Harlequin5942
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User ID: 1062
Harlequin5942
1d ago
I’ve always been taught that anti-Catholic sentiment in America went hand-in-hand with nativism. The Catholics were from strange lands with strange customs like Ireland, Italy, and Poland.
Strange customs like the Irish? Three 19th century American Presidents were Irish, but they were Protestant Irish.
The main issue was that Catholics were seen as having a supra-nationalist loyalty to the Pope. Even in the 1960 election, Protestant figures like Billy Graham argued that JFK would take orders from the Pope. (The Pope couldn't even restrain JFK's sex life, let alone his policies.) There was also fear of Catholic schools and other sectarian institutiins, which even sought funding from Protestant taxpayers. The Catholic Church was also seen as too anti-black in the North (due to its silence on slavery) and too pro-black in the South (especially by the KKK).
Harlequin5942
1d ago
You wouldn't want to be a black person in Europe because the people wouldn't like you and would consider you inferior and possibly not human.
True to some extent, but people will tolerate terrible treatment if the price is right. Just look at migrant workers in the Gulf States.
Harlequin5942
1d ago
Yes, to the point where "British citizen" (as distinguished from "British subject", which included anyone in the Empire/Dominions) is a fairly recent concept. Americans of a certain age (80+) will sometimes use "British subject" to mean "British citizen", maybe because the latter was not actually a thing when they were young.
Harlequin5942
2d ago
men had authority over women in return
That's vague. Men had a higher legal status in some respects and in some situations, but a typical man in a typical historical society had absolutely no authority over any women, except his wife and daughters if he had any.
Harlequin5942
1d ago
That's not really 'Irish,' though.
They were in the eyes of Americans at the time, specifically Scotch-Irish. Also, Scots are Celts, though views about that at the time were sometimes complex.
Aside from their Catholicism, there was little to distinguish a typical Irishman from a typical Protestant Highlander. (Their languages would have been slightly different, but equally alien to an English American in 1850.)
Harlequin5942
1d ago
The Pope officially renounced it along with the entirety of mainstream Catholicism
Well, it wasn't just a single Pope who completed that process after WW2! ;)
Harlequin5942
2d ago
Then it wasn't something that men had as men, whereas women had their immunity from conscription as women. Different from today, but not that different, and no solace for an unmarried man who was conscripted (as many young, unmarried men were, sometimes violently e.g. press gangs).
Harlequin5942
3d ago
That they'd later turn into vaguely anti-western, mixed political system basket case anyway wasn't really a concern.
There was also a lot of confidence that liberal capitalist democracy was the natural state of countries, as long as there wasn't some special interfering factor. I think that didn't really start to fade until the Iraq War.
Harlequin5942
17d ago
I grew up in a relatively conservative community. There was one boy who, at age 4-ish, liked to dress in girl's outfits when we played dress-up games. He also liked some "girl's" toys, e.g. Polly Pocket. He was also fearful of competitive sports and tended to make friends better with girls rather than boys (I was an exception).
As often happens, he's just gay. He often finds it easier to identify with women and empathise with them, perhaps because he has more of a lady-brain (who knows?). People in this relatively conservative community generally ignored it, reasoning "He'll grow out of it," and they were right, since he is (99%) a typical adult guy these days.
The same thing happened with a girl in my neighbourhood, who just turned out to have a very active imagination as a child. She's now married to a man, with kids etc. She had a very religious family, who treated it as a game (like a child who decides that they are a dinosaur) and within a year she had forgotten even that she used to insist that she was a boy.
Kids are weird. Sometimes, it's because there is something deeply different about them. It's hard to know why, so it's best to enjoy the ride (within sensible boundaries e.g. keeping them from sexual experimentation) and offer them love throughout the process.
When it comes to mass manufacturing pieces of steel financial hubs won't do well. The US sees itself as economically superior because smart americans work with insurance, investment banking and Netflix while Russians work in a tractor factory. The tractor factory will produce far more mortars than Netflix.
The US produces more steel than Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production
And "smart americans" can buy steel from the Chinese, who massively outproduce Russia (or the US).
The US is also a major tractor manufacturer and exporter, Russia is not: https://blog.howdeninsurance.co.uk/tractors-where-are-they-manufactured/ -------- though Russia does import a lot of tractors from countries with better tractor manufacturing industries: https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/russia-agribusiness
Just because the US outperforms Russia in service industries, it doesn't mean that the US doesn't ALSO outperform Russia in manufacturing.
Having lived in quite a few European countries and knowing British history in some detail, I would put it this way: the UK had a period of great comparative success across a huge range of fields (prior to about 1945) where European countries they didn't outperform economically (France, Germany) were outperformed militarily/diplomatically, and the UK developed a fairly "laissez faire" type of imperialism that had some definite advantages over Belgian rapaciousness, French assimilationism etc.
The UK had a period of relative decline in 1945-1979. This was only relative (this was a period of mostly solid growth) and with some exceptions (UK unemployment rates were low in this period, even compared to e.g. the US).
The UK had a concerted and successful effort to combat relative decline from about 1979-2007. This took different forms, e.g. Thatcher had great confidence in Victorian institutions, practices, and values; Blair had a huge love of America (especially Clintonian America) public service modernisation, and wanted the UK to lead the EU into a modernist, progressive, American-style supra-state; Major was somewhere in between, with a strange sort of quiet iconoclasm in favour of "ordinary people" that ranged from the clever (getting rid of stupid regulations on everything from employment agencies to service stations) to the absurd (the "Cones Hotline").
For various reasons, I mostly blame Brown and subsequent UK politicians, and of course the UK voters to whom they pander. For example, the UK has a great edge in financial and business services. UK business services are one area where the UK still does great, partly due to language, partly due to regulation, and partly due to agglomeration in London/South-East England. What do UK politicians and voters love? MANUFACTURING. Steel. SHIPBUILDING. It's like a tall, scrawny but fast kid wanting to play rugby and set weightlifting records rather than basketball and netball - admirable, but stupid. So the UK overregulates and taxes its financial sector (as well as the occasional kick to its oil sector) and then wonders why its economy underperforms.
Similarly, the UK voters hate paying taxes at the levels of European countries. So they have the opportunity to e.g. save more of their own money for retirement, taking advantage of the huge long-term gains that private investment can make relative to pay-as-you-go state pensions. But they also want state pensions at European levels (no Boomer left behind) so politicians have introduced an unsustainable pensions uprating scheme that has meant that, despite significant spending cuts in some areas (welfare, education etc.) and despite tax rises to about peacetime highs, the UK public finances are still shit. This is not how a serious country deals with an ageing population.
And there's the UK national religion, the NHS, a healthcare system designed to save the UK Labour party from the wrath of doctors in the 1950 election, which voters think (a) should be improved, (b) should not be changed, and (c) should not cost them personally any more in taxes or fees. I suppose there are some religions with more absurd origins and principles...
Scotland is the beak of the UK ostrich: deepest into the sand it has buried itself.
I have lived in Germany, Austria, Netherlands, France, Italy, Greece, and other places. These countries all have their own chronic problems and a similar lack of ambition in dealing with them. For me, it just stands out more in the UK (and more recently in the US) because the Limeys used to have some leaders and an electorate who were serious about tough changes. For all her faults, Margaret Thatcher was about the closest the West has come to a Lee Kuan Yew figure: someone who really thought, "If a policy is too popular, then we are being too careful."
Harlequin5942
6d ago
But- formal one man rule seems to incentivize anti-corruption drives at the very least.
Not clear that's true. Insofar as power is concentrated, it is easier to identify who you have to bribe. Things like monopoly concessions in return for money (formal and informal) happened a lot in e.g. Elizabethan England, and (I am no expert) presumably other cases of one-man (male or female) rule. On the other hand, that could be attributed to the problems that feudal rulers had in obtaining tax revenues.
However, from an incentives standpoint, it seems that the more powerful the state and the more concentrated that power, the greater the gain and the lower the cost of outsiders corrupting those with power. That's leaving aside "power tends to corrupt, more power tends to corrupt more" considerations.
Harlequin5942
24d ago
They can't really attack her for being a right wing extremist when her world famous books are a pretty clear allegory of Racism Bad.
As the TERF controversies showed, agreeing with right wing extremists on Current Year issues is enough to be judged guilty by association. For example, Julie Bindel is far to the left of almost all of her critics, on most issues. Controversies-of-the-day create weird alliances: think of Christopher Hitchens and neoconservatives on the Iraq War.
Harlequin5942
28d ago
giving myself any sort of self actualizing goal and getting busy is the best and most immediate cure.
And a lot cheaper than going to therapy. Even classically "useless" male coping mechanisms like chopping wood or fantasy football are cheaper, while potentially disproving negative thoughts like "I can never do anything right!" that people often experience when depressed.
Today, I passed a forest path that I cleared for a summer job as a teenager, when I was very depressed and almost crippled with social anxieties. Working on that path wasn't the whole story of how I got better, but it was one of the early moves in the right direction. Of course my work was sporadic, ill-organised, slow, and so on, but it was something where I made progress every day, received some positive feedback, and achieved something that looked impressive at the end.
Harlequin5942
28d ago
I came to similar conclusions based on reading/hearing the thoughts of Mark Noble, a neuroscientist:
https://feelinggood.com/2019/11/18/167-feeling-great-professor-mark-noble-on-team-cbt-and-the-brain/
Basically, a good rule-of-thumb in neuroscience is "what fires together, wires together." So classic talk therapy (going over thoughts again and again with an interested but passive, unjudgemental or supportive therapist) might actually strengthen neural pathways that lead to depressed, anxious, angry, or otherwise undesired mental states.
This also explains why, if possible, just ignoring thoughts like "I'm useless" or "This is going to end terribly" or "It's SO unfair!" can be remarkably effective at avoiding the concomitant emotional problems; I think there was some research on this recently. It also explains why men's "just don't dwell on it" coping strategies are associated with lower levels of depression, anxiety, and suicide attempts than among women, despite the ideology that "repression" is a bad thing. Men have more successful suicide attempts, but this can be explained by higher levels of aggression. It also explains research suggesting that the behavioural activation methods in CBT are the most effective, since these are focused on rapidly removing negative thoughts/habits (e.g. by falsifying your hypothesis that holding a house spider will kill you with its venom or that your old friends will hate you if you get back in touch with them).
Mark Noble argues that approaches like David Burns's TEAM therapy, which aim at rapid recovery, will be more successful, partly because they minimise the amount of time spent on therapy or brooding outside of therapy. Noble also thinks there also reasons to think that each element of TEAM (Testing emotions/therapist performance before and after sessions, Empathising with the client, Agenda-setting to deal with client resistance to change, Methods for rapid and client-calibrated recovery) has a neuroscientific basis for effectiveness.
However, even if TEAM doesn't have these properties, I think that the idea of gradual change and the elevation of emotional expression have quite possibly damaged millions of people's mental health.
Just responding to the manufacturing point, I don't think British voters particularly fetishise heavy industry so much as they feel that the return of these jobs will allow these poorer regions in the midlands and north to thrive again.
That's part of it, I agree. The LKY solution would be to build lots of houses where there are jobs, so more people can escape dependency and joblessness. If people complain about losing the green belt or excess urban density or the loss of the beautiful Essex countryside, then you're doing it right.
Also, in my experience Brits consistently conflate manufacturing output with manufacturing employment. Thatcher's policies led to a boom in UK manufacturing, just not UK manufacturing employment: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/10/22/1413987501531_wps_2_SPT_Ben1_jpg.jpg
So if you ask a Brit if they think that the UK produces more today than in the days of coal mining, Ravenscraig etc., they'll think, "Certainly not." This is partly because they conflate manufacturing with "a man's work" i.e. something dirty and smelly you do with your hands (but in public).
Of course, this sort of sentiment is almost universal, but for a while, the UK had the leaders and the electorate to plough forward with tough, realistic decisions.
finding an ideology not of mutual servitude but of domination and strength has a lot of appeal to disaffected western men.
Which is ironic, given the actual level of social power and approved autonomy of young men in most Islamic societies. One of the most successful efforts of feminists has been to persuade people that, in traditional societies, the overwhelmingly significant power differential is male vs. female. The lives of young male Muslims does not seem to be defined by domination and strength.
One introduction to what life is like for most young male Muslims, at least in the Arab world, is to see what it's like to be a soldier:
https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/meria/meria00_den01.html
Head-to-head competition among individuals is generally avoided, at least openly, for it means that someone wins and someone else loses, with the loser humiliated. This taboo has particular import when a class contains mixed ranks. Education is in good part sought as a matter of personal prestige, so Arabs in U.S. military schools take pains to ensure that the ranking member, according to military position or social class, scores the highest marks in the class. Often this leads to 'sharing answers' in class--often in a rather overt manner or junior officers concealing scores higher than their superior's.
American military instructors dealing with Middle Eastern students learn to ensure that, before directing any question to a student in a classroom situation, particularly if he is an officer, the student does possess the correct answer. If this is not assured, the officer will feel he has been set up for public humiliation. Furthermore, in the often-paranoid environment of Arab political culture, he will believe this setup to have been purposeful. This student will then become an enemy of the instructor and his classmates will become apprehensive about their also being singled out for humiliation--and learning becomes impossible.
It's tempting to think that American-style individualism and meritocracy is universal, but the opposite is true. Power over your wife (provided her family isn't more high status than yours, within the constraints of various reprisals by her family against you etc.) is a small degree of compensation for the more general submission that Muslim men (and men in most societies) must do to their parents, in-laws, and so on. And until you are an old man, that power is mostly exercised by your parents, by-proxy, since you are expected to obey them. So your "authority" over your wife is mostly power for your parents, including your mother-in-law (dominating you and your wife is HER compensation for submitting to HER parents/in-laws in the past and her current husband).
Of course, unless your parents also convert, you are instantly suspect and low status, precisely because your parents are infidels, so a greater degree of deference and forfeiture of power is likely to be required, unless you're rich, famous etc. (in which case Western dating is probably working fine for you). I suppose you might have some success in social acceptance if your in-laws essentially take all the power over you associated with both your parents and in-laws, but I wouldn't recommend that.
Frankly, the idea of men adopting a religion named "Submission" to gain domination and strength is one of those classic "buyer beware" cases. More generally, historically what has been called "patriarchy" was primarily power for patriarchs in relation to their social status. In your case, almost certainly, you aren't close to a patriarch, and even if you were, any power you would have relative to the West would be more than compensated for by your superiors (even once you are old, there are more high status patriarchs who have deep social authority over you) to whom you would be expected to submit.
I do understand why e.g. some submissive (sexually or otherwise) men convert to Islam, since it integrates them into a system where they get thoroughly dominated by men, women, and God. This can also appeal to wayward men who feel like they can't control themselves, since Islam offers a social and religious structure in which they are thoroughly controlled by older/more powerful men and women, and God himself.
For purchasing internationally (and thus for the arms industry) nominal GDP is more important. PPP is a better indicator of domestic prosperity. International suppliers care about what you can offer them at market exchange rates, they don't care about your domestic prices. If Israel can offer me $500 for some small electronics part and Iran can offer me $400, I don't care if it's cheaper to live in Iran.
Harlequin5942
10d ago
I believe that there are writers primarily motivated by money, but that's not the same as being emotionally uninvested in a story. (This is distinct from being passionate, in a strong sense, about the story.) However, yes, I think it's hard for someone to prove that they aren't emotionally invested at all. How does one prove such a thing? And is it really possible for an intelligent human to both understand a book like Crime and Punishment and read it and be emotionally indifferent to it?
Harlequin5942
24d ago
True, but that's the audience to whom attackers of J. K. Rowling are appealing. In the long run, small groups of politics-obsessed extremists can have a huge impact; just compare the changes on trans issues in the past 20 years.
Harlequin5942
11d ago
Suppose an American consulate were bombed by anybody, what would you expect the US response to be?
Let's imagine that Iran didn't just bomb a US embassy, but stormed it and took diplomats/civilians hostage. What would happen?
There's precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis
The US response would probably be to tighten economic sanctions on Iran, but to avoid military escalation. As the Ukraine war shows, the US is very wary of escalating conflicts, even with second-tier powers like Russia or Iran.
People saying "if we don't stop him now, he'll take Poland" are fabulists. This is not a realistic scenario.
What about, "If we don't stop him now, he'll attack Ukraine again"?
Just because Russia can't beat Ukraine militarily now, doesn't mean that Putin can't try for a second bite in the future, with the same rationales.
Harlequin5942
10d ago
The only reason the West got sucked into the conflict in its current capacity is because Ukraine put up an impressive resistance
Was it that, or more that Russia is much more pathetic (and apathetic - just look at their public's reaction or the level of mobilisation/defence spending that Putin can muster) than anyone expected?
From what I have seen, it's not so much that Ukrainians have been fighting well, and more that Russia's ability to project power beyond its borders is almost completely gone. Once they could dominate Eastern Europe, now they take months of grinding to gain worthless plains within a country that they once lorded over directly.
Yes, it's hard to tell cause and effect, but I am amazed by how much many women (almost always women) spend on endless and unsuccessful therapy.
I think most of us have experienced a spiral at some point of our lives, where we go over and over some topic in our heads until e.g. we hit some object or some booze. As far as I can tell, from my experience, the general factor that works in any mental health method (if they work at all) is some way of preventing and/or stopping those spirals. Going over negative thoughts repeatedly, with someone who either validates your opinions or at least stays neutral, seems like a good way to get into the habit of such spirals.
Conversely, I like Albert Ellis's iconoclastic approach, which was to playfully mock e.g. "mustabory" cognitions ("I must be successful" "I must be loved" etc.) and challenging them by the same standards one would challenge a hypothesis or practical proposal. That seems to be one of the parts of CBT that actually works, but many people shy away from it, and cultivate their neuroticisms to the point of becoming an identity. The extent to which this occurs with some trans people is unclear to me, but I can't imagine it helps with e.g. autogynophiliacs or autoandrophiliacs.
You need to consider demand for relocation as well as supply in the analysis. The expected gain in 1500 AD from moving from e.g. West Africa to Europe, given the risks and the relative differences in quality of life, were pretty small compared to the expected gain from moving in 2024. It wasn't like Europeans were fighting off hoards of African immigrants. And in 1900, what would the average African villager going to do in places where they don't speak the language, don't have much marketable skills, don't have immunity to local diseases, and don't have a welfare state to use?
In the Imperialist period, the transfer was the other way: hordes of European economic migrants swarming to the Americas and Africa.
In the UK, a lot of the black immigration was driven by things like African nurses coming over for work after 1945, during a period of labour shortages in the UK.
I would say that the key factors were (a) the Great Divergence in economic prosperity between the West and the Rest, due to the rise liberal capitalism in the former; (b) differences in population growth, and (c) better information transfer, so that even poor Africans could know that the poor in the West enjoyed a better standard of living.
Restrictions on immigration, with a few exceptions (like the White Australia policy) were less important than the above factors, I think.
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