DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
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User ID: 460
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
Sardonic suggestion: both sides might agree they should be jailed until the seas rise.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
I don’t know where this crowd is at now.
We’re working our 40 hr/wk jobs, or doing whatever has taken up our schedules since retirement, and coming home tired to watch Fox News not talk about the election fraud Dinesh discovered. We’re listening to podcasts by Jack Posobiec and Charlie Kirk and wishing we were young enough to be in TPUSA. We’re sending 5-year-old memes to our families on Facebook, never noticing they’re not promoted outside five or ten people. And between all that, we’re trying to avoid being called racist to our faces for holding the same pro-American colorblind ideals we have since The Cosby Show became our favorite sitcom in the 80’s.
I say “we” because I got my start in politics watching the short-lived Rush Limbaugh TV show with my dad before high school. I still consider myself a Rush/Reagan Republican, a libertarian in all but party affiliation. My parents are described above too.
Thank you for the post. I feel seen.
EDIT: another poster has given a more left-friendly explanation for “where this crowd is at now”: quietly coexisting with their liberal friends, and “hiding their power-level” as 4chan would say.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9mo ago
I grew up a Christian in a full gospel (literal Bible) church which would today be reductively called fundamentalist. As a nerd (with what turned out to be autism and ADHD), I listened to the stories and connected the pieces. I looked for underlying structures, like I do with any sufficiently nerdy story-verse, like Star Trek, DC Comics, or My Little Pony. When I found theological radio shows (Chuck Missler’s 64/40, The Bible Answer Man, and the like), I was thrilled. To me, theology is worship s the Logos, the infinite and eternal mind of God, is the Person of the Trinity I’ve most adored since putting those pieces together. For fifteen years of adulthood, I spent Monday nights in a non-denominational Bible study group which is a local chapter of an international organization. I’ve expected the End Times to start soon, ever since I read a Chick Tract featuring mobile guillotines for Christians in the near future.
But I really didn’t get religiosity, or the atheist view of religiosity, until I read Robert Harris’ Cicero Trilogy, which brought the ancient world of the late Roman Republic to vivid and stunning life. Among the things Harris (not to be confused with Richard Harris) did was subtly but often mention the state religion. Not just the honoring and petitioning of gods, but the auguries, the seeking of divine signs in the entrails of small animal sacrifices. After seeing what reverence the Romans placed on auguries, it made sense that Caesar’s most public play for political power was getting himself chosen as the head high priest of Rome. It also suddenly made sense to me why the early Christians were called “atheists”: because they did not participate in the very public rituals and observances.
I still go to the same church I grew up in, though I’m one of only a few of my approx. age still there. I still believe in Jesus, though I’ve had several crises of faith. I still know the little details and nuances of the Bible and believe them to be real history, though I have an instinctive dislike of superstition and woo-woo pseudoscience.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
· Edited 10mo ago
“Woke” is about intersectionality or power-critical narratives or character arcs, usually pedantically or with a lecturing tone, not just progressive / feminist heroic viewpoints. Brave was about a Scottish princess beloved by her kingdom and family who used her existing but unrealized privilege to make choices in her romantic life; that’s standard modernist feminism.
Moana, on the other hand, was marketed as woke: “here’s a brave, strong Brown woman, isn’t she brave and strong for being Brown and a woman?” I didn’t see it until it hit the second-run theater for that reason alone; when I did, I was surprised it was just a fun, well-made, coming-of-age Disney film. She saw a problem, had an adventure, fixed the problem, and was rewarded for her leadership with more leadership. Sure, she had no romantic co-star, but that’s not woke, just feminist. It had a flamboyant-coded treasure-grubbing giant crab, which edged into wokeness, but it was a minuscule part of the film, and it fit the story. Again, modernist progressive, not woke.
Lightyear was woke because it was power-critical: the white man protagonist was constantly wrong, not heroic, throughout the film. At the end, his heroism consisted of being an ally to the family he accidentally helped, against Zurg, another white man who wanted to turn back the clock to when things were good for him and hide his mistakes from the people who determine his societal status. Postmodern “power was wrong” narrative plus fecund Black lesbian equals the triumph of queer family over the success of a highly privileged white man’s career ambitions
“It’s not a small or throwaway part of the movie. The climax hinges on Buzz deciding Alisha meeting her wife is more important than his primary objective for the entire movie, the lost years of his life, any possible better alternative path. He sacrifices everything for their love story and for the multi-generational positive impact of their love story. I was gobsmacked at how hard it swings not just for gay people being tolerable in “family-friendly” settings, but for gay people creating amazing families themselves.” - Autostraddle article
The article then goes on to point out how Pixar’s meta-narrative made queer acceptance itself travel back in time to make the Toy Story universe retroactively gayer, and thus better, then ours. Lightyear is woke, it’s a political point masquerading as a story, and it’s not satisfying entertainment.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
11mo ago
I'll add that if a guy can't say anything without lying, maybe he's got a bigger problem.
If a guy declines to testify on his own behalf because he can't say anything under oath without being accused of lying, and if he can then be forced by law to spend his own money to defend himself whilst again unable to take the stand himself, the problem he has is known as a witch hunt.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
The part of the Seuss debacle which really chafes my hide is the works were chosen for extinction, not even the clumsy editing of censors, or the clever redactions the liberal Geisel would have made to his own works to update them to the new ethos, were he still kicking.
On Beyond Zebra is one of my formative memories: a world tour of things so fantastic that they need to be described with entirely new letters like Yuzz, Thnad, and Spazz. …Oh wait, “spaz” is as bad in England as “retard” was here, and both are now hate speech. Ol’ Ted would have renamed it “Plazz” or “Svazz” or something.
One of the other cancelled Seuss books was a gorgeous book full of watercolors he painted, very unlike his usual cartoon style. One page would have needed editing.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
I believe the mechanism underlying that generalization was that people trend leftward who haven’t had to work for a living yet (in school on loans) or whose only jobs have been entry-level jobs where they’re treated as fungible, replaceable components. When someone has to actually interact with the economy with agency, or find people relying on them to be responsible, they end up conservative because they have things at stake and have to game out their future choices in the world they find themselves in.
This theory suggests that something is massively altering the employment landscape, keeping Millennials in entry-level or fungible job positions longer than previous generations, or otherwise keeping them from being economically agentic.
I believe the silent killer of conservatism is young people not moving out of their parents’ homes. Taking out a mortgage on a home was considered a turning point in the American Dream, and even moving in with roommates to share costs was a Big Deal.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
It’s Christmas Eve, and over-the-air TV stations around the country are playing Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. Meanwhile, a thread on Reddit’s Movies sub is having an actual rational discussion of the film’s exploration of economics after the OP identifies it as socialist propaganda.
Of course, the OP is not alone. Ayn Rand herself is said to have identified IAWL as a vehicle for socialist thought, specifically a class war between unrepentant valueless rapacious businessmen versus class heroes of the working class, written by Communist sympathizers and socialists within the movie industry.
Or did she?
An article from The Atlas Society reveals she said nothing about IAWL, and despised the House Un-American Activities Committee as publicity-seeking partisans:
For the record, while Rand did testify at the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in 1947 as a Friendly Witness, she did so under subpoena. She seems to have considered the appearance a formality, and she scheduled her testimony to take place during a business trip, sandwiching her HUAC appearance between research for Atlas Shrugged and over a dozen interviews with journalists from major media outlets to discuss her own writing. The only movies that she discussed in front of the committee were The Song of Russia, which she considered such blatant Soviet propaganda that it was hardly worth mentioning, and The Best Years of Our Lives. The latter film she criticized because the banker, Al Stevenson, played by Frederic March, is praised for lending without collateral. It is interesting to think about Al Stevenson in relation to the fictional Eugene Lawson, one of Rand’s characters from Atlas Shrugged, whose humanitarianism bankrupted the Community National Bank in Wisconsin.
While Rand-haters like to claim that she took offense at the depiction of Mr. Potter, played by Lionel Barrymore, in It’s a Wonderful Life, there is no evidence that she was concerned for the reputation of the miserly banker, and it is difficult to believe that she would have defended him. On the contrary Potter bears a resemblance to Mayor Bascom of Rome, Wisconsin, a chiseler of Rand’s own creation, again from Atlas Shrugged, for whom she really did have contempt.
In any case, as an Objectivist-influenced thinker, it’s great for me to be able to point at It’s A Wonderful Life as an example of the paradox of Randian selfishness. It was selfish for George Bailey to save his brother from the pond at risk of his own life: he wanted a world where his brother was alive, and selfishly didn’t care if his parents lost both boys if he failed. He selfishly put off his honeymoon when the market crashed to save the family business he inherited.
In each case, his choices added the kind of irreplaceable value to the life he wanted, despite costing him his dreams of going to big places and making big things for big people to admire. If those big dreams were genuinely his values, he’d have worked for them with his whole heart instead; he’d have selfishly spent time and money to headhunt a like-minded soul to run the S&L, sell the business, and go to architect school next to Howard Roark.
I hope that each and every one of you have a merry Christmas, without resentments, without loss or pain, because I value each of you for daring to selfishly stand up for your highest values: truth, purpose, and communication between minds, with the intent to make the world you want.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
7mo ago
In the newspeak memetic calculus of the 2020’s, being mean implies someone with “a tough skin”, good coping skills, or good mental defenses won’t be harmed by someone else being mean to them. But of course, if someone hasn’t been harmed, “no harm, no foul”. Therefore, all “being mean” should become “violence” to make harm unavoidable: “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can truly hurt me.”
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
“Neurotypical” used to exclusively mean without neurological structural differences from the norm, ie, without autism, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury, and anything else identified as being physical, not chemical.
It was adopted by the bipolar community, among others, creating a neuro-atypical disability pride community which now includes every emotional disturbance and memetic misconfiguration, including the dysphorias and dysmorphias.
“Neurotypical” is now used as an insult for “people who don’t know what it’s like to be us.” It’s another power-critical term intended to make “normal” unutterable without a sense of guilt.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
I like the way you’re hottaking here.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
Adrenochrome.
I have heard exactly zero medical evidence that torturing children (physically or psychologically) causes their adrenal glands to produce a substance which reduces or reverses human aging, boosts cognition by at least twenty IQ points, while causing a chemical high better than any other drug.
I have seen exactly zero evidence that the political, economic, entertainment, and old money elites spend billions yearly on obtaining it from evil secret facilities on private islands (Epstein) and in corrupt countries (Ukraine) where kidnapped trafficked children are raped by elites for sexual rewards and blackmail material in the process of harvesting it.
It sounds like a new class war variation on old anti-semitic blood libels created to spark revolutions and pogroms, a toxic climate of ethnic warfare which culminated in the Holocaust.
It also sounds like a memetic trap for conspiracy theorists: secret knowledge, high detail, plausible motivations for those who don’t understand how real moneyed power could be so inhuman, and so on.
So no, I don’t believe adrenochrome exists. The stakes would be too high and someone with a conscience would have provided proof by this point.
I also sincerely hope it’s not true. It would be truly horrific if true, and would require a much tighter-lipped and powerful conspiracy than any we’ve ever seen exposed.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
I’ve just noticed that when the red tribe wants to rename something, it’s treated as pointless signaling or laughably poor gamesmanship, but when the blue tribe wants to rename something, all of the institutions of American public life get behind them. This asymmetry is one more reason Chthulu swims leftward.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
And I think most of that is his fault; that is no small feat.
He publicly went against the moral spiral consensus in several different ways, which nowadays consists of standing still whilst Cthulhu swims left.
I remember being confused about the emphasis on “pull” in Ayn Rand’s novels; was public opinion really such a divisive and powerful force in the 30’s-60’s? But I had grown up in the 80’s and 90’s, when pull was on the wane, or rather when it was somewhat balanced; it came roaring back in the 10’s with vengeance, and now I see how nothing big can be done without the moral approval of pull. And I realized just how privileged the 90’s were compared to the rest of history.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
4mo ago
· Edited 4mo ago
Baphomet Has Fallen
How much good faith is required for an American state government respecting a religion's symbols?
The Satanic Temple, specifically the Satanic Temple of Iowa, put a statue depicting the pagan idol Baphomet in the Iowa Capitol, following the letter of the law allowing religious symbols. Thing is, it's explicitly an atheistic (or rather "non-theistic") religion; they have as much belief in the reality of Baphomet as they do the Flying Spaghetti Monster (mHNAty). They use literary symbols and provocative symbols to promote science and promote humanist atheist goals of tolerance and justice. It was designed to provoke a response, and it has; a Christian broke it. Deseret News reports that:
Jason Benell, the president of the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers, described the “targeting” of the display as “encouraged by legislators.” He wrote in a news release, “This is unacceptable. When our leaders make it permissible to destroy religious — or non-religious — displays they find religiously objectionable, they are abdicating their responsibility to safeguard the freedom of expression of the citizens they represent.”
The state of Iowa finds itself in the position of avenging the rights of atheists to display a pagan idol they don't even believe in, which mocks people of genuine Christian faith with a dark symbol drawn from mythology.
Take that to its logical conclusion.
A Christian church could create a parallel object to be installed in the Iowa Capitol, a similar deliberately provocative anti-atheist symbol to be promoted as a sacred symbol of a pseudo-atheist "Church of the Human Condition" which exposes the failures and tragedies of the Enlightenment and promotes learning how to morally philosophize using the Jefferson Bible and select readings from Ayn Rand in after-school clubs. I can think of a few:
- A statue of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx in their best suits, French kissing atop a pile of human skulls
- A statue of Margaret Sanger and Madalyn Murray O'Hair standing back-to-back, dressed as Greek priestesses, each holding a knife in one hand and together holding the corpse of a Black baby
- The Invisible Pink Unicorn (possibly made of pink-glazed blown glass, in the style of My Little Pony) as the steed bearing the returning Jesus, depicted as a Super-Saiyan, His head and hair burning white, His eyes like a flame of fire, His feet like fine brass
- Or, if we want to avoid humanoid and animal statues entirely per the Third Commandment, an orrery (representing science) surrounded by gravestones bearing the names of Marx, Darwin, O'Hair, Sanger, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Hitchens, and other prominent atheists.
Desecrating any of these would bear the same fourth-degree criminal mischief charges, with up to a year in prison and a $2,560 fine, and exposure to lawsuits by the artists and owners of the symbols.
But aside from the turnabout, I'd like to remind that atheism is treated as a religion de facto by its adherents and proselytes, and de jure by the government in having Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment. Anyone who says it is not a religion must, by implication, accept that the broken Baphomet statue is only a violation of Freedom of Expression (under the same Amendment) so any cries of Christian hypocrisy at its destruction are inaccurate on their face due to the uneven parallel. Only by accepting that atheism is a religion can atheists claim a sacred right to offend Christians.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
11mo ago
Facts first:
-
Maxwell Ghislane, Epstein’s madame, was wealthy because her father paywalled science journals which had previously been free. It is widely believed that user MaxwellHill was her Reddit account, one of the earliest and most constant users.
-
Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz was a free info activist. He was in big legal trouble for using MIT’s fast Internet to freely download massive amounts of paywalled science journal archives. He died by hanging.
Theory:
- The Maxwells’ science journal empire would have been threatened if Swartz’ free information activism had spread to the student populace. She used intelligence service tactics to get close to the inner circle of Reddit admins and powermods, and applied psychological tactics to push him to commit suicide.
Even if not true, it’s interesting that both Swartz and Epstein were found dead, hanged. Miss White in the server room with the noose.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
11mo ago
First they reinvented original sin as white privilege, and the selling of indulgences as buying sustainable / environmental / electric. Now they’ve reinvented the mortification of the flesh.
I find this both scary and amusing. Maybe I’m just up too late, too tired.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
I still find it a hilarious etymological coincidence that, despite the total lack of causal connection, “based” ended up the opposite of “debased.”
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
Ironically, the backstory of the final trilogy could have been the first film of it and garnered critical acclaim! Call it Fall Of Skywalker.
Show the New Jedi Order in morning calisthenics, doing sparring and obstacle courses with lit sabers. The order is doing great, but Ben doesn’t like Luke’s strictness. Also, Luke is married to Mara Jade, former Emperor’s Hand and second Master of the Order with Luke.
Leia being ousted from the New Republic leadership when it comes to light she’s Vader’s daughter, over her protests she’s an Organa in her politics and her heart.
The alien philosopher Snoke tempting Ben to become a “Grey Jedi” and giving him a test: watch his uncle’s eyes for hate.
Leia finds out the media scoop was provided by a shadowy source, and tracking it down leads to proof of mass abductions and missing hyperfuel shipments.
Ben and Han have a huge argument about Snoke and Ben uses the Force to shove his dad. Han tells Luke the kid’s a bad seed, then storms off to do some smuggling to clear his head.
Leia finds proof of slavery of armies of stormtroopers. She learns a new fascist power has emerged in the underindustrialized sectors of the galaxy, promising an end of poverty: The First Order. She returns to Hosnian Prime to discover they’re already there, making a non-aggression treaty with the New Republic.
Ben is startled awake from a nightmare by Luke standing over him, green saber lit. Ben fights him to a standstill, fear and anger boiling from him, while Luke looks stone cold deadly and determined, almost inhuman. Luke’s other students join in the fight reluctantly, and Luke slices through Ben’s blue lightsaber to disarm him, but red-sabered figures emerge from the shadows: the Knights of Ren (as seen in TLJ). They slaughter Luke’s students and wife, and rescue Ben, taking him aboard Snoke’s ship.
Epilogue: Leia forms her militia after the New Republic refuses to hear her evidence of stormtroopers and Star Destroyers. Luke disappears to the planet of the first Jedi temple. Han shows up at Chewie’s door on Kashykk and asks if he’d like to do one more run, for old time’s sake.
Do it this way, and the third film isn’t even needed.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
An actual explanation for why, despite being largely set in the Los Angeles megalopolis, the Terminator franchise mostly shows white people surviving the AI apocalypse.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
1yr ago
· Edited 1yr ago
Today’s Wiki-walk:
After reading today’s XKCD (which is a real hoot, let me tell you), I scrolled down past where I usually scroll and found Randall’s links to other webcomics. I used to read Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics daily, so I clicked through to it, to procrastinate retiring to my slumber.
After today’s Dinosaur Comics (the plural is part of the title, similar to Psalms), I clicked the arrow for yesterday’s comic. It, too, was witty. Then I clicked the text for a random comic, and got one where the dinos discuss mathematicians always doing their best work before they’re 40. Both the Fields medal and the Abel prize were mentioned. This discussion was of interest to me, as I’m both over 40 and planning a paper for a discovery I’ve made in number theory.
Having never heard of the Abel medal, I Googled it. It’s a medal specifically designed to correct the oversight of the Nobels not including a prize for math. What caught my eye was the 2008 awardees, John G. Thompson and Jacques Tits.
John Thompson, the solver of the nilpotency of Frobenius kernels, and Jack Tits, the classifier of all irreducible buildings of spherical type. Also, the Tits alternative, the Tits building, the Tits cone (“of major importance is the fact that X is convex”), the Tits group, the Tits index, the Tits metric, and Tits systems.
I go to bed with a smile tonight thinking of Thompson and Tits.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9mo ago
The left is now experiencing what it felt like on the right when the left was demanding everyone parrot "Black Lives Matter" or else be branded a racist on social media forever. (Which ruined race relations, and became an incredible opportunity for actual racists and eugenics supporters.)
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9mo ago
The question Western/European civilization now needs to answer is at what point migrant camps / ghettos / unassimilated population centers / banlieues / HLMs become colonies in the colonial sense.
Native America was overtaken by European colonies, and the most famous was Plymouth, refugees who broke from England’s church but stayed tied to England politically.
One other thing scares me: France is a nuclear-armed power; imagine if the Conquistadors had found natives’ nukes and given them to the 17th century Vatican.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
11mo ago
My hypothesis remains unfalsified: the media reaction and government reaction was a tool for societal changes, not a tool for saving lives.
It was like those SF movies where some monster, disaster, or disease is ravaging the city, and a plucky scientist shows up saying the response has been all wrong. Only, instead of the authorities or the military listening and solving the problem in half an hour of screentime, they lock him out of the building and the media starts calling him an anti-science conspiracy theorist.
Ever since a police standoff with a homeless man ended in the prosecution of two policemen, I’ve Noticed that my hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico seems to be functioning as a testbed for leftist movements in coastal cities and inner cities across America. We seem to be a perverse Peoria.
Here’s the next one coming your way: Solomon Peña.
A thief and felon, who somehow managed to convince the right people to let him on the ballots, ran as a Republican to be state legislator in a heavily blue district. Predictably, he lost. He hired a literal conspiracy of people to shoot at Democrat office holders’ homes.
The national news media is calling him a MAGA candidate / MAGA Republican in every news article. I’ve heard from a local who know him and apparently he was always a little off his rocker, not a steady America-First patriot.
Police arrested him ONE DAY after the Bernalillo County Republican Party convention, which I attended along with hundreds of other GOP locals, mostly my parents’ peers. The MAGA wing was out in large numbers, and together we elected a new Treasurer and Vice-Chair. The Chairman retained his seat, the Chairman under whom Peña was allowed to become a candidate. The next day, Peña, who had been the prime suspect for a little while, was arrested.
I cannot overstate how much this one lone nut tarnished the local party in our semi-megalopolis, and I cannot overstate how non-representative he is of the people I met and caucused with. Peña is, in my estimation, one of a tiny minority of politically active Albuquerque Republicans who would even know how to contract with other criminals to shoot up politicians’ homes. I literally only had to Google “Albuquerque Republican” to find the NPR story I linked above.
This stinks of “sources and methods” in my opinion. That story will forever be linked with Albuquerque Republicans. It has been a rousing success for the left in New Mexico’s biggest city. So, I expect similar stories to start popping up in other big blue cities, probably with higher body counts. And it only takes one dead legislator to call MAGA an insurrection movement and make it legally stick. No Republican will be allowed to denounce Peña (or any future similar incidents) and still laud Trump without being called a liar on the denunciation by the media.
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