GBRK
2d ago
In a post Sunday night on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he has authorized the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to slap a 100% tariff “on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
Well I was never going to pay for the anime I watch anyways lmao.
I remember saying something that if trump actually wanted us to re-industrialize he'd say something like, "china doesn't respect our IP, so we won't respect theirs." I said that not expecting it would ever actually happen because I don't like him, but this could escalate in a really hilarious way. Actually, you know what? I'll make that my official position. If trump gets rid of american respect for foreign IP I will start unironically liking the guy.
GBRK
2d ago
it's not about sexy new partners but a support system
That's it. That's the whole thing. Romantic involvement and religion are the only part of society modern technology and economics have yet to fully atomize. Polyamory offers both, in a way, to a certain kind of atheist. Polyamory forms a community and ideology at the same time. Of the rat/poly/atheist people I know IRL, two of them single mothers with apparently little to lose, and one of them actually tried Protestantism at an earlier point but couldn't manage to swing the "belief in god" part.
GBRK
2d ago
It's funny when the ingroup jokes about the ingroup. It's disrespectful when the outgroup jokes about the ingroup. Simple as. Trump isn't catholic, so I don't want him making even relatively harmless jokes about my religion.
GBRK
2d ago
Have you never seen the word "democratic" defined before? Google says:
a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
Democracy is about how choices are made, not what those choices are. Nothing precludes a democracy from using force-- either externally or against its own citizens. In particular, the majority overriding a minority and imposing their will by force is so inextricably linked with the nature of democracy that the founders intentionally tried to temper it with anti-democratic republicanism. Argue against democracy itself if you want, but don't argue that sending the 101st to end segregation was anti-democratic.
GBRK
3d ago
A woman who is genuinely worse off by all possible metrics has no option but to simply settle for less (or not settle at all.) Same logic as profoundly ugly men. But most people have at least something they're exceptional in, and can derive comparative advantage from. Maximize whatever that is. It doesn't matter if you're competing against X other women for X-Y men that care about that trait, it's better than competing against every other woman for traits everyone is looking and optimizing for.
(All of this logic works the same way swapping "women" and "men." It's what I consciously applied to find my current girlfriend.)
Depending on one's view of the soviet union, it could be categorized as either a hostile jungle or a laboratory, but in any case it is not a laboratory of democracy. America's special status, and special success, comes from the fact that both the experiments and the laboratory at large are managed under democratic principles.
GBRK
3d ago
The difference is that the actions of the 101st were mediated by a democratically elected president rather than an unelected autocrat. The soviet union's member states were a laboratory, just not of democracy.
GBRK
3d ago
The 101st is an internal force relative to the united states. So long as its application is democratic, the united states remains a laboratory of democracy.
Remember: everything the state does is backed by acts of violence. Whether or not the 101st is an actual, literal presence within a state, the existence of the power to deploy units like the 101st backstops every federal declaration to the states. Demanding "no violence whatsoever" is just the end of the american experiment period.
GBRK
3d ago
I think this analysis is interesting but fundamentally off the mark. "Jocks" and "nerds" aren't real, except in a descriptive sense. They're polyphyletic groups. There are jock and nerd behaviors, by which we assign the labels, but no jock or nerd etiology. There are multiple causes that might cause a person to externally present as either, and no cause common to either party. It may or may not be correct to say that kids nowadays want to be more like nerds, but trying to attribute deep social changes to that is fundamentally futile. Even if it's true, these kids don't want to be more anxious, or more socially awkward, or pastier-- they just want the positive attributes associated with nerdity... intelligence, education, high-paying jobs. But they aren't copying the monomaniacal focus on studying that creates the "true" nerds and their social problems.
Now, I think you're onto something about the impact of 2008-- but you're missing the root cause. It wasn't the GFC, it was facebook, youtube, and the iphone. Modern kids don't idolize tech founders, they idolize influencers! (Streamers, youtubers, social media stars, etc.) Think about the dynamics of that. From their own perspective, an influencer is just a person-- they're constantly concerned with social approval, and constantly afraid of failing. But from the perspective of an impressionable media-consumer, every influencer is constantly succeeding, because failing or quitting just means means they're seamlessly replaced with another aspirational influencer selling the same vision of success. So the narrative they're fed is: all the most successful people in the world are hyper-vigilant about social consequences and also glued at all times to the drama-and-suffering machines we all have in our pockets.
GBRK
3d ago
Can you give an example of a system that's not a "laboratory of democracy" then? By that logic Soviet tanks rolling into Prague just shows how the Eastern Block was a "laboratory of democracy".
A laboratory allows for safety equipment and controlled experiments. An external force coming in and wrecking your shit, in contrast, is the law of the jungle. Both lab experiments and warfare let you discover interesting new things about governance, but there's a big difference between your PI coming in and telling you to quit being an incompetent waste of grant funding vs. getting invaded by soviet tanks.
GBRK
5d ago
What exactly are you referring to? I don't recall any test followed by failure, I only recall a test that was stopped by the federal government through force.
Jim crow laws lead to massive out-migration and a loss of economic and therefore political power. Exactly the same as what's happening to california now. The fact that the feds stopped them by force is exactly the point-- it's the tangible proof that those states lost the ability to contest outside control over their cultures. Now the feds are targeting california discrimination with anti-DEI measures. Seeing the parallels yet?
GBRK
5d ago
Plenty of states tested exactly that until very recently and failed. Now some states are performing a replication test in the other direction and also failing. What more do you want out of a laboratory? It's enough to test"shooting people is bad for them" and "getting shot by people is bad for you" in separate studies, you don't need to check both hypothesis at the exact same time.
GBRK
5d ago
I think you're right that the effects of this will be felt years from now, bit that you're completely wrong about the form that will take. Trump's actions are what I'll call "concentric escalation". They fully encapsulate previous democrat tactics re: ignoring administrative norms to enforce control (a conservative would point to "lawfare) which in in term encapsulate previous republican tactics that did essentially the same thing (re: "starve the beast" government shutdown brinksmanship) and so on and so forth since the whighs fought the federalists.
The next step won't just be the democrats trying and failing to assert control over an altered federal bureaucracy, it will be another concentric escalation-- another attempt to make the previous cycle of escalation totally moot. Republicans sidestepped democratic control ofer the courts and agencies by ignoring the courts and agencies. Democrats will sidestep republican control over the budget and military by sidestepping the budget and military. I don't think we'll be at outright vanguardism just yet... But property rights are not a natural law. The government provides them as a service, and services can be cut. Republicans have made an effective bulwark against redistributive taxation, but taxes are not the only means by which property can be redistributed. It doesn't particularly matter if people actually succeed at at adversely posessing or controlling property... raising security requirements alone becomes de-facto redistribution toward the prospect-less young men most likely to get hired for security work.every night watchman, every gated community guard, is a win for the democratic base.
GBRK
7d ago
V. The USA
The takeaway here really should be that the US is "too big to fail." Apparently the "laboratory of democracy" thing is working exactly as the founders intended-- no matter what an individual state does, there's going to be another state somewhere else doing the complete opposite thing. So even as particular regions of the country decline, other regions become good targets for immigration, able to scoop up all the people leaving the dysfunctional areas. That's the beauty of America's heterogenous geography and culture-- diversity is our strength. Bad federal policy can be a drag, sometimes... but the very nature of bad policy is that states are de-facto empowered by public opinion to circumvent or ignore it it. See: blue states with sanctuary cities, red states with de-facto abortion bans well before roe vs wade, and every state with legal marijuana currently. With tariffs, for example, if they manage to actually stick around whichever borders state figures out the most effective way to enable cross-border smuggling will get a competitive advantage over every other state.
GBRK
12d ago
Then I guess NYC will just have to resort to universal tolls paired with a rebate to new yorkers specifically.
GBRK
13d ago
That would be a mechanism by which congress-- not the courts, not the executive (except as duly assigned by congress)-- could potentially intervene, yes... But do you honestly believe the interstate commerce clause grants the federal government the unlimited ability to interfere with how states delegate municipalities the power to decide how they're going to charge people for using vehicles on their roads? If this argument was about interstate highways I'd understand your point, but the congestion fee applies to municipal roads. NYC taxes pay for those, so NYC gets to decide what to do with them and who gets to use them.
GBRK
13d ago
That's really not what the equal protection clause means. Being a resident of a state or city gets you cheaper or free access to public services like museums and universities. Why not roads?
GBRK
14d ago
GBRK
14d ago
I don't understand why you're presenting this like a bad thing. NYC citizens pay taxes to create a city that people want to come to. What's wrong with them instituting an entrance fee for out-of-towners that would be freeloading otherwise?
GBRK
14d ago
It would be a context-dependent response, and I'm not convinced that it was the right context in this exact case, even if the defendant's claims of bullying were true. But it's really not that hard to imagine scenarios were even motivationally innocent behavior from a physically threatening individual can be reasonably perceived as a threat.
GBRK
14d ago
The defendant is alleging a history of bullying from the person who got stabbed. I don't know if that's true, but if it is it would substantiate claims of self-defense.
GBRK
15d ago
I think I could beat up the "average" person (inclusive of women, I'm not good enough that I can confidently claim I would beat up the average guy.) But if I got into a heated argument with someone weaker than me, it would be ridiculous to expect them to just concede to my physical prowess. Therefore, I would consider it a proportional act for them to pull a knife on me. Similarly, if I'm in a reversed situation, where I'm facing a black belt or prizefighter in their prime, I would rather pull a knife than let them give me brain damage. In full space of hypotheticals, I think the fight would de-escalate from there the vast majority of the time-- few martial artists are stupid enough to actually fight someone who'd afraid and has a knife, including myself, but I can't strictly exclude the chance of conflict.
GBRK
15d ago
Characterizing them all as "rioters" who wanted to "burn a community down" is a credible, but not unimpeachably true claim. I suppose it maps onto the (again, credible, but not unimpeachably true) argument that the black kid in this case was being bullied, but I think the difference here is that assigning an intent to a group does not assign an intent to the individual people Rittenhouse shot, while at least an in principle a claim about bullying is a claim about a history of negative interactions between particular individuals that let them predict how the other will act.
GBRK
15d ago
Talking about fundraisers is comparable but peripheral. Central to the rittenhouse controversy is a scissors statement about "is it reasonable to walk around with exposed guns." Central to this controversy are facts that are yet undisclosed-- that being, what exactly lead to the stabbing. It's possible that the two cases might start looking more alike, if during witness examination the prosecution makes a credible case that stabber was in some way looking for trouble (regardless of what the stabee what up to), but it also might start looking less alike, if the defense can establish a history of bullying and negative interpersonal interactions between the stabee and stabber. At this point, I think it's too early to tell, and people drawing connections are being pointlessly inflammatory.
I do martial arts also, and I predict you'd be facing an unsympathetic DA and a very tough jury if you did that. "People can be killed with bare hands!" Yes, but it's very uncommon, and pulling a lethal weapon is an obvious escalation and most courts will see it that way.
Of course it's an escalation. But it's very rare that situations begin perfectly even. If I was having a heated argument with a five-nothing woman, by the very nature of my size, sex, and training I have already pre-escalated. If I even unconsciously clenched my fists, her bringing out a knife would be a reasonable response. Neither of us would necessarily want a fight here-- but then events might conspire to put us in conflict. I'd prefer to run, but if my back was against the wall, I might instead make a grab for the knife. Under those circumstances, it would be perfectly reasonable for her to try to stab me. Regardless of which of us comes out the victor, either of us could be plausibly at fault.
Yes. Yes.
The performative outrage by my non-religious ingroup (liberals) is unnecessary and overblown, and I'm not super offended, but I think Trump's post was stupid, and annoying, and I didn't like it.
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