Harlequin5942
No bio...
User ID: 1062
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
to them Trump's stance against illegal immigration is in fact about illegal immigration and not secretly about "brown people".
I think there are plenty of people who are worried about brown people who are not alt-right. There are plenty of racists who are not fascist, just as there are "Eat the rich, man!" people who are not socialist in any narrow sense (nationalisation of industry, state planning, or even egalitarian outside of putting some limits against huge inequality).
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Some of these were a lot more high profile than others, e.g. I suspect that most Republican party members have never heard of gamergate. The IDW and Rogan are more well-known, although I still would try hard not to underestimate how much of the Republican party is made up of Not Very Online people who have at most a passing acquaintance with Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan etc.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
George W or George H. W.? The former was pretty protectionist and tried fairly hard to appeal to the American working class:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tariff
You could plausibly argue that that Trump was more protectionist, but free trade vs. protectionism has rarely been a simple Republican vs. Democrat issues.
Also, the Bush administration also had a lot of anti-elitism in their rhetoric, like Trump. While Bush was obviously from an elite background, he tried (successfully) to be portrayed as "One of the guys", in a way that his father, Bob Dole, or Mitt Romney did not. Quite an achievement for a teetotal, Ivy League educated, son of a wealthy family.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Is the Palace just some oasis sheltered from the rat race that envelopes other parts of Britain?
No, there are some rat-infested places in Britain (like the City and Westminster) but in general people value their families, communities, and leisure (except they say "leh-jur" rather than "lee-jur"). The aristocracy is an elite, but it's different from e.g. the Washington Policy elite. It's into longstanding loyalty, implicit agreements that span decades or centuries, predictable norms etc.
If you want to get a bollocking from a sociopathic woman in return for a 0.5% chance of becoming a high ranking political figure and a 99% chance of being forgotten by your employer in 10 years, you work at Downing Street, not Buckingham Palace. If you want a guaranteed heartfelt handshake with the kindly monarch (who fondly remembers you dressing them when they were just 3 or 25 years old) when you are old and grey, you work at Buckingham Palace.
This kind of loyalty culture is one reason why even republicans I know who joined the army often become at least moderately royalist, because military-types also tend to like the idea of stable customs, long-term bonds, and implicit agreements.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
The problem is that, at least on a social construct view of race, she's not black in Britain, but she IS American. She can self-identify as black if she wants, but one thing that almost everyone seems to agree upon regarding race is that it's not decided by self-identification.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
The development of the EEC/EU in this direction was surprisingly late. The devil's bargain seems to have been circa 1990: German demands for a Größerer Staat to rival the US were granted by the nationalistic French left, in return for the EU becoming a device for enforcing social democracy across France's competitors. The British Conservatives said "FOMO!", ditched the Eurosceptic Thatcher, and the other countries had little choice but to come along.
However, there are complexities, e.g. the EU has gradually adopted German hard-money/fiscal prudence views, and so that has also become associated with the EU even in the minds of Eurosceptics. The EU's expansion east has also brought in countries who are not aligned with the social projects of the Brussels elites, and this tension has not yet been resolved.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Is Rome perceived as a southern or northern city, or is it indeed viewed as its own distinct thing?
As I recall, it's a bit like Washington: it's in whatever part you don't like.
Just as Washington has the friendliness of the North and the efficiency of the South, Rome is seen as having the friendliness of the North and the efficiency of the South. When I visited, there was a public transport strike and an astonishing sense of bitterness, so I was not disappointed by the performance of Romanness.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
It might eventually mean the dissolution of the United Kingdom given that it has given the Scottish nationalists a lot of energy and they're pretty eager to hold another referendum.
It gave them a rationale, but didn't make an obvious impact on Scottish opinion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki_Scots_Indep_V6_new_format.pdf
The Scottish nationalists did better in the general election before the Brexit vote than after.
The most successful counterstrategy I know is to signal boost (and even fabricate) cases of largesse that is not being cut:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loony_left
This was sufficiently successful that, when the generally nonpartisan Yes, Minister TV series had an episode with Thames Marsh local council, who had cut all civil defence but kept open the "gay bereavement centre" (and a small bunker for the council leader) this was something that the audience could recognise and accept easily. It also meant that, even as the UK Labour party moved somewhat to the right between the 1983 and 1987 elections, they were still associated with radical socialism and social progressivism, due to their association with "loony left" local councils.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Yes, it's a good example of misleading by selective elaboration.
A contemporaneous American documentary on the loony left:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=COt65HZCJaA
The "Why is this English school only serving English food?" part is particularly amusing. And I also feel sympathetic: I would feel bad if my child was only eating English food, but for the psychological welfare of the child, not for reasons of objecting to an English school serving only it in England.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Have you considered systems biology? Or engineering?
A falling currency is also hardly a bad thing for a net exporter.
There's a good rule in economics: never reason from a price change. Always ask why the price is changing. An exchange rate is the price of a currency in terms of another currency.
It depends why the currency is falling. If the purchasing powers of trade partners are increasing, that's probably a good thing - more spending by people buying your products. If your currency is overvalued, that's also a good thing - exports become more profitable. If you are overstimulating your economy or your exports are falling, that's a bad thing, although it's still best for many economies to let the exchange rate (rather than the whole domestic economy) handle the adjustment to the problem, and so the change in the currency value is unpleasant but necessary.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Didn't they also ditch their fiscal rules? I remember people 10 years ago in the UK saying that austerity was a waste of time. Turns out it wasn't: markets really do care about the management of an economy and they don't like massive debasement of its value.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Yes, there are a lot of ways to use physics skills in biology. Another is simulation work, if you don't mind some programming: I have a friend who went from physics to modelling the evolution of sexual reproduction. However, as he put it, thinking about sex all day isn't as fun as you might think...
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Senegal, (remarkably peaceful coexistence between Senegalese Muslims and Catholics. Any theories on why this was so successful ?)
I would also like to know more about this. I do know that Senegal has done pretty well economically since IMF reforms in the 1990s, but compared to, say, Nigeria, it is poor, yet Nigeria is not notable for its positive Muslim-Christian community relations...
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Interesting! This author suggests that Sufi Islam is an important influence in Senegal's stability, e.g. it tolerates a Shi'a minority:
https://theconversation.com/the-exception-behind-senegals-history-of-stability-113198
It also looks to have had some excellent diplomatic policies, e.g. finding profitable links with its ex-coloniser (France) and the Gulf States. With much more economic success, Botswana is another example of an ex-colony that continued to look for links with its ex-coloniser (Britain).
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
True: my point was that Nigerians on average are more prosperous than Senegalese, so poverty can't explain the difference, but I suppose it is possible that inequality creates a difference. However, from what I can tell, inequality is also high in Senegal, and I would be surprised if absolute poverty was significantly better in Senegal than in Nigeria.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
I tend to think of it the other way around: welfare states are a way to have a system for loving people, for people who regard benevolence as the primary (or even sole) virtue.
Put another way, the most attractive presentation of American liberalism that I know is Star Trek: The Next Generation. Not radicalism, not Marxism, but FDR/JFK/apple pie and patriotism liberalism. (Less overtly, the same spirit is also made attractive in Carl Sagan's Cosmos.) Without agreeing with that vision, I can still admire it, and share some of its ambitions, including the Promethean values in TNG that help it to appeal across the political spectrum. Perhaps significantly, Gene Roddenberry (and maybe Carl Sagan) was the type who could at least recognise the value in different visions of the world, even if he thought that American liberalism was superior.
As I see it, the distinctive spirit of American liberalism is self-actualization. Tolerance, multiculturalism etc. are valuable not so much in themselves, but insofar as they enable people to pursue their higher and often idiosyncratic goals. Moderated by a stronger concern for negative freedom and/or tradition, self-actualization is also something that is important in American libertarianism and American conservativism, so there is a lot of room for cohesion among these value systems. That's why both liberal visions like TNG and conservative 80s action movies can appeal across the mainstream US political spectrum. And something like the Rocky series has cross-political appeal, even though there is a lot of political/philosophical themes where there could be controversies: the films have themes that are bound by a self-actualizing vision of "Do it yourself, for yourself, by sorting yourself and your relationships out" that almost all Americans enjoy.
The problem is that many cultures of the world do not share this vision, and the idea that you can have American liberalism among any cultural group is an item of faith rather than knowledge.
(Incidentally, I'm not American. View this as an alien's interpretation of your culture.)
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
That's definitely part of it, but a lot of those social workers also favour a (generous) welfare state.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Star Trek is not a realistic presentation of the potential future for humanity.
Agreed, but presentations of ideological utopias are rarely (if ever) realistic.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
The same, for what it's worth, applies to the Right.
Is that true? Or is the American Right's vision "About 40 years ago, but with more tech"? Seems like it's been that way for quite some time. The difference is that US conservatives' utopia starts from an idealised version of a period of the past, rather than a more novel vision.
Even Trump, who I regard as a relatively nihilistic member of the American Right, seemed to have in mind an idealised version of the Reagan era.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Not sure if this was ever explained, but I interpreted this as a kind of rebellion by Worf - a bit like a second-generation immigrant getting REALLY into their parents' culture, even moreso than their parents. Ironically, this results in Worf living up to ideals that most Klingons do not. That's why Worf is more stereotypically Klingon than many characters who grew up in the Klingon Empire and are frequently dishonourable.
Harlequin5942
1yr ago
Does that make me a xenophobe?
Maybe just a xenoskeptic:
Alan Partridge: I’ve nothing against them, it’s just, as I see it, God created Adam and Eve. He didn’t create Adam and Steve. I’m kind of a homosceptic.
There are a variety of psychological models of anxiety. The one I find most reliable, for understanding myself and other people, is the hidden emotion model: irrational concern about X is due to suppressed emotion about Y. You can use exposure of cognitive techniques to eliminate the irrational concern about X, but unless you express your emotion about Y and integrate your feelings into your actions, you will just find something Z to be irrationally concerned about.
So, a good way to strike at the heart of any anxiety is to examine your life for things that (a) you are worried/angry/desirious/sad/etc. about and (b) find it hard to admit that. A good technique for identifying these is that they are often things that you perceive as social taboos, e.g. being angry with your wife about something "trivial" or being happy about the death of a family member.
Paradoxically, once you accept and express the emotion, it almost always becomes "cooler" and it can be acted on in a sensible way. For example, maybe you gently tell your wife that she's doing something that annoys you a little and you seek a mutually acceptable solution. Or you realise that you don't have to cry your eyes out at the funeral of the alcoholic uncle who frequently criticised you and put you down - you can be respectful but not mournful.
More options
Context Copy link