any hard data on the subject would suffer from selection effects as well, so maybe it isn't a solution for someone with a high school degree or less, who knows.
Doesn't really matter though. You seem more interested in 'zingers' and waging the culture war, right?
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
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.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
I can well believe that Canada decided to subsidize shitty behavior by taxing good behavior. This question is more out of curiosity than a challenge- how exactly did Canada do this in a more egregious manner than other first world countries with their eg single motherhood benefits.
Are you confident that other countries without those single motherhood benefits, such as the US, have lower rates of single motherhood than Canada? Because I don't think that's true even controlling for race. I'm sure cheaper daycare has an effect on the margin, but I'm skeptical that if Canada elected a clean Conservative slate and abolished the entirety of their welfare system that all the problems OP gestures at would evaporate. Even leaving aside the new problems generated as a consequence.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
4mo ago
I’ll vote for Trump next November, but only because I personally dislike a lot of influential progressives and will enjoy the crying and wailing on social media if he wins (and perhaps in the faintest, 5% chance he might do something about immigration).
Setting aside the 'own the libs' part, you've got a better chance of immigration reform under Biden or his successor. Trump being Trump (or the media being the media, depending on your perspective), will inevitably make immigration reform so toxic that no democratic politician could support any proposal he makes without getting absolutely shredded by their base.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
10mo ago
They probably fear that if they don't, they'll be hounded. They don't want to be associated with Bad People so they go out of their way to make the distinction even in the midst of mourning.
It's Havel's Greengrocer: Family Tragedy Edition.
Is it really so difficult to believe that she might just be a good person who genuinely cares enough about doing what she believes is the right thing despite her grief? You may typical mind her to the point that her speech and feelings can't possibly be genuine, but not everybody processes their emotions in the same way as you.
Tell me, when Fox News regularly interviews families with children murdered by illegal immigrants are you similarly disgusted? Do you cringe and berate them for giving speeches on national television rather than grieving alone at home? How about Trump giving a panel with Bill Clinton's victims?
Most people are fundamentally good and want to do the right thing. I think she's deserving of at least as much charity as you're willing to extend to your tribe.
As an aside, is this comment:
Honesty is alien to the Arab, Chinaman, Indian, etc. They have a difficult time imagining a world in which you can look to a man as your equal and take what he says as a sincere expression of his beliefs. I think Americans have been somewhat orientalized in this regard.
So unremarkable that nobody here even bothers to point it out? I know, don't feed the trolls and all, but that tweet is just funny and self-sabotaging to the point of satire. Not to mention the followup tweet 'Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!'
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
1mo ago
There's Cernovich, or Bronze Age Pervert, or dozens of smaller accounts.
Fair enough, I confess to not reading BAP and I've never heard of Cernovich. I'm surprised you wouldn't mention Joe Rogan or JD Vance, but I know the phenotype you're referring to.
Maybe you're thinking of Ben Shapiro and Cadence Owens and Hanania types
Well, also the vast majority of the Trump administration, people like Steve Bannon, Alex Jones (I guess he hawks his supplements) and other conservative talk radio hosts, red coded media (fox news, OANN, Breitbart), most of the local commentariat, most any public figure on the right whose schtick isn't self-help/redpill/MGTOW style. You know the rhetoric I'm referring to, right?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
2mo 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
5d ago
When poverty is defined as a percentage of median household income and explicitly excludes food and housing aid, the problem simply cannot be solved
I'm confused; wasn't there a brouhaha about this specific point just in the last year? Where some folks on the right said the census bureau was cheating as they redefined poverty to include food and housing aid, to make it seem like we've made progress eliminating poverty when really all we've done is increase government handouts?
I remember a number of articles like this one:
In the late 1950s, the poverty rate in the U.S. was approximately 22%, with just shy of 40 million Americans living in poverty. The rate declined steadily, reaching a low of 11.1% in 1973 and rising to a high of nearly 15% three times – in 1983, 1993 and 2011 – before hitting the all-time low of 10.5% in 2019. However, the 46.7 million Americans in poverty in 2014 was the most ever recorded.
Also articles like this. Apparently there's also absolute and relative poverty. Oh well.
Regardless, the fact that definitionally 49% of people will be forced to earn sub-median incomes isn't necessarily a reason to shrug away poverty and/or the degree of income inequality in society. As evidenced by the last decade of politics. Do you think that the anger at elites is unfounded (given nobody falls below your definition of poverty anymore), more related to status than income (although definitionally 49% of people will also be sub-median statuswise...) or are you more sympathetic to discourse around income inequality than poverty?
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
12d 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.
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.
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.
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