Eetan
1yr ago
Imagine finding out the legitimacy of America's and Israel's moral narratives rested on fewer dead bodies than America's interventions against Iraq or Vietnam.
Not anymore - WW2 as whole is fading into background.
See, for example, tally of holocaust movies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Holocaust_films
and you will see that peak holocaust interest was in late 90's- early 00's.
"moral legitimacy" of today's US+allies is based on democracy* and human rights, especially black and LGBTQ+ rights.
US embassies everywhere are flying rainbow flags, not Israeli flags. Big multinational corporations are declaring "Black lives matter", not "Jewish lives matter".
*Unlike Cold War One, "freedom" faded into background too. When was the last time US was talking about "free world", when was the last time US president was called "leader of the free world"?
The Holocaust wasn't even begun until '42, America and Britain justify their war with events that happened after they declared...
This is post war justification, way post war. In the actual war time, Nazi propaganda was nothing than "JOO JOO JOO", while Allied (and Soviet) was absolutely silent about Jews.
Eetan
1yr ago
I remember going to a panel about virology and biology as it relates to fiction at a comic convention one year. One of the panelists, who studied at ASU, talked about the allergy thing and Red Queen Syndrome(?), and how one of their colleagues, who suffered from a peanut allergy, had the ballsy idea to fly to some African country and intentionally contract a hookworm(!). It actually worked, and they could eat a peanut butter sandwich without suffering an allergic shock.
But then, I don't suppose we could ever think of trying to treat allergic and autoimmune conditions by having people deliberately infect themselves with something their immune systems can focus on.
Why not? Treatment of syphilis by deliberately induced malaria used to be a thing. It worked.
Eetan
1yr ago
Genocide, as defined by international law, does not have to involve killing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Forcible conversion of religious group or assimilation of national group is genocide, even when no one dies in the process.
(the question is what counts as "national, ethnical, racial or religious group", case law is scarce)
Eetan
1yr ago
By the way, Locklin asserts, fairly or not
Scott Locklin is always worth to read, add his blog to your links, if it already isn't there.
https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/
OFC, like everyone, he has major blind spots (in his case it is, amusingly, Russia - he goes full on "big manly Russkies are REAL MEN who ride bears while Americans are gay, Russia is the future, what is left of real American men should move there ASAP")
in a century, pretty much nobody gave a rat's ass about cryopreserving people at scale (like me, EY is very angry about it).
Failure of cryonics to take up is not due to civilizational failure, it is fault of cryonicists themselves.
These nerds have no idea about marketing and PR and struggle to sell cryonics to anyone than (minuscule number of) other nerds, failing to persuade even their own families.
Imagine if they targeted at first Hollywood celebrities and oligarch types, people with giant piles of cash and even bigger ego, people who do not doubt even for a moment they deserve to live forever.
Imagine alternate world, where every new rich type is showing up at fancy parties:
"Yes, this is my keychain. Here, key of mountain house in Alps, here key of seaside house on Azure Coast, here, key of my Lamborghini. And this metal tag? This means I get to live forever, while you will die and rot like dogs."
In this world, cryonics will be major political issue.
"Why should only the millionaires live forever? Cryonics is human right! Tax the rich to freeze all!"
"Shut up, commie! Why should hard working tax payers pay for eternal life of lazy losers like you?"
Eetan
1yr ago
Diversity of opinion?
Be careful what you wish for.
This place was not exactly friendly to something as mainstream and sane as holocaust revisionism, would you really welcome here unironic believers in gnomes, fairies, vampires and lizard people?
but there's only so much we can do to foster that, unfortunately.
Foster that? It would be easy - just promote this site in obscure corners of the web as place where all opinions are respected and given fair hearing, and you will be surprised who will come.
Eetan
1yr ago
Interesting, to me it seems that the conflict is now not between so called "left/right" but as Steve Bannon said years ago it is between populists (be it national or socialist) and for lack of better word the "technocrats" who want to rule through "expertise" of bureaucratic apparatus.
Big if true, and not good for the populist side.
What is populism and why it has a bad name?
Populism is politics without theory.
Imagine prototype of pure populism - someone like this guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Poujade
Someone who never wrote or read any books and does not pretend to, someone who does not even care enough to found some "Poujadist instute" and commission some intellectuals to write theory of scientific Poujadism. If you are an intellectual, seeing someone like this will understandably make you furious.
This is the reason why populist movements crash and burn or slowly fizzle out, but never achieve anything lasting, because politics without theory is ultimately like travel without destination.
Eetan
1yr ago
F is, I think, also something most of them would only begrudgingly accept. However, the issue with this is that it’s basically merely the local version of NATO, but overseen by Russians. If our position today is that this would be unacceptable and violates our political norms, we’d also have to say that it was not acceptable for the Americans to maintain hegemony over Western European states and station their military units and nuclear weapons on their soil. (I’ll make an expectation for West Germany, as it was a defeated enemy and no peace treaty was signed.) Alternatively, one can make an argument that “but it’s different when the Americans do it, the Russians have always been Mongoloid Ugric-Turkic savages”, but I don’t know how many normies would be willing to say this unironically.
Normie would just say: Look at the difference in living standards and quality of life between American and Soviet sphere. Yay NATO, boo USSR.
Eetan
1yr ago
But are they neurotic? Wracked by climate fears and anti-racist remorse? Invested into the Culture War, frothing at the mouth about Beijing Biden or Trump, Pizzagate and COVID?
The Orthodox life might look idyllic from the outside, but it is not spared angst and trauma, angst that might look silly to the outsiders, but is deadly serious for the insiders.
for example: "Is the water I was drinking all my life really, really kosher? What if I accidentally swallowed some tiny bug?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/nyregion/the-waters-fine-but-is-it-kosher.html
https://gothamist.com/food/nycs-tap-water-clean-but-filled-with-crustaceans
Eetan
1yr ago
Anti-conspiratorial thinking relies on the assumption, that if there was a conspiracy, we'd see solid evidence of it. That assumption is unfounded. The hierarchical structure of most human organizations means access to information is not equally distributed, which allow any potential conspirator to operate undetected, or at the very least, with plausible deniability.
Best answer to these "but someone would talk" debunking talking point is introduction into some actually existent historical conspiracies well documented by mainstream history, some of them very large and long lasting, that managed to stay secret and achieve their purpose.
Is it really so implausible, Mr. Skeptic, that important and influential secret conspiracies are active now, in this time and place?
Another issue is a sort of mental block, that people who grew up in high-trust societies have. To paraphrese Hlynka from the other thread: sure, our government can be corrupt, but it's corrupt in benign ways.
Typical example is Greg Cochran. Very smart guy, but devoted old school flag - bald eagle - apple pie patriot with all blind spots you can expect. For someone like this, idea that his beloved Eagleland
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Eagleland
was infiltrated and controlled by blackmail is simply unacceptable.
See in this thread Cochran cavalierly (but uneasily) dismissing the whole Epstein thing with barrage of lame jokes (Evidence please. No, this is not evidence! Not this! Not this! Not this either!)
https://twitter.com/gcochran99/status/1548817244599099392
(of course, YMMV whether this hot take by the great basilisk man himself in this thread is better: "Pedophile mafia in control, trust the plan!")
Eetan
1yr ago
The transgender movement is, at heart, a radical leftist ideology, and so they work to identify enemies, isolate and smear them, promising to be tolerant, and then smashing them.
As you said.
Some other people might say that transgender movement is radical capitalist ideology financed by billionaires and big pharma that works to achive final frontier of commodification - turning even your own body into consumer product of choice.
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Pritzker_family
In capitalism, I can choose my food, my clothing, my place of dwelling, my job, my hobbies etc... why cannot I pick and select my gender identity?
YMMV.
edit: link fixed
Eetan
1yr ago
"The collapse of WTC 7 is the first known instance of a tall building brought down primarily by uncontrolled fires."
What am I supposed to compare it to if it's a unique event?
This lesser known case of high rise collapsing in fire.
It took decades of neglect (at the time, it was derelict inhabited by squatters) and ninety minutes of whole building burning like torch, but it finally went down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edif%C3%ADcio_Wilton_Paes_de_Almeida
Here is AFAIK the only (shitty cell phone) video of this event.
Eetan
1yr ago
I have to confess, a general philosophy of 'If the world is not fair and just, we can at least make it beautiful' is one that has a good amount of appeal.
This is one of the appeals of "retvrn" neo-feudalist and neo-reactionary thought.
"If we have to lick the boot for our whole life, why not make it beautiful golden, bejeweled and embroidered nobleman's boot instead of ugly black capitalist's or comissar's one?"
Eetan
1yr ago
I look forward to the Icelandic adaptation of Roots.
Story of Irish slave sold to Vikings 1000 years ago, and story of modern Icelander who found from his DNA test he is of Irish descent and went to search for his home village in Ireland?
Could be good.
Eetan
1yr ago
Why are you against banning or restricting unhealthy food?
Idealistic reason:
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/a0/a0278d6ebd9591c39e398b65ed9c5dd9d7d6ea7686578f1088d41908c6b92ca4.jpg
Pragmatic reson: Who gets to decide what food is "unhealthy"? You can bet it will not be you.
Once the mechanism for restricting and banning "for your good" starts rolling, it will not stop at foods you do not like. I am sure there are many scientific studies that prove your favorite food causes cancer, impotence and baldness.
Remember when deplatforming happened only to few terrorist, nazis, and other bad hombres?
Eetan
1yr ago
That's a contradiction that just exposes classical liberalism as self-defeating.
If:
you believe that civil liberties are intrinsically valuable
and you are an individualist
but individualism loses the culture war and loses political power to groups that cooperate to achieve power
and losing in turn compromises the civil liberties you care about
If by "individualist" you mean complete loner who cannot work with and stand anyone else, you are right. There are such people, but they are few in number and do not tend to care about politics.
Actual classical liberals were, in their time, succesfully organizing on large scale and did not saw it as compromising of their principles.
Eetan
1yr ago
How do wokes/social constructionists/etc reconcile their views with the actual state of scientific knowledge or even basic logic?
Simply and effectively: they deny it.
Just like literal six days creationists see geology and paleontology as satanic lie, wokes see genetics and evolutionary science as racist lie.
They know nothing about "actual state of scientific knowledge" and proudly refuse to learn anything it - why waste your time with some fascist garbage?
Try to show genetic data, IQ tables and bell curve graphs in any woke place and see how fast you get banned, regardless how many impeccable scientific citations your stuff gets.
Eetan
1yr ago
More than this, despite these people being very intent on portraying themselves as secular, scientific people, their viewpoints clearly are in conflict with any kind of scientific understanding
These were atheists of the noughties, breed nearly extinct by now.
Modern wokes see science and secularism as parts of white system of oppression and do not appreciate them in the slightest. The wokes love religions and traditions of BIPOC, they reject white oppressive religions and traditions.
Your arguments about social utility of religion were said many times before
https://i.imgur.com/v5zUuAl.jpg
and might persuade rationalist atheist (especially atheist with big house and portfolio), but would not impress the woke.
Eetan
1yr ago
Also - why are you flipping first names and surnames? What is that all about?
previous poster is Hungarian? ;-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_names#Hungarian_surnames
Eetan
1yr ago
One more comment on this woke thread. This is attempt to steelman the woke mindset, attempt to explain by analogy how "the woke" feel about whites and whiteness.
Imagine country controlled by mafia, country where mafia families own disproportionate share of wealth and power.
How would non-mafiosi feel about the mafia?
There are mafiosi born and raised in mafia. These are bad hombres, and few mafia victims are willing to contemplate whether it is really their fault.
There are "mafia adjacent" people, who hang around mafiosi and try to behave like them. These are also highly sus people.
There are mafiosi who were not born into mafia, but joined it willingly. These are the worst people around.
There are also "penitents", mafiosi who renounced the mafia and fight against the mafia system. They are not bad people, but they have to understand they will not be ever as trusted as someone who was never in mafia.
(There are also mafiosi who claim to be victims. "No one was as oppressed as us! Our family was nearly wiped out by other families! Why you cannot feel our pain?" These are justifiably viewed by real mafia victims as the most revolting kind of mafia ever.)
Eetan
1yr ago
I essentially see everyone in the US as someone I can't stand or as an ideological enemy to some degree
If you feel that America is hopelessly polarized, if you feel that all Americans are living and breathing only politics, it might be only your "bubble" you are living in.
Remember, 40-50% of eligible American voters steadily do not even bother to register and vote. Do you hate them too? Are they also your enemies?
but find the infrastructure of the US as the most hospitable place for me to live, long term, for practical reasons.
Can you be more concrete what "infrastructure" you mean? The world is big place, bigger than you imagine, what specific American thing is there you cannot find anywhere else?
Eetan
1yr ago
As a footnote, even though Warren now plays it off as just a little family story, it was something that she LARPed hard enough that she was publishing recipes in Native American cookbooks. There's a pretty big disconnect between living it in that peculiar fashion while also saying that it's not a big deal.
For someone who was working on their identity so hard, it made no sense to apologize and beg for forgiveness that will never come, she knows the rules better than all of us together.
She should just double down and say: "I was taught my Native identity by my grandma who was taught by her grandma, and I trust living experience of my ancestors over any "genes" "DNA" or similar whiteman "scientific" mumbo jumbo."
Eetan
1yr ago
Should I not rejoice at this dehumanization being punished? They need a reality check, even if they don't deserve the full brunt of economic consequences of AI.
Spinners and weavers 250 years ago did not deserved what happened to them.
These charming people people you cited, if your quotes are representative of their mindset and attitude, deserve everything that will happed to them.
(objectively, having to go back to jobs they did few years ago before they learned that drawing robot pirate Harry Potter fucking werevolf ninja Darth Vader in Japanese schoolgirl uniform is good gig)
Eetan
1yr ago
I for one think that a serious pivot towards New Cold War politics could very likely starve out social issues of political oxygen, starting at the higher echelons of US politics, and then cascading back down the levels until things like immigration, woke politics, etc. lose their salience.
I think that a serious pivot New Cold War will give big boost to the social issues. As Russia and China position themselves against wokeness and LGBTQ, Western bloc will turn them to the max to show the fascist Russians and Chinese. Anyone standing against wokeness would be seen as Communists and Communist sympathizers were seen in the 1950's.
"You are not gay or transgender yet? Are you a real patriot? Are you Russian agent or Chinese spy?"
Eetan
1yr ago
Why is Alex Jones the one getting slapped with a trillion dollar bill?
Why indeed are they picking on poor Alex? Good question with several possible answers.
1/ Normie answer: This is incorruptible justice system of the most free country at work. Justice is served, mission accomplished.
2/ Conspirational answer A: TPTB are afraid of Alex Jones and want to silence him because he is speaking the truth. They chose this convoluted way, instead of, for example, sudden accident or heart attack, to frighten and intimidate all brave truth seeking dissidents.
3/ Conspirational answer B: Alex Jones was doing his work - shitcoating and derailing people who are asking questions with barrage of nonsense, first, after 9/11 from the "left", now from the "right" - excellently and is going to be promoted further. For this purpose, it is necessary burnish his dissident credentials by publicly persecuting him and turning him into martyr, ideally in such way that will not harm him in the slightest.
If we are of conspirational, tinfoil hat mindset, how to find out whether A or B is true?
We will see whether Alex Jones will be indeed silenced, whether he will be completely ruined by the judgement and end homeless on the street, or whether he will continue broadcasting louder than ever before. his miraculous soy pill business will prosper as before and his lifestyle and living standards will not diminish.
Have patience.
This is the official story - bright young white woman ousmarting bunch of old crusty white men. If Elizabeth Holmes suddenly discovered she is person of color, she would be the perfect heroine for our time.
For more tinfoil hatty take on this event, check this.
https://thenakedhedgie.com/2021/10/02/the-theranos-scandal-the-real-story-1-3/
https://mmabeuf.medium.com/reconsidering-some-things-i-wrote-about-theranos-last-year-cb9f32b833df
More options
Context Copy link