FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Nope. Previous warning in the mod log for this same issue. Banned for a day, and the bans will rapidly escalate if you continue to communicate in this fashion.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
And this cuts both ways, as Bruen and Heller have demonstrated.
Forget our militaries , we are culturally unable to actually fight , and the Russian propaganda machine will have a field day destroying our democracies.
These sound like very serious problems. I would be in favor of trying to cooperate with Europe in trying to fix them, if Europe hadn't convinced me that they are implacably dedicated to the destruction of my society and my values. Given that they have done that, why should my tax dollars, the attention of my politicians, and the lives of my fellow countrymen go to propping up a system whose agents absolutely would see me persecuted by the full power of the state for exercising what I perceive to be core human rights of conscience and liberty?
We are able to fight, and we are not helpless in the face of foreign propaganda, or domestic propaganda for that matter. Maybe you should have done things differently somewhere along the line, if this is where your choices have led you? If you have nothing to offer Red Tribe but scorn, why should Red Tribe cooperate with you?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
And also control of the legislature and the courts doesn't count for much if laws and judgements can simply be ignored. Illegal immigration was always illegal. The federal government spent at least dozens of billions of dollars directly supporting and subsidizing violations of the law. Ditto for drug laws and many laws protecting the ownership of firearms and practice of Christianity. Ditto for Bruen and Heller and any other decisions Blue Tribe doesn't like.
Republicans could easily have looked for a solution that favored the power of the legislative branch (where they have a structural advantage) or the courts (where they'll soon have an incumbency advantage.) Instead, they gave the power to the presidency? Seriously?
We pass Federal laws and secure Supreme Court decisions, and Blue Tribe state governments, circuit courts, and large portions of the federal bureaucracy simply ignore them. Immigration and Guns are two issues where this pattern is more or less undeniable with a history stretching back decades; recently, we were surprised to learn that basic law enforcement was one of these as well. This has actually been a long-running conversation here on a number of threads, and is the reason why Red Tribe is currently doing what we're doing: We've lost faith in process as an impartial arbiter of outcomes, because we have, as a tribe, caught on to how "Manipulation of Procedural Outcomes" works.
This part I agree with. That's why I'm so confused: why are the republicans giving the democrats the ammunition they need to win the divorce?
We don't think the allocation of Ammunition works the way you seem to think it does. If you have five bullets and I have no bullets, and I pull a lever that gives both of us five bullets. there's a sense in which I'm "giving you more ammunition", but that doesn't make pulling it an obviously bad idea.
We already know that Blue Tribe ignores any law it doesn't like, and we already know that Blue Tribe is entirely willing to abuse power against us in lawless ways without significant consequence. Either we get to exercise meaningful power too, or the power should be denied totally. This is us attempting to exercise meaningful power. When Progressives get the Presidency again, we'll work on the "ignoring laws we don't like part". If it is not, in fact, possible for us to use power the way Blue Tribe does, we need to know that. If it is not, in fact, possible for us to ignore laws the way Blue Tribe does, we need to know that as well. We need legibility more than anything, and the current strategy does a good job of producing it, in my view.
In any case, the cumulative effect of this back-and-forth wrenching will not, I think, be a net increase in state capacity and control.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Prayer doesn't seem to me to be a necessary component. As I understand it, what is under discussion here is whether there should be some things where simply being silently present as a visible symbol of opposition should not be allowed, because it constitutes, in your words, "influence/harassment" of the people engaging in the activity. I'm asking which Red Tribe things are sufficiently sacred that when we do them, those who disagree need to keep that disagreement strictly invisible within a protected zone since expressing it there would be "influence/harassment".
In the US, of course, we actually tried a bipartisan solution to this: protest at Abortion Clinics and places of worship were placed under equivalent restriction. Only, the bureaucracy enforced the law zealously for those protesting abortion clinics, and notably refused to use the law for people protesting places of worship, so I'm not inclined to take it on good faith that there's actually a common principle at play here.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Democrats are staring down the barrel of that right now and believe me, it is terrifying. You better hope republicans have a plan to rig every future election because otherwise that gun will be turned on you.
We were staring down the barrel of it previously, and this was the best recourse we could find. I personally would prefer the power not exist; actually using it as we see fit and Progressives resisting where they may is the clearest path to eroding that power that I can see. Under Biden, we already saw state-level defiance to Federal orders. We're seeing more now versus Trump, and we'll see yet more when the Progressives are once more ascendent. Either unified power will break down and durable Federalism emerges from the conflict, or we escalate smoothly to actual civil war.
But in the long term, I don't think they're going to enjoy what happens.
What you are seeing with MAGA is precisely "I don't think they'll enjoy what happens" for Blue Tribe in general. "I don't think they'll enjoy what happens" wasn't a restraint on Blue ambitions under Obama or Biden (or Clinton or Bush II for that matter). The escalation spiral is a very evident phenomenon. Why expect departure now?
The basic problem is that we can no longer agree on core values, on what the laws should be and how they should be enforced. All the formal structures of our system of government assumed baseline homogeneity of values. Without that, none of this works, and what will happen is what we have seen happening for decades now: irreconcilable values-conflict blowing out one conflict-limiting mechanism after another as the pressure for a resolution one way or the other rises over time. Either someone has to win, or we have to have a divorce. There isn't really a third option.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
I am a reasonably prolific poster who has argued for some time that Conflict Theory offers clearly superior predictive power. The difference between kulak and myself, I believe, is that I am capable of communicating on the spectrum this forum is designed for, and he is not. If you need an example of posters being "all in" on conflict theory, I think I'm probably one of the better picks. There are others, but most of the ones more extreme than me tend to get argued against and modded fairly frequently.
I think using my posts would work less-well, though, because I generally don't write unhinged rants arguing for ceaseless war of all against all, and I generally try to back up my arguments with solid evidence. Likewise, people who appeal to all the great old posters who used to represent Blue Tribe here tend to not remember how some of these pivotal conversations actually went on the Blue end. People don't remember the chronic advocacy for lawless violence, the defenses of the indefensible, the absurd behavior, and the blatant trolling campaigns when it's their side doing it. I miss the old days, and I'm dedicated to trying to keep the conversation running as long as possible, but if you think the breakdown is the fault of nasty right-wingers, I think you are mistaken.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Can you give some examples of things Blue Tribers wish to protest through silent vigil without signs or messages, where you believe a ban on such protest is similarly understandable?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
I view "porn-brained" the same way. Men have a remarkably strong sex drive, always have and likely always will. We currently have an environment that supercharges that drive to woeful effect, and some people like it that way and think it should be the norm forever, because they confuse single-factor, short-term gratification with Eudemonia.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
I find "pornbrained" is generally a bad-faith, loaded word used to demonize aspects of male sexuality that have existed forever.
A lot of Americans are fat. do you think their environment (cars, desk jobs, unlimited cheap candy and ice cream) might have something to do with that? Do you roll your eyes at "healthy at any size"?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
For some perverse reason, it cracked me up the first time I heard it, and every subsequent time since. The song came on in a playlist, and with zero context but the music and that line, I knew exactly what I was in for, and loved every minute of it.
There's no accounting for taste!
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Golden Brown
One of my all-time favorite songs; the harpsichord is simply delightful!
Are you familiar with their Vladimir sequence?
"Thank you my fatherland, for helping me to be totally re-integrated and normalized."
Bonus:
"To the Advisory board for the development of cultural visits to sympathetic states: Dear Sirs!"
The Wayback Machine is your friend. I'm currently reading cached copies to my wife in the evenings. I also should mention that the audio books are excellent for long road trips.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
...Kulak is your example of a typical poster? With a post about how he doesn't post here any more?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
I'm not going to discuss murder methods in depth on an open forum that has a bunch of murderous lunatics on it.
This is a sound policy and I endorse it.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
There's a poem I learned as a kid:
If you have to wash the dishes, such an awful boring chore
If you have to wash the dishes, 'stead of going to the store
If you have to wash the dishes, and you drop one on the floor
Maybe they won't make you wash the dishes any more.
You don't want to do the job, so you do a bad job on purpose.
There's a piece of advice I heard from a re-enactor once:
If the King orders you to dig a pit in the middle of the jousting field, maybe it should take you the rest of his term to find a shovel.
This isn't about not wanting to do the job, it's about not wanting the job to be done at all.
Sir Frederick: there are four words to be included in a proposal if you want it thrown out.
Sir Humphrey: Complicated. Lengthy. Expensive. Controversial. And if you want to be really sure that the Minister doesn't accept it, you must say the decision is "courageous".
Bernard: And that's worse than "controversial"?
Sir Humphrey: Oh, yes! "Controversial" only means "this will lose you votes". "Courageous" means "this will lose you the election"!
And now we reach true bureaucratic sophistication: manipulating your boss into not ordering the job done in the first place. Wag-The-Dog. Top-from-the-bottom.
Cohen: Sell it all. Today.
Tuld: Is that even possible, Sam?
Sam Rogers: Yes, but at what cost?
Tuld: I'll have to pay.
Rogers: Really?
Tuld: I think so. Where is this going to come back to us?
Rogers: Everywhere.
Tuld: Sam, I don't think you seem to understand what your boy here has just said. If I made you, how would you do this?
Rogers: Well, you call the traders in for their normal 6:30 meeting and you be honest with them -- because they're going to know it's the end either way. So, you're going to have to throw 'em a bone, and a pretty big one. And then you've got to come out of the gates storming. No swaps. No nothing. Forty percent done by 10:15. By 11:00 all your trades have to be gone, because by lunchtime word's going to be out. And by 2:00 you're going to be selling at 65 cents on the dollar, if you're lucky. And then the Feds are going to be in here, up your ass, trying to slow you down...
Rogers doesn't like the order he's been given. He thinks his boss's plan is disastrously bad. He still lays out the best method to accomplish the stated objective, even while that they shouldn't do it.
That's what I'm asking for: a clear-eyed assessment saying "we have be3en ordered to withdraw by this date, here's the problems we have to overcome, here's the resources we need to do it."
The paper you linked is... not that. I'd say it's pretty disappointing, but honestly I wouldn't expect much better. It's "informative" in the loosest possible sense of the word, which is I suppose exactly what its authors are paid to be. My impression is that it's written so that, no matter what happens, its authors can be considered prudent.
Again, you understand the concept of malicious compliance and bureaucratic wag-the-dog. You're aware that the US military is not immune to these activities. Why do you believe that what we saw in the pullout was entirely or even mostly the result of policy set by the president?
As politely as I can, two of those three qualities are rather fundamental job elements for the job the man in question took quite a lot of effort to secure.
"Tactics" - How to win a firefight or a battle. "Strategy" - How to string together a series of tactical victories into an overall victory. "Bureaucracy" - What drawer the papers are filed in and who does the filing.
In the abstract, an Executive is supposed to decide what value a war offers, when to fight and when to make peace. He has final command over the top-level strategy where it impinges on that question, but below that the details are down to men who have made those details their lives' profession.
Likewise for Bureaucracy; an Executive should be concerned with questions of policy, not with the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of getting the folders handed round. What we are seeing now with Trump and DOGE is not, in fact, how any of this is supposed to work; a President is not supposed to have to micromanage his underlings to ensure they are performing their jobs competently and in good faith. Likewise, the President should not be having to inform his generals about the Afghan fighting season and suggest to them the proper way to account for its effects on the pullout. He should, in fact, be able to give a date for a pullout a year in advance, and our troops should be able to pull out on that date with no further input from the President other than signing and approving the orders. I'm bewildered as to how it could possibly be otherwise.
As the President of the United States, Biden was literally the signature authority of American strategy.
Indeed. So, keeping the date fixed, what did Biden need to do to make the pullout not a disastrous fuckup on the part of the US forces? What, specifically, did he do wrong? I'm not accepting "pick another date", because I don't buy that a year's lead time was insufficient to plan a better pullout. I'm not buying that he forced a bad plan through over the objection of the pentagon unless I see the actual orders.
Those were very much strategy and inter-governmental bureaucratic issues, which were precisely the job of the Commander in Chief and Chief of Executive- Joe Biden- to perform.
How? What was the president of the United States supposed to do to make this operation not a hilarious fuckfest?
With Benghazi, I think I have a reasonable answer to that question: Clinton and Obama slow-rolled response out of political concerns. With Mogadishu, I think I have a reasonable answer: Clinton denied heavier assets for the snatch, and when things went bad "joint" operations were a huge mess to coordinate, and also a whole lot of things went very wrong. For this, if I'm supposed to blame the president, I want to know specifically what the President did, and until I have specifics my assumption is that the people actually drawing up the plans are at fault when a plan is a complete mess.
But when you raise issues like these, it makes it sound like you believe that the American military is the part of the US government responsible for planning and handling a lot of things that the military isn't actually responsible for in any non-military-dictatorship that I can think of.
You got me! I assumed the DoD was in overall control our presence in Afghanistan, given that it was still an active war. I'm happy to withdraw the relevant questions and resubmit them as "why the fuck is the state department this incompetent?" ...Though that surprises me somewhat less. It still seems like a pretty important question, though, and it seems to me that there are probably people who were paid a considerable salary to run this shit, and those people should probably lose their jobs and possibly go to jail. They seem to have done a really bad job, and if they are not removed they are probably going to continue to do a bad job wherever they are placed next, no? But a considerable amount of the clamor I heard was specifically over the military side of things, and the military side of things isn't the state department. And again, this looks to me like basic competence failure, to the point that I'm suspicious.
My argument isn't that the military should be running diplomacy. I am happy to complain equally about the State Department. My argument is that agents of the federal government were given a job, their implementation was disastrous, and I see people on the Right saying "well, it's all Biden's fault", and people on the left sort of shrugging their shoulders. I loath Biden, but I'm not going to blame him unless I have some actual explanation about what, specifically, he did wrong. And so far, all I've got is "he timed the pullout during the fighting season". I'm not buying that, and I don't think you should buy it either.
It is not actually the military's job to run the other branches of the government well, even if it becomes the military's job to clean up and mitigate messes that result.
That's an entirely fair position, and again, the same question applies to the State department and whoever else did not comprehend what "we are pulling out in a year" meant.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
I'm quite looking forward to my daughter being old enough to watch the series.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
I'm pretty sure I could find a Victorian committing suicide over the fallout of their adultery if I worked at it. "Much closer to adultery than cannibalism" would be my intuition, at any rate.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
Unacceptable like cannibalism, or "unacceptable" like adultery?
I absolutely agree with you that if people don't agree on how to use labels, communication grinds to a halt. I believe one of the greatest disconnects in the USA is that a vocal group of people have started to try to change the definitions of words which is destroying the national conversation
Presuming that this group of people is more or less Red Tribe, this seems like a statement that should be testable by objective evidence. Woman, Rape, Racism, Sexism, Feminism, Child Abuse all seem like words whose definitions have been radically altered, where it is a matter of objective fact who is doing the altering.
...but then again, I don't think the national conversation is happening between online reactionaries.
This seems wrong in two ways: first, because the conversations here have had a direct relation to the conversations happening nationally, and second, because a number of the views we've been discussing here have just been championed by the victorious candidate in a national election as well as a number of lesser cultural arenas. The online reactionaries are engaging with the national conversation, and what's more they're currently conducting a wildly successful offensive.
I think real feminists are quite boring; hence you don't heard about them on reactionary websites.
The Motte might be described as a "reactionary website". I don't think that's a fair description of either Vox or the state of California, or the Biden administration. Vox and the State of California and the Biden administration are the ones claiming what you (and I!) call sexism is actually "Feminism". And you still seem to side with them, so apparently this isn't a deal-breaker for you.
If a group of adults are talking about horses and a kid comes over, points to a mule, and calls it a horse, you don't suddenly debate the definition of a horse. If he wants to go find others who want to call a mule a horse and make a group, then you have a weird bunch of people who don't know what the hell a horse is.
Alternatively, if this weird bunch of people declare that a mule is a horse, and organize and swing elections for the "mules are horses" party, and write and pass laws that mules shall be considered horses, and then enforce those laws with the power of the state, you don't get to pretend that everyone knows mules aren't horses and it's silly to even discuss the subject. Clearly, they don't know that mules aren't horses, and enough of them don't know it that they'll send the police to arrest you if you disagree too strenuously. Nor is it silly in such a situation to point out the difference between your claimed principles and observable social and political reality, most especially if you are voting for the "mules are horses" party and urging others to do likewise and sharply disapproving of the "mules are not horses" party.
In my opinion, yes, they did beat you into submission, and therefore weren't very good Christians.
I disagree. "Pain" and "Harm" are not synonyms. Pain can in fact be harmless. It can even be beneficial, when necessary to achieve a greater good. A spanking hurts, but so does exercise. So does play; I loved playing paintball as a kid, and getting hit by a paintball was way, way more painful than a swat with a belt. Sword fighting with boffers also involved inflicting pain for idle amusement, and it was totally worth it. Blocking a soccer ball with my calf once left me with a huge purple bruise six inches wide, and right when it was fading blocking another soccer ball left a new six-inch bruise inside it, like a bullseye; it made walking notably painful all week, and the week involved a ton of walking. By contrast, no spanking I received ever left bruises, or even lasting pain at all.
Having been a child, I observe that children are foolish and selfish by default, and their reasoning is remarkably deficient; this is often true even of adults. Pain cuts through all of that; children fear pain unreasoningly, instinctively, even when the pain is actually not all that bad. Eventually they learn that the anticipation and fear are actually worse than the sensation itself, and this level of mental maturation is the point at which corporal punishment stops being effective; in my case, it was the point at which I toughed out a spanking with only minimal distress, at which point my parents transitioned to other methods of discipline.
And discipline is, in fact, the point. Spankings weren't done out of anger, and they weren't done arbitrarily. Sure, they secured my submission. My submission needed to be secured, because I was a foolish child who did not understand the value of discipline, and so had to have it imposed on me until I could learn to value it through experience. Learning discipline is obviously good for any child, and the fact that the child does not recognize this in the moment is easily explained by the fact that they are a child, hence of extremely limited understanding and perspective. In hindsight, I recognize that spankings were very good for me, and wish that my parents had used more discipline, not less. I do not think this is any form of false consciousness, but is a rational assessment of my own experience. Maybe it was different for you and your parents; all I can judge is my own experience and the experience of those I observe around me. And as you say, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". When I was a kid, I wanted unlimited chocolate and Nintendo and no school. Now I recognize that these desires were immature, and I had to be taught that by parents who loved me, wanted the best for me, and prioritized my long-term welfare and flourishing over my desires for immediate gratification. How could it be otherwise?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5mo ago
"Do not participate in massive unprotected orgies" is an intervention that can be equally applied to both straights and gays. And in fact, straight people were already de facto banned from participating in massive unprotected orgies based on the many, many restrictions placed on gatherings. And yet my recollection is that gays thumbed their noses at the rules, and were allowed to, even when it was causing a mini-pandemic within the pandemic.
Also nope, and "he started it" doesn't cut it. Four warnings in the mod log, no quality contributions, one note recently with "ban next time". This is next time. Banned for a day, and the bans will rapidly escalate if you continue to communicate in this fashion. Next time report and move on.
More options
Context Copy link