FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
"Reassessing the realities of the present situation" is a vague pronouncement, of the kind that is not your habit.
Vagueness is not my aim. Broadness is.
I've argued for years now that the Constitution is dead. By this, I mean that I personally do not expect the Constitution, as a codified legal document, to protect me in any meaningful way, either now or most especially in the future. This is not a novel perspective, but it seems to me that it is an increasingly common one, often tacitly and increasingly explicitly, among millions of my fellow tribesmen. Since we have no reasonable expectation that the Constitution will in fact protect us when we need protecting, we have no particular reason to accept appeals to Constitutionality when they are raised against actions we consider needful.
I used to be a fairly doctrinaire conservative. I certainly am not one any more. I am not particularly interested in "fiscal responsibility" as it is traditionally formulated, or in limited government as an end unto itself for reasons that might be summarized as "nature abhors a vacuum". I am increasingly skeptical of free markets, free trade, and economics as a discipline. I have neither interest in nor patience for wars abroad and large-scale military alliances. To me, the question "What has Conservatism conserved" was fatal to any allegiance I still held to the ideological pillars of my youth. Again, I do not perceive my political metamorphosis to be particularly unusual; much of my tribe has gone through the same.
I do not consider myself an American in any deep, meaningful sense. Largely, this is because I no longer perceive America as a coherent concept, much less a live, meaningful political entity. People appeal to a "Nation of Ideas", but the collective mind which contains those ideas is best modelled as a schizophrenic with dementia. I think America's political history is best understood as a succession of philosophical errors and misapprehensions which, once corrected by practical experiment, have resulted in the nation's accelerating dissolution. I do not believe that I share some core set of fundamental values in common with a supermajority of my fellow countrymen; in fact, I perceive abundant evidence that the opposite is the case. Ozy's magnum opus is valuable and should be read and understood because their views pretty clearly generalize to a significant portion of the population, Red and Blue alike. I am quite convinced that Red and Blue tribal values are mutually incompatible and incoherent, and I do not believe that this mutual incoherence is in any sense temporary or amenable to reconciliation. Blue Tribe values are both deeply alien and deeply repugnant to me, and I am entirely aware that large and growing numbers of them feel likewise about my values. I do not trust Blues to rule me fairly, and I do not expect them to trust rule by people like me, or to acquiesce willingly to it. I do not believe that coexistence is likely to work out well for anyone involved; our differences are irreconcilable, and we need a national divorce before our growing mutual hatred gives birth to large-scale tragedy.
When Crooks' bullet missed Trump's brainstem by an inch or less in Butler, PA, a significant portion of the American population experienced acute angst and disappointment. Likewise when Rittenhouse was acquitted. When Mangione murdered a law-abiding husband and father in cold blood, a significant portion of the American population experienced joy and elation. Likewise when Antifa publicly celebrated the cold-blooded murder of Aaron Danielson in Portland, as evidenced by the glazing journalists provided to his murderer. We are more than a decade past the start of our most recent wave of widespread, organized political violence condoned and facilitated by significant portions of our institutions and local, state and federal governments. Calls for the murder of Elon Musk are frequent and widespread.
I appreciate that much of the above is bitter and immoderate. It seems evident to me that our present situation is likewise bitter and immoderate. People who have not internalized that reality are not, I think, paying sufficient attention to what has been happening in the world around them. Appeals to "freedom" and "America" are not going to cut it, and I would never under any circumstances be so foolish as to deploy them in an attempt to persuade my outgroup. They are, at this point, a punchline, like Freeze Peach.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
They are not, in my case at least. I try to upvote people I debate with to counteract the downvote swarm, but it is a losing battle.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Conservatives are now pushing for random passport/citizenship spot checks as you’re walking down the street, that’s what “freedom” and america means to you?
Do you believe that Conservatism is a live political force? Do you believe America is a live political entity? The Constitution? In what meaningful sense would any of these be true?
I think you perhaps should consider taking a few steps back and reassessing the realities of the present situation.
Yeah I just don’t think these petty deportations are good politics though.
What constitutes "Good Politics" is indeed the core of the disagreement here. You and others arguing for accepting the illegals appear to believe that Reds should accept large-scale, chronic violation of the law as a fiat accompli, because what can we do about it, after all?
One thing we could do about it would be to, as Blues have a long history of doing, simply stop pretending that laws mean anything when they contradict what we perceive to be desirable or necessary outcomes. And then you and others who make arguments similar to the above can offer your "sure what they did was grossly illegal, but it's done and it'd be far too much effort to fix" arguments to the Blues instead, and see how receptive they are.
I understand that you might not think this sounds like a good idea. What I'm curious about is why specifically it would not be a good idea.
Christians, in general society, promote social conservatism, and God - who is love - is not compatible with social conservatism.
I can readily agree that under a definition of "Christian" that considers social conservatism disqualifying, most Christians are not actually Christian. Likewise, under the definition of Christianity employed by the Westborough Baptist Church, only themselves and those who agree with them are the true followers of Christ. This is an obvious feature of arbitrary, bespoke definitions, which is why most people who wish to communicate clearly try to avoid them.
I do wonder, though: have you ever interacted with a serious addict? Suppose a meth junkie asks you for help securing more meth so that they can get very high. Under your definition of Christianity, what is the properly Christian response? What is the proper Christian response to a heroin addict asking to use your bathroom to shoot up?
Obviously Scardina; unless Phillips also refused to bake a cake for alcoholics, murderers, adulators, liars, thieves, and all of the other sins, which are seen as equally bad as homosexuality, then he is judging and condemning based on his own preferences and not because of his religion, which is un-Christian.
Suppose, hypothetically, that Phillips had not refused to sell a cake to a trans person, but rather had refused to customize a cake to celebrate transition itself, in the same way that he would refuse to customize a cake themed to celebrate acts of alcoholism, murder, adultery, deceit, theft, or any other sin. Suppose designing artwork whose message was celebration of sinful behavior in general was what he was objecting to, and that Scardina's request was not to buy a cake generally, but to commission exactly this sort of sin-celebratory confectionary. In this hypothetical scenario, would your assessment of either Phillips' or Scardina's actions change?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
This is an unflattering paraphrase of what the author purports to be a progressive position. It is not a good example of progressive attitudes toward Christians, because it was not written by a progressive. I find it a useful text to encapsulate what I perceive to be a common attitude among Progressives, but if you want to assert that this attitude really is widespread among progressives, you need to provide actual examples of the behavior, not the mocking paraphrase.
What’s the limiting principle here?
What was the limiting principle under the previous regime? "Whatever we can get away with"? Why is a more rigorous standard necessary now, all of a sudden?
My preferred end-state here is the tribes undergo a soft divorce and our system devolves into robust federalism, where we stop trying to rule each other and simply try to leave each other alone. I'm not looking for a restoration of our previous system because I do not believe that such a restoration is possible. I'm open to arguments that my assessment of the situation is wrong and that actually we've been living under robust rule-of-law all along, and I was deceived to believe otherwise, but my expectation is that I can win that argument pretty easily by pointing to a whole bunch of things that have pretty clearly happened. Absent a developed argument as to why all of the many, many previous times where Blue Tribe ignored black-letter law or court decisions they found inconvenient were different, actually, "but the judge said so" just isn't an argument I find persuasive especially in an area where the law has been chronically ignored for decades.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Your definition was "a William is someone who calls himself William". You made no mention previously of frivolity invalidating self-assigned Williamosity. You make no mention here of what separates frivolous self-designations from serious ones. You seem to think that changing the name back and forth to secure a position in the front of a line would be illegitimate, but you've offered no justification for why that particular arbitrary change is the lone illegitimate one, nor a list of what the other exceptions might be, much less a general method for discerning legitimate changes from illegitimate ones.
Would you agree that "people are called William if they want to be called William" appears to be a definition that doesn't actually work, given that it appears very easy to abuse without adding an unspecified number of additional caveats?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
A teacher lines students up to use the water fountain:
"Line up by reverse alphabetical order this time. ...Aaron, it's reverse alphabetical order, you should be at the back." "I've decided that I'm called William, actually."
What should the teacher do?
Again, "people are called William if they want to be called William" is likewise not a problem if and only if no action or statement ever depends on or is connected to this definition in any way. When we try to actually do things with this information, allowing the data to be completely arbitrary breaks whatever we try to use it for. We do not, in fact, generally allow people to arbitrarily change their own names; to the extent that we allow name changes, we do so through legible processes, because names are important in a lot of ways.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
As I pointed out to you elsewhere, this is true if and only if "a woman is anyone who calls herself a woman" is the only statement about "woman" that you will ever use, with no connection to any other statement or issue allowed, ever.
This sort of hermetic formulation is not what people generally expect from a definition, and pretending otherwise makes it difficult to take you seriously. And this is why people with more at stake than you hem and haw and rely on squid ink when asked in the real world: they can't just retreat to forum anonymity when asked to apply or extend their definition in even the simplest ways.
For the same reason that I don't think we should have laws requiring Church attendance. Christianity's first-order ends cannot be achieved by coercion. Christian charity is not enforced by law; charity enforced by law is not meaningfully Christian. See my post here for more elaboration of the argument.
What would the argument in favor be?
We had laws that imposed significant restrictions on immigration. People who disagreed with those laws could have abided by them until such time as they could change them. Instead, they organized at a national level to simply ignore them. What you are seeing now is the destructive downstream effects of that decades-long policy.
I stopped believing in naive "rule of law" some time ago, and for what seem to me to be solid, objective reasons. I fundamentally do not believe that we have been operating in an environment of rigorous rule of law, which Trump is now violating; rather, it seems to me that Trump is simply playing the game the way it has been played for decades now.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
I could see arguments either way, but I lean pretty hard toward "no".
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
These seem like reasonable definitions.
I know neither the Christians you've met in your life, nor the Progressives. Maybe the Christians were really awful, and the Progressives really saintly. I am curious as to how you see the Progressives "loving the Lord their God with all their heart and with all their soul and with all their mind"; what does that mean to a non-Christian observing non-Christians? Likewise "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
My suspicion, perhaps unfounded, is that you are rounding these principles to "is a progressive". Perhaps I'm wrong, and there's more to it.
Do you believe your experience generalizes? Moving beyond Christians and Progressives you've personally met, I presume you'd agree that we can observe Christians and Progressives in society generally, and identify notable examples. When drawing from a reference class that broad, we ought to see extremes both ways. I can certainly find cases of Christians interacting with Progressives where the Progressives are acting in a significantly more Christian fashion than the Christians. Would you agree that there are identifiable, individual cases of Christians interacting with Progressives where the Christians do in fact seem more Christian than the Progressives?
Take the cake shop guy versus the trans activist; does it seem to you that Phillips was acting in a more Christian fashion, or Scardina?
Would you agree that the simplest, most obvious solution to the wage gap and indeed every other politically significant, statistically-measured gender gap in existence is for all men to say they are women?
That is to say, "whoever says they are a woman is a woman" is indeed simple, in atomic isolation. It is also completely incoherent with, at a minimum, the entire edifice of Feminism. When people say that the progressive position is not simple, they do not mean that the definitions offered have too many words, but rather that the position is evidently incoherent, and that this incoherent state is only maintainable in a safe space and with an ocean of squid ink.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Is your argument that it is obvious that Biden was the one who signed the order? If so, I would disagree.
Is your argument that it is obvious that regardless of who signed the order, Biden was mentally competent enough that he clearly understood and approved of the orders being issued in his name? If so, I would certainly disagree, given that we appear to have at least one observed case where Biden had no awareness of one of his own executive orders.
Is your argument that it doesn't matter? If so, I strongly disagree. I am not willing to accept "presidential power" being wielded by unknown staffers on behalf of a mentally-vacant president. That would seem to be straightforward fraud. It is true that I probably cannot prove that this is what happened in this case, but it is at the least a live possibility, and forcing the issue seems like a good way to actually address the extremely large and extremely damaging conspiracy to conceal Biden's incapacity.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Every progressive I have met in my life has espoused the tenets of Christianity more than the sum total of Christians I have known in my life.
What are the tenets of Christianity, as you understand them?
I can think in my 20+ years of living two Christians that met the minimum definition of a Christian, while I can think of plenty of atheist progressives who have gone beyond the minimum.
What is the "minimum definition of Christianity", in your view?
Even granting the framing that progressives are anti-Christian and MAGA are bad Christians, I'm not sure where that implies that Christians shouldn't challenge MAGA bad Christianity, attempt to drag it towards better Christianity, or even simply warn Christians against imitating MAGA?
What's your evidence that they aren't doing any or all of these three things?
Christians can be in a tactical alliance with MAGA while also needing to maintain a sense of why MAGA is bad and they must not become MAGA.
The chain of inference here seems quite long. Is Musk MAGA? When he claimed that massive "skilled" immigration was a good thing and got immediately hammered by the grassroots, were the people hammering him rejecting MAGA? Is MAGA bad, and if so, why?
From the inside, the proper way for Christianity to interact with politics is a very interesting question. Let's presume that "MAGA" stands for right-wing politics not explicitly guided by Christian principles; that seems to be your general intent here, though if you'd disagree I invite you to offer a more fitting definition.
Christianity tried right-wing politics explicitly guided by Christian principles during the Bush administration, and it seems to me the result was disaster, even from a Christian perspective. The reasons for this disaster seem pretty straightforward to me: first-order Christian ends can't really be secured by Government power, second-order Christian ends mostly can't be secured without social consensus, and the Christians (along with everyone else, for the most part) were sufficiently blind to the realities of their situation that prudence in the exercise of power never materialized, and their political capital was entirely wasted.
As I see it, Christianity's interaction with MAGA has abandoned pursuit of first- and second-order Christian ends through the exercise of Government power, and are aiming exclusively for prudent exercise of power. That is, Christians are spending their political capital in an attempt to prevent rule by people who hate them, to secure some modicum of political and social stability, and to attempt to preserve and maintain peace and plenty. The hope is that if prudent exercise of power can be obtained, first- and second-order Christian ends can be pursued outside the arena of political power, as individuals and as churches.
Let's leave aside MAGA for the moment. What does "Challenge Bad Christianity" look like? To me, it seems like this involves preventing people from pushing non-Christian values and positions while claiming the mantle of "Christianity". An obvious example would be Pope Francis's various shenanigans. But neither Musk nor Trump are making any credible claim to be Christian, nor indeed any claim to speak for Christians. Both are very clearly pagans, and never made any notable attempt to claim otherwise. And indeed, this is how most Pro-Trump Christian discourse has gone: Trump is compared to Nebuchadnezzar, say, a pagan monarch with no claim to righteousness who can nonetheless serve as God's instrument. There hasn't been nearly as much discourse on Musk, but I'd expect it to evolve in a similar fashion.
I see no evidence that Christians have endorsed the paganism of either Musk or Trump. What I see is Christians accepting the evident reality: we no longer have the power to impose our values through law, even were it desirable to do so, and we no longer have the consensus necessary to impose our values on society, even were it desirable to do so. We cannot compel, but can only attempt to persuade, and those unwilling to be persuaded will do what seems right in their own eyes. Our fight now is centered on what Christianity actually is within itself, not on how best to impose Christian values and rules on the pagans without. It seems to me that people arguing for a Christian broadside against Musk's or Trump's paganism come mainly in one of two varieties: Christians who haven't grasped the scale of the change in our society and of Christianity's position in it, and non-Christians who for reasons of mental habit or momentary expedience prefer the Christianity of the past to the Christianity of the present. Neither, it seems to me, really has a coherent argument here.
If people actually want Christians to start policing non-Christians again, they should present a general case for when and why this is desirable, and also for why the desirability of such policing was not evident in the past. Absent such a case, it is difficult to take their arguments seriously. "Family Values" as a going concern died with the introduction of ubiquitous internet porn; people appealing to it now as though it were a live political entity are either deeply confused or lying.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Just wanted to say that I appreciate the offering of actual data on a question of fact.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
There is no evidence that he was looking for stuff to steal, and to my knowledge no evidence that he had stolen in the past. The "citizen's arrest" was very clearly illegal, resisting it was a reasonable response, and shooting him for resisting was not self defense and was in fact murder.
It would have been trivial for the men involved to call the police and follow him at a distance if necessary. By chasing him while brandishing firearms, they gave him reasonable fear for his life and invalidated any claim of their own to self-defense in the ensuing altercation.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
And even if they were, they don't have some magically independent power to conjure life-screwing facts out of thin air.
Kavanaugh was an example of life-ruining facts literally being conjured out of thin air. They didn't succeed, but that was due to notable external factors.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
This is a pretty good example of a low-effort "boo outgroup" post. From the rules:
There are literally millions of people on either side of every major conflict, and finding that one of them is doing something wrong or thoughtless proves nothing and adds nothing to the conversation. We want to engage with the best ideas on either side of any issue, not the worst.
Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible. General groups include things like gun rights activists, pro-choice groups, and environmentalists. Specific groups include things like The NRA, Planned Parenthood, and the Sierra Club. Posting about general groups is often not falsifiable, and can lead to straw man arguments and non-representative samples.
I think I have heard the name "Lomez" before. I have no idea who they are, or why they are a good representative for the "Right Wing" generally, or why this meme tweet is indicative of "Right Wing Life Advice". I think it's probably possible to describe a coherent category of "Right Wing Life Advice" and describe central examples of that category; I do not think "not going to college, working at the nail factory, marrying an 170 pound woman, dumpster diving for yogurt, and not getting vaccinated" would be a reasonable summation of that category, but if that's the argument, you should put some effort into proactively providing evidence to support it.
...and due to my "e" key being broken, @self_made_human beat me to it. Consider his warning seconded.
I don't particularly want you to. I am not writing the above as a way to say "others should think as I do". I am writing it to point out what I see actually happening in the real world, and to hopefully offer some building-blocks toward insight as to why it is happening. Unlike Kulak, I would strongly prefer moderation to win, for us to find a way to extend the peace and plenty, to keep the Belle Epoch running as long as we can. And even if it does not win, I am committed, at some personal cost, to rejecting motorcycle-warlord-ism and all its works.
In order for that to have any chance at all of happening, Moderates need to understand the fact that moderation is currently losing, and put together some workable model of why and what to do about it. Ideally this would happen before something breaks that none of us can fix and we can't actually do without.
I am glad that you are an ocean away, in a place where perhaps moderation fairs better. You have always come across as a fundamentally-decent person, and I hope your life remains a pleasant one.
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