Being Catholic is a choice in a way that being black or ethnic Jewish is not. Hence making fun of blacks or ethnic Jews for being blacks or ethnic Jews is more mean spirited than making fun of Catholics for being Catholics.
There is a difference of quality between, for example, making fun of a person for thinking that the Earth is flat and making fun of a person because he belongs to a certain ethnic group. Both are mean spirited, but the former is at least potentially part of some kind of meaningful debate, whereas the latter leads nowhere except to divisiveness.
Goodguy
2yr ago
religious people exhibit better mental health than nones
Unless you consider their religious beliefs to be a form of mental derangement. For example, can someone who is convinced that a man 2000 years was literally god incarnate and rose from the dead really be called mentally healthy?
Goodguy
5mo ago
An easier way to facilitate American homegrown fascism would be to let Trump and conservatives do whatever they want. What would result is not precisely fascism, but it would be close enough for all intents and purposes.
I have argued in the past that Trump does not pose any serious risk of fascism because the rest of society would be able to exert sufficient counter-force to prevent the true right-wing extremists around Trump from getting much done.
I might have been wrong. The left seems to have quietly accepted defeat, and the right is quite energized. The counter-force I expected is, so far, not materializing. And certainly plenty of people around Trump would create a form of fascism if they could.
In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of the reach of common understanding — symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power.
-Frank Herbert
Though this is a quote, I believe that it is so precisely said that it is worth posting on the top level.
Personally, a big part of me supports the dawn of super-human AI that annihilates the human species just because I think that it would be funny as fuck to see humans world-wide suddenly show horror and terror as they realize that they are about to get exterminated, treated the same way that we treat a bunch of non-human animals. It would be the most funny, the most comedic moment in the history of humanity as suddenly all human self-importance gets popped. I would have a multiple-hour orgasm of comedy. Yeah, I would die too but who cares, I'm going to die anyway.
Goodguy
2yr ago
That you wrote six paragraphs to vent a simple emotion that you could have stated in one sentence does not lure me into thinking that you are making a rational argument. I am not that much of a Motteizen. Plenty of people disagree with your idea that the greatest current failure of American civilization are the violent homeless drug addicts. There are so many other options. For example, the endless foreign interventionism... the NSA domestic surveillance... the war on drugs...
You are a Singapore-style authoritarian but I am not. If you want to move to Singapore, I doubt that it would be difficult.
"Lock the addicts up, slaughter the dealers, forget about the problem."
Aha... but in this authoritarian utopia of yours somehow you think that The Motte would still exist? You think that a government that literally kills people for selling substances that people consensually want to consume is going to... let people post on a forum that allows free speech?
"Lock the addicts up, slaughter the dealers, forget about the problem."
...
"Lock the free-thinkers up, slaughter the spreaders of dissident thoughts, forget about the problem."
No, fuck you.
Getting the media to put its ass on the scale to help you is part of what it means to have an expertly-run campaign. Of course, the media in general leans Democratic, but that shouldn't necessarily be an excuse if you're a political strategist who is getting paid millions of dollars to help the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign strategists have done nothing to grab the narrative away from the Harris campaign ever since she replaced Biden as the Democrats' chosen candidate. It's been several weeks of nothing from them, meanwhile the Harris campaign is full steam ahead. What are the Trump campaign people even doing? What is their strategy?
I think that Trump has a problem in that compared to Harris he just seems old and he has been in people's political attention for nine years straight except for a brief interruption in Biden's first couple of years in office. Trump is still entertaining, but he's no longer the novel maverick, and probably a lot of people are just tired of hearing about him. Harris, on the other hand, is shiny, new, and relatively young for a recent Presidential candidate. There is an element in the voting population that loves shiny and new optics. Bill Clinton playing the sax, Obama flashing his pearly-white grin and talking about hope and change, etc. The Trump campaign hasn't managed to do anything to seize the national narrative away from Harris. I feel like they need to come up with something if they want to win.
This is veering pretty close to waging culture war and, while not building consensus, assuming consensus.
My understanding of the spirit of the Motte is that when you write on the Motte, you should not assume a background of people who share your political views.
That is, my understanding is that this is not supposed to be a place where you share excited "inside opinions" about how your preferred politics are going.
I say this not as someone who is for the "Yes", but just as someone who does not want more culture war waging here.
Oh come on, there are comments on here dripping with sheer contempt all the time that don't get the authors banned.
Keep in mind, I'm not a leftoid, I just think that most of the rightoids on here are retarded. If we had more leftoids here, I'd tell them that they are also retarded, cause I genuinely believe that.
But the Tomato didn't express himself in a way more obnoxious than what we see regularly here, so come the fuck on, shape up or have this site keep being viewed as a joke by actually smart people.
Right now, this site is mostly just a refugee camp for midwits who overrate their own intelligence because they realize that different races differ in IQ or whatever (Wow! You just have to be a non-retard to understand that different races differ in IQ for probably in part genetic reasons! Congratulations on having a bare minimum intelligence to be worthy of smart people paying attention to you!).
Having the bare minimum of intelligence to be able to see through leftoid ideas of how everybody's on average equal in intelligence or whatever... doesn't take much. It's just like the bare standard minimum. This site is overrun with lame social trads, religious idiots, authoritarians, and so on... all of whose ideas are not rationally obviously correct, but they clearly are pushing these ideas because they have deep-seated emotional (as opposed to rational) reasons for wanting to push those ideas. They often write things that are not rationally justified, and imply that their opponents are all sorts of nasty things when they write it, but I am not calling for them to be banned. So why ban Tomato for writing a mild few paragraphs poking fun at his political opponents?
Edit: Sorry, I was drunkposting and a bit too harsh. Oh well, I don't mind a week vacation.
Goodguy
1yr ago
Well, I think that in a society as liberal as the modern US it's nearly child abuse to bullshit your kid deliberately so that they will have an easier time fitting in. If you're raising your son in Nazi Germany and he has a pretty decent chance of literally getting killed if you teach him to be a free thinker, I guess that's different. But in a more liberal society, the way I see it you're depriving your child of some of the things that make life most worth living in an awake and aware way in order to make it easier for them to sleep through life, all just so that they have an easier time of fitting in with various forms of idiocy.
Fair enough, maybe calling it close to child abuse is a bit exaggerated on my part, but I would say it's not too far off the mark.
Goodguy
10mo ago
Yes, at least as long as the government doesn't become totalitarian and use their guns to commit violence. But as I said in my original post, I'm increasingly having my doubts that our government in the US is seriously deterred by all the public gun ownership from becoming totalitarian, as opposed to having other reasons for not being totalitarian. Not necessarily altruistic reasons, but other reasons at least.
It's not our place to belittle those who march off to fight and die at our direction, at the will of the white-collar class.
They sign up to potentially kill complete strangers on government orders, because they believe in the cause and/or for money. They willingly turn themselves into tools of the government. Hence I will belittle and mock them just as surely as I belittle and mock the government itself. If you are fine with belittling and mocking the government, then there is no reason not to belittle and mock the people who willingly make themselves into that government's agents.
The vast majority of the moral harms were committed by careless policymakers and senior officers who committed troops to achieving the unachievable.
100% of the actual harms were committed by the soldiers, not the politicians. If the soldiers did not follow the orders, the harms would not have happened.
Do you want to go and risk getting turned to meat paste by Chinese hypersonics?
Nobody has to risk that to begin with. The US is more than well-enough protected by its nuclear arsenal and, on top of that, by the oceans. If some American decides that going to fight for Taiwan or South Korea or whatever is really important to him - either because he cares about those countries or because he cares about maintaining US global military dominance and economic might - then alright, fine, but I'm not going to pretend that it has anything to do with defending the US itself from a threat of being militarily attacked.
Goodguy
1yr ago
What makes standing for the national anthem important? Like, which one? The national anthem of England, or the one of the traitorous colonists? If in Nazi Germany or the USSR, is it a basic civic norm to stand for the national anthem?
In my book, trying to force kids to stand for the national anthem is practically child abuse. Loyalty to country is a thought-terminating cliche.
In my opinion, that might be a good thing for what I value. I would much prefer for some other arm of Tumpism to be stopped, not DOGE, since I value cutting government bloat... but at least it's something. My politics is based on the idea of keeping the left and the right stuck in a stalemate so that neither becomes dominant.
Now that Trumpism and the new right in general have given the woke a number of brutal punches and the woke is on the ropes in several ways, Trumpism begins to seem to me like the bigger threat, so now I turn my attention to strategies for doing some damage to Trumpism.
This would not have come about, other than that the left turned out to be weaker than I expected. I thought they would put up more of a fight, and that the stalemate I wanted would naturally come about, but I was wrong. The left has turned out to be a bit of a paper tiger and Trump's people have been running wild, which was never my preferred outcome. I just wanted to stop woke authoritarianism. So now I pivot yet again and, since the left turned out to be weaker than I had expected them to be, I now, despite having no love for the left, find myself wanting to at least prevent them from being crushed, since although I am neither left nor right, unfortunately the left is the only political force in the US with enough numbers to contain the right, just like the right is the only political force in the US with enough numbers to contain the left.
Goodguy
10mo ago
I am not saying that Harris' campaign is necessarily expertly run, but I am surprised by their adroitness. Even though they have much of the media's help, they still have been doing a great job of avoiding making any mistakes. So far the Harris campaign has been a slick, fine-tuned machine that has managed to hide all of her weaknesses and accentuate some of the Republicans' weaknesses.
The media leans Democratic, but that did not stop Trump from getting elected in 2016 and then only narrowly losing in 2020 (and that only after the pandemic). We clearly see that it is possible for a Republican president to get elected even despite the hostile media environment. So I think that Trump campaign strategists who are getting paid millions of dollars should not get to use the Democrats' media domination as an excuse for not doing a better job of marketing Trump's campaign.
Goodguy
2yr ago
Maybe, but I hope people realize that there are still many people in the United States who think that they are under hostile occupation by conservative Christians and have good reason to think so. The typical TheMotte commenter, I think, has lived in liberal urban areas for most of his life and does not realize that oppressive conservative Christianity is still a force to be reckoned with in some parts of the country. I think that the kind of people who enjoy mocking Christianity are probably disproportionately drawn from people who escaped such oppressive environments when they were young, much as many of the most fervent anti-communists are people who escaped communist regimes.
Goodguy
2yr ago
But: is it in an insult to call her a whore?
Well yeah, that is why you called her a whore. If calling her a whore was not insulting then you would have found some other word.
Goodguy
6mo ago
I am a pretty moral person. I have a strong moral code. I am generally nice to others. I try to help people. I think that things like murder and rape are fundamentally wrong in an absolute way. And I have absolutely no problem with someone having sex with 100 strangers in an hour. The idea that there would be a moral issue about it strikes me as somewhat absurd.
As for drugs, I would prefer that people not get addicted to them, but there is no moral dimension about it for me.
Goodguy
1yr ago
But I'm not sure "everyone" knows this. I just responded to a comment that argued the opposite in fact.
Yep, many people didn't know it of course. But people who even half-seriously follow modern war without being blinded by some sort of bias knew it.
Probably, but as this isn't 1990 it matters a lot less.
Sure, but having the Persian Gulf closed down for months would still be a giant shit show for the world economy. And probably not good for the Democratic Party in an election year given that in today's US political situation, there is unlikely to be some sort of "rally around the flag" effect as a result of any war that didn't start with the US getting directly attacked, and the Democratic Party base is divided about Israel to begin with.
Yes. That's the meat. Will Israel attack Iran's nuclear capability? It will be good for the world if they do. Terrorists should not have nukes.
This is a matter of preference. Personally, I am in favor of Iran getting nukes because I do not wish them to be continually threatened by Israel and the US. The "world" would largely be unaffected. It's not like if Iran gets nukes, they are going to nuke Zimbabwe or Thailand or something. In fact, even if they got nukes, given the reality of mutually assured destruction they almost certainly would not even nuke Israel or any US assets.
Goodguy
1yr ago
That's interesting. Anecdotally, I don't think I've ever heard a woman make such an argument around me, even though I live in a heavily politically "progressive" area. Not even the most fervent SJWs have done it around me. I wonder what kind of social circles you are moving in that you see so much of it.
Goodguy
1yr ago
It's only weakmanning to show how bad a group is if you assume that Gdanning thinks there is something bad about disliking Obama for his skin color.
I don't understand why you think this is such a big deal, given that it is legal for parents to homeschool their children or send them to private school.
Besides, modern technology means that pretty much any kid who wants to see porn, will see porn. Compared to the stuff that a kid can find in 2 seconds on the web, nothing in some LGBTQ book in school can possibly compare. Now of course, that doesn't mean that I'm a fan of having my tax money spent on such educational content. But then, I'm not a fan of having my tax money spent on about 90% of the so-called education system to begin with. Largely because modern techhnology means that pretty much any kid who wants to learn outside of school and has normal cognitive capacity can easily teach themselves.
It's possible. The Secret Service are humans, not superpowered ninjas from a movie. They are good at what they do, but the reality is that there are probably like 30 million people in this country who would happily kill Trump if they could do it and get away with it. The Secret Service has managed to successfully protect Trump for 10 years, through hundreds of outdoor rallies and so on. They're not perfect, so it's rational that they eventually fucked up. One might argue that it's weird that the two assassination attempts that we know of that even came close both happened shortly before the election, but that can be explained by the fact that just before the election is precisely when random lone wolves would be most motivated to try to kill Trump.
It might seem weird that the Secret Service would not do anything in reaction to someone telling them they see a guy on the roof with a gun... but at the end of the day, it's a job for them. We all have bad days on the job when we're tired or whatever. Besides, if I my job was protecting Trump for years and having to stand around in all kinds of weather conditions listening to him ramble for hours, and someone told me that there was a reason to think Trump might be about to get shot, I can easily imagine even as an elite Secret Service operator being like "fuck who cares, I'm tired of all this shit".
Goodguy
5mo ago
I'm very much not "woke", but I disagree with you on a couple of points. First, in my opinion "Denali" sounds much more awesome than "Mount McKinley". "Denali" sounds imposing, almost Himalayan. And "Utqiagvik", although I don't know how to pronounce it, at least looks better on the page than "Barrow". I don't see the benefit of replacing cool, exotic-looking foreign names for such places with Anglo names.
Also, I don't really mind getting rid of using Robert E. Lee's name on anything that is run by the government. I would be annoyed if the government was naming things after a man who fought to keep my ancestors literally enslaved just 160 years ago. Of course there's a slippery slope, because then one can argue we should also stop naming things after Washington and so on... but in any case, I don't think that it's unreasonable for blacks to ask that we stop naming public things after literally Bobby Lee, the top general in the Confederacy, just like it was not unreasonable for Latvians to want to get rid of Lenin statues after the USSR fell apart.
I don't know, I think it's illuminating to see how many people on TheMotte both loathe mentally ill homeless people so much and are so authoritarian that their desired solution to the mentally ill homeless problem is to kill them all.
At this point SneerClub might as well just shut down. TheMotte beclowns itself enough on a regular basis that outside mocking of this place is superfluous. There are some great contributors who rise above the mess, but a large part of this site is just /pol/ but with unnecessary verbosity.
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