DBDr
1yr ago
If you will pardon some hysterical left wring political doomerism:
I think I'm having an AI risk moment, and you guys are doing it to me!
I was always kinda skeptical of leftist claims re. right wing fascism in the US.
Yes, claiming the election was stolen is a little ehhhhh, but it is also just more traditional right wing signaling about corrupt institutions and blah blah blah.
Yes, circling the wagons around Trump and friends when they were doing clearly sketchy/criminal shit was a little fucked, but could I honestly say the left or the libs wouldn't do the same thing in exchange for the presidency? Of course not.
Yes, conservative justices are openly political and have only enough respect for precedent to secure the fig leaf with blue tack, but come on now. Roe v Wade, anyone?
The reaction of right wing populists, elected officials, intellectuals, and media regarding our lovable insane maga hammerbro doing a little trolling are making me wig out. People I thought were wrong but serious passing around clear bullshit about gay escorts, pretending the dude wasn't Q radicalized, and laughing it off. It's one thing for the lunatic fringe to do that shit, it's another entirely when the largest single conservative news network and most popular intellectuals are doing it.
Then I come here for a dose of sanity, and I have to dig DEEP into the replies before I find anyone positing the plainly obvious: that if you say your political opponents are child rapist election stealing perverts, some section of the population will actually believe the literal words you are saying and "take action".
Maybe I'm just having a little moment and will regress to mean in a couple weeks, but this particular incident has shifted me from "no" to "They would if they could" regarding conservatives in this country, at least temporarily.
I was already armed because I think guns are fun and cool and are never gonna be banned regardless of how many schools get shot up so I might as well have fun, now I'm shopping around for my local John Brown chapter.
(also, if you are apolitical or don't mind some leftism from time to time and are looking for a gun club, the John Brown Gun Club and SRA are actually really chill and safe, so far. Much better than the local non-denominational clubs. I haven't been flagged once by a dude shoulder carrying his AR with closed bolt and magazine loaded yet, which is a damn sight better than the public ranges in SC.)
One last thing while I'm thinking about it: Dude once showed up to the range with the sickest Springfield armory 1911 I've ever seen, all nickel and smooth as glass and beautiful as fuck, one of their 2000$ fancy jobs. Predictably everyone gathered around and asked to see it like a bunch of 7 year olds for a foil pokemon card, then dude turns around and fucking holds me up with it practically. Scary as fuck. He let me shoot it afterwards though, so that was something.
DBDr
9mo ago
At least there exists good rap; good rap is theoretical possible. The design specifications of rap allow for good.
The essential element of stadium country is that it is vapid garbage for people that hate music. It is mid 2000's R&B level worthless trash.
Here are the things that are good about pop country: You can dance to it.
It's the Mcdonald's of music. Bland, overproduced, overpriced, and super salty all the time.
Wait, hold on, I have more bitching in me! And it's deffo not all sour grapes that my guys never break into the mainstream!
DBDr
1yr ago
This seems like a stretch.
This is like some lefty organization finding the secretary of Blackrocks's marketing division's cto and videotaping them saying "We plan to put all the non straight white men in concentration camps by 2024"; and all the outgroup saying "See! We knew it all along!"
DBDr
1yr ago
As a lefty: It is a real shooting fish in a barrel type exercise, but it works 95% to score cheap points.
If I get into a "Heated Exchange In The Free Market Of Ideas" and my interlocuter says "woke" or "pronouns" or any other conservative buzz word outside of a conservative safe space, I can make them look real stupid by forcing the conversation to a screeching halt and having them explain it to me.
Either they try in good faith and look stupid, or they blow right through and look disingenuous.
DBDr
1yr ago
No, because "White Patriarchy" refers to two different ideas: One is that there is a secret masonic lodge of old white dudes who wear red robes and sacrifice a BIPOC virgin every full moon to anoint themselves in the blood of the innocent as they secretly control everything, man!
And the second "White Patriarchy" is noticing that white men hold something like 65-70% of all US political offices, but constitute 30% of the population.
One of these is empiricism, one is insanity.
Qanon is just insanity.
DBDr
8mo ago
HISD to eliminate librarians and convert libraries into disciplinary centers at NES schools
Not worth a post as top level thread on it's own; but hilariously dystopic enough to post here. It's only one (admittedly large and important) SD, but this is the type of shit Margret Atwood would write about as a totally out there thought experiment.
Hopefully enough people get mad it stops there.
DBDr
1yr ago
Piracy is ethical in the same way that shoplifting is ethical.
Ie: it isn't. It is stealing plain and simple. There is no ethical justification for piracy, including yours. If you don't like the politics behind a product, simply don't consume it or accept that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
But! You could consider a certain rate of shrink to be a part of the market and write it off.
There are more people that want products than there are people that can afford products, and there are (sometimes!) more products produced than people that can afford to buy them. If that percentage cancels itself out to zero, it is a legit victimless crime.
Once piracy starts cutting into the share of shit that would ACTUALLY get sold, is when there is a problem.
DBDr
4mo ago
Your list of things to trigger and own the atheists betrays a complete lack of understanding of non-theist world views.
You are holding up a list of things that exist as though they are the same thing as a given religions idols (the cross, the prophet, the tablets, etc) when the whole point of atheism is that there is no such thing as an idol.
If you are a committed christian (or theist in general, I guess) your reality requires lots of maintenance. You have to believe in things for their own, not believe in other things because that would endanger the things you do believe in, hold things sacred for no reason other than because they are, abore things that are aborent for no reason other than that they are.
Atheists don't have to do that: they just have to not respect and privilege your personal reality over the shared reality that is the material world. Religion is the practice of having faith in things you can't deduce through empiricism, atheism is a rejection of faith, and anti-theism considers faith the be a type of negative utility delusion.
There is no special claim atheists have to uphold or special symbol they have to respect. All they need to do is shrug.
DBDr
10mo ago
A lot of antisemitism as defined is very close to just telling facts. Jews really do have a disproportionate amount of power in key institutions.
Ah, Critical race theory!
I'm glad to find another adherent on this sub, most people are super against it here.
Less snarkily, your points are all valid only through the racialized, critical framing that produced the document you are arguing against.
If you are a white nationalist or black hebrew isrialite or some other flavor of such you are acting 100% consistent, otherwise I think you should do some intellectual hygiene regarding prevailing theories accepted without critical analysis.
DBDr
4mo ago
Coming from the opposite place (a socialist with a history in the shovel swinging strata):
You've really nicely explained to things I've always just taken for granted in here.
A: there is an such a thing as elite capture, but there is also such a thing as "Dude, nobody fucking likes you". The level of authentic dislike or lack of interest in conservatives and conservative politics people have is wildly underestimated in places like this; right down to me polling my crew of redneck proll tradies over lunch about the transes and the SJWs and the majority answer being a combination of "I don't care" or "What the fuck is that?"
B: So, in an attempt to solve A we switch to a more salient message: these groups are attacking you, destroying your "way of life", the fact that your life is worse than your dads or your granpappys is because of THIS! And that might work in the short run. It will work in the short run, even. But dudes I used to work with and still talk to who fully bought in to Trump style messaging are getting woke to the fact that nothing in their lives improved even with a three branch R sweep; that their boss still buys a new corvette every other year but their kid had to move back in 8 months after moving out or they would end up homeless.
The current problems politicos need to solve are the (1)disintegration of community sentiment and the (2)disintegration of the economic middle; and the strategies of the parties have been to say "Just hold hands and thing happy thoughts and we'll slap a few bandages on it and if you complain about (1) in the wrong tone you have 5 cousin fucking teeth you pathetic FUCK" from the dems, and "(2) is good actually you comunit bitch but actually both are because of immigrants(brown) and the gays but we won't actually do anything about either".
Both major parties aren't attacking the root of the problem, but people notice that the D's attack the symptoms and the R's at least will sympathies with your grievances. Both parties are fucked in the long run if nothing changes, but the R's are fucked sooner because they keep not even pretending to do anything with the policy goals of the bottom of of the top bottom alliance. (except abortion, and look how that's turning out.)
Also: What, should the entire apparatus of the civil state stand there, limp dick in hand, watching norm after law after precedent get dynamited?
The apparatus demands lubrication, and the only substance at hand is blood. It is good and necessary that blood should flow to feed the state. That is what the state is, that is what the state is for. The state is the threat of violence perpetrated against all by consent of all for the benefit of all.
There has been a defector; why should the government even exist if it can't punish one idiot failson of a fallen business empire?
DBDr
11mo ago
If they die? Yes.
He clearly committed manslaughter, so he gets the punishment for manslaughter.
DBDr
1yr ago
If your politics go in this direction and you want to be PURE, you are just gonna have to not watch any movie worth watching, listen to any music worth listening to, read any fiction worth reading, etc. and so forth.
Creative endeavor has been dominated by people with liberal tendencies since the renaissance at least; and "conservative" art is by definition conservative: retreading existing styles, but worse. That Thomas Kinkade Neoimpressionist Disneyest Nostalginizim garbage.
There are some right leaning artists worth a damn, Dali for example had some SPICY OPINIONS re. politics (even if I don't think blowing up the king could be considered conservative at the time); but they are thin on the ground.
DBDr
1yr ago
I represent as sample of that population.
I think Chapelle is too in his feelings about people not liking his trans jokes, but he's still DAVE FUCKING CHAPELLE. Shit, I even liked most of his trans material, it's his bitching and moaning about being "cancelled" on his 73'd netflix special that's cringe.
Musk is just pure cringe top to bottom. I miss just thinking "his fans are lame as fuck but dude is launching rockets and popularizing electric cars and making long bomb bets on innovative manufacturing techniques" instead of "Oh, that insecure guy who called a recue diver a pedophile 'cause he didn't want his stupid submarine and who did all that Hyperloop snake oil bullshit and who did all that boring company snake oil bullshit and and and". Dude needs to take up boxing or mma or something and work up some self respect.
DBDr
4mo ago
I think you believe this because of the people around you and the bubble you are in; but it just isn't true. Historically when money is tight, SJW's make even faster, harder, more permanent progress. Prosperity produces empty gestures because everybody can get by well enough, hardship produces actual clicks of the ratchet because people have enough potential energy to be actualized into political will.
But even if that doesn't happen, nothing ever happens for you. Even if nobody believes in DEI (which they don't because it's dumb); the gesture is all that is required. If DEI goes away, it will be replaced with something you hate equally because, again, you can't win permanent victories, just like you can't make water flow up hill.
You can expend cultural capital; you can burn that shit as fuel and pump that shit back up; but eventually water finds it's way to the sea.
Because we live under capitalist realism, because even with two (do I hear three!) wars going on right now, History has Ended. Nothing Ever Happens. If you want to actually see the changes you desire in your heart, you are going to need to take a risk; to smash the system just like I will to see the economic changes I want to see.
DBDr
8mo ago
I know this isn't helpful, but my flinch reaction to dudes who have masculinity problems is to scoff and feel contempt.
Like, what's so fucking hard about it? And then I remember normal mind bias and tell myself that what I just said is "Listen, picking up heavy stuff is easy! Just lift more than you can lift!"
I will say that building your masculinity on the attention of a particular woman or women in general is cuck behavior, and needs to be discouraged wherever possible. Even the MGTOW dudes still construct their whole identity around women, you gotta stop that shit.
But that runs into "Just stop feeling that way! Lift more than you can lift!" again.
DBDr
1yr ago
Yet physical property rights are also a fiction, which have only existed for a couple hundred years out of the thousands of years of human history. Up until the 1700's ish, all property was defacto owned by the king.
There is nothing stopping the Viking a'reaving up your coastline on his long ship but social pressure and the monopoly of violence; property rights are not physical law.
That said, if you want to argue the socialist de-commodification of all human endeavor, I won't stop you. That shit would be tight, if it could be made to function.
DBDr
1yr ago
The apologia for the richest guy who started rich and picked right twice is funny to me, as always. Dude really is the modern day Timothy Dexter.
YOU are smarter than Elon Musk, he just had money and the blind self confidence to parley his way into a leadership position where his staff carefully wrangles him to making correct decisions sometimes. Testimonials from everyone who has ever touched his technical work are universally negative, strip it down and build it again right style shit.
But! That doesn't matter. HIS JOB ISN'T ENGINEERING, he is the fucking CEO. He can hire 99th percentile STEMlords to do STEM stuff, he needs to do CEO stuff.
The place you can say he is actually a genius: He is a fucking sublime marketing machine. He never turns off, he is 25/8 looking for ways to promote himself and his sources of revenue, both directly and indirectly, both positively and negatively.
He managed to fill the Steve Jobs shaped hole in the zeitgeist, and that is enough to make up for 95% of all boneheaded financial decisions.
DBDr
1yr ago
Boris is your usual populist idiot political toad. He is dumb as hell and has a mile long trail of stupid decisions, blatant lies, obvious hypocrisies and general ineptitude, but gets elected and even does pretty well sometimes because the opposition has swung so far away from populism their ivory tower is about to hit the moon.
Doesn't matter in the face of being a total fuckup though, which his handling of Brexit really showed. Shit or get off the pot, my dude.
DBDr
4mo ago
As an SJW: You can't win. It is as impossible for you to win as it is for me to will big communism into existence ex nihlo.
We are currently playing Culture War by a set of rules that gives me infinite tries and only allowed you temporary victories; and it is the same set of rules that means I can vote in as many elections as I like and choose between two dudes representing corporate interests but one has the pride flag.
So, I win the culture war. You loose the culture war. Maybe you make some headway here or there, but in the end all your causes will fail and all of mine will succeed, until they move beyond me and I become the reactionary.
Unless there is some sort of radical reorganization of society; until the socialist or ancap revolution really comes, this is just how it do. Capitalist realism baby!
DBDr
7mo ago
I'm taking my third month long vacation in the past 12 months; given that we are probably seeing the very end of the covid price extravaganza that let me go to japan and london from Socal for a couple hundred bucks; this time filling out my map of Europe with Romania, Bulgaria, and greece (which I somehow managed to avoid up until now.) If I don't go now, I'm probably gonna not go for a long ass time; prices look like they are bouncing wayyyy back up.
I'm really gonna miss covid; that whole situation was so fucking convenient to me. Cheap plane tickets, cheap lodgings, cheap car rentals, incredibly cheap train tickets (including that summer ticket in Germany that was all local and national and some international rail with unlimited rides for like, 12 dollars or something. Shit was wild; I hope they do that again.), and short lines.
I guess It has to end eventually though, or all the places I like will go bust. This is me bidding a fond Farwell to the Coronavirus era, I really hope the people who want me to eat the bugs and live in the pod don't also make me go back to the fucking office.
DBDr
8mo ago
I mean, not specifically.
But signing your name to something you know isn't true or tricking some else into similar is the dictionary definition of fraud.
DBDr
8mo ago
Nor is it fraud to sign a piece of paper saying you believe.
It literally is fraud to do that though, is the thing. That's what fraud is.
DBDr
11mo ago
Strangling is continuous, choking isn't (from a wrestling perspective).
A choke has a defined end; which is a tap, unconsciousness, or death. A choke leads to unconsciousness somewhere between 5 and 15 seconds (shit is faster than you think; once it is locked in.) and brain damage/ death in 1 - 5 mins. Assuming that this was a shitty armature choke as from a guy that had a couple months of light combatives once; it is still pretty murder-y.
Any choke that is held for more than 10 minutes is as excessive as shooting a dude 7 times that reloading and giving him another 7.
Given that he surrendered himself and doesn't seem to have intended to kill the dude, manslaughter seems about right.
The current War of Northern Aggression "discourse" has brought to mind the top 100 first place greatest mistake in US state craft: not letting Burnen' Sherman just march back and forth for a couple years or finishing hardcore full reconstruction.
Every degenerate tendency in US Con. politics has originated directly from the South's special position as a rebellious territory that was allowed to maintain it's cultural legitimacy, or second order effect from it. Imagine the conservatives we could have in this country if the wellspring of the tendency was John Adams and the federalists; rather than Rutherford and the lost causers.
Wrapping up the entire holographic southern cultural package with opposition to Washington eg. the North, eg the technocratic, rich part of the country has led to a situation where Technocratic Tech-billionaire Technologists are shackled to the cultural traditions of south, either Cavalier hedonistic indulgence papered over with cheap aristocratic pretension lacking any of the actual cultural roots that european aristocrats have; or hill people proud ignorance and shiftless rebellion against anyone who might have gotten any of that big city 'lernin.
You can watch these tendencies poison Republican politics live all the time; it's why even though the Democratic party is jam packed full of passionless ossified corporate aphorism chat bots, when republicans have all three wings of the government they STILL can't get anything done. There is a deep state problem, but it's not the 'unelected bureaucrats' in washington, it's the decaying corpses of Jefferson Davis and Johnny Reb clinging on to conservatism's ankles and dragging it down into the mud.
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