HaroldWilson
2yr ago
a proposed bill to take kids away from parents who expressed resistance or skepticism
What bill? I hope you're not referring to SB107 because that isn't what that did.
HaroldWilson
7d ago
the left worshiped him.
Maybe for a short while but left-wing opinion turned cool on Obama surprisingly quickly, and the 'anti-imperialist' Chomskyite left never liked him. As early as 2009 not-exactly-radical-lefist Bill Maher said that:
Barack Obama is not a socialist -- he’s not even a liberal....this country needs a left wing. It doesn’t have it, and part of the reason is the media... I don’t know if this administration has really caught up to the idea that Americans are a lot more liberal, perhaps, than we think they are- or they think they are
More importantly, I think the election denial/J6 clearly puts MAGA a class apart from any other modern American political movement in terms of cultishness.
HaroldWilson
28d ago
Very dependent on individual experience, of course, but it definitely seems like Twitter is much more of a slop factory under Musk. If we just look at things which are not just directly related to the changed political valence of the platform, scams and bots are way more prevalent than they used to be, even paid advertisements are pushing scams and the comments under any big post are utterly worthless because of the boosting of blue-check replies
HaroldWilson
2mo ago
naked attacks on suburbanites by urban enthusiasts
If you like the suburbs so much then don't go to Manhattan, nobody is forcing you to do so.
HaroldWilson
3mo ago
Why should my state put the interest of someone who has zero right to be here above mine?
The point is that the same logic which is being applied here could be used to deport and abandon citizens. Just ignore due process, do what you want and then, oops, looks like you're in a tinpot dictatorship now so nothing we can do because there's no way to redress your grievance.
'I don't care about due process because this guy was guilty anyway' is not a very coherent position.
HaroldWilson
8mo ago
who had to have the rest of the party candidates drop out
I never understand this line. Is the idea that all of the moderate candidates were just going to keep splitting the vote right up until the convention, and then just, idk, let Bernie have it on a plurality or something? The dynamics of primaries demand that candidates drop out to endorse similarly positioned frontrunners. Do you think it's just a coincidence the 2016 and 2008 Democratic primaries also become two-horse races?
and couldn't manage to get anyone to show up when he did'
'Enthusiasm' is overrated. For every Obama or Trump there is a Starmer or Scholz who coasts by on the incompetence or divisiveness of their opponent - that is definitely not unique to Biden. Similarly;
secretly such a charismatic candidate that he shattered voting results
The obvious explanation is negative polarisation - maybe Biden didn't drive huge turnout himself, but it's very plausible to Trump did both for and against him.
I am also to simply ignore Georgia closing up polling stations due to a water main bursting, sending observers home, then dumping votes that went 100% for Biden that were totally already counted before Republican observers were given the boot, nothing to see here, it's honestly disturbing you'd even think to question such a thing, really. I am to simply take in stride that observers were kicked out, and windows blocked from outside observation, totall normal, totally legit, only a loony would think there might even be the barest scintilla of a possibility that something untoward was going on.
This is just nonsense. The water main 'bursting' happened a 6 a.m. on the morning of election day, disrupting things for a few hours, way before any shift towards Biden was beginning to be observed. There was no big tranche for Biden co-incident with the water problem. The whole kicking out observers thing I have only ever seen reported third-hand by people like Giuliani - the Chief Investigator of the SOS's offices has testified that this never occurred, no doubt you don't trust her but I'm curious what in particular convinces you this did happen.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
If you want to practice blind allegiance to a sacred document, go to a church/mosque/synagogue. That is no way to run a country.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
It must have seemed fairly unambiguous to the Japanese-American soldiers at the time given that they were willing to risk their lives.
The survival of his kin sounds like enough of a motivation
I am glad that he managed to rise above man's baser instincts.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
A regime led by a bureaucrat that owes his seat to a coup
Probably not much continuing here now thar these points have come up in your other comment but this is absurd. This is just how the Westminster system functions and even this party-orientated system has been the norm for coming up on a century. It's called the 1922 Committee for a reason.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
If Miyagi was a true Patriot, he wouldn't have fought for the army of the State that killed his wife only to return to a country that still hated him, he'd been bombing recruitment centers instead.
With what end? All that would achieve is assisting an unambiguously far, far worse 'tyranny' in the war.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
You literally can't get much stricter than Chicago in restricting firearms, and you also can't find many places with a higher murder rate
Speaking of, NH has some of the most permissive laws and also a negligible homicide rate. Again kinda makes the point for me.
This is ridiculous. One cannot prove anything with one or two data points. To take just one example, here is some tentative evidence that permitting decreases homicides, and RTC laws have the opposite effect. I'm obviously not saying that just because there's a study here you have to agree with me, but at least engage with the literature rather than saying 'look at Chicago' and calling it a day.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29785569/
The odds of a fire extinguisher protecting you from a house fire of any kind, let alone an arsonist, is incredibly low...
You see the subtle error in reasoning here?
Fire extinguishers do not impose wider social costs.
And because those instances are intentionally given outsized attention by the media who has every intention of maximizing the fear felt by their viewership.
Different thing, but you seem to be framing this as a fault of the media but surely if there is blame to be assigned here it has to go to the consumer, given that the media is surely just satisfying the demand for such news which we all demonstrate by consuming it as much as we do.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Two wolves and a lamb voting who's for dinner may constitute above-board, by-the-numbers, all nice and legal democracy... but an autistic loyalty to the rules while shrugging your shoulders at the result has confused means with ends.
So essentially your argument boils down to 'my preferred candidates and policy preferences are losing'?
HaroldWilson
2mo ago
"using it as it was meant to be used?"
Fundamentally he seems either deliberately unwilling or simply unable to comprehend that the interviewer is asking about means rather than ends. Saying 'I was elected to close the borders/change our terms of trade' is just a total non-sequitur response to the question 'have you expanded the powers of the presidency'. It would be one thing to say 'I don't care about process, I care about results', but he doesn't say that, he's just talking past the question.
HaroldWilson
6mo ago
the movement
What movement? Trump heads no movement (no global one anyway), he has no ideology other than narcissism and vague sentimentalism about the past. He has no coherent ideal or theory about how the world system ought to work in the way that Wilson, FDR, H.W. Bush or Churchill did, certainly none that can be reconciled with his actions - or inaction - as President first time round.
HaroldWilson
8mo ago
If you're not voting with reference to the outcome, why bother going at all? If it's just a question of making yourself feel better, stay at home and throw darts at a picture of Kamala Harris, and let the people who actually care about who becomes President do the voting.
HaroldWilson
8mo ago
This is the exact kind of thinking he is criticising. It would be more than a little narcissistic to choose whom to elect as President based on where each of the candidates fits into your own personal psychodrama (his word not mine) - that might be the narrative most personally compelling to him, but it isn't objectively of any importance compared to everything else at stake in the election. Voting isn't a question of 'aid and comfort', it's a dispassionate selection between the range of options offered to you. And Scott is saying that one shouldn't let personal animus or revulsion lead one into an erroneous selection. If one objects to Harris on the grounds she is closely associated with the broader cultural milieu that 'cancelled' Scott, one must also consider that Trump is personally extremely quick to 'cancel' or attempt to do so, and you aren't released from that obligation of considering what the alternative is just because you really hate the left-liberal establishment.
HaroldWilson
8mo ago
This line of thought is actually highly atypical. Even in 2022/2023 iirc a majority of Americans rated their own economic circumstances as good/improving, they just thought the country as a whole wasn't.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
400 years
Of which well over 200 were spent in chattel slavery, and the following century as a legal underclass.
Try sending your kid to a 90% black school and ask them how easy it is to fit in because everyone eats peanut butter
I suspect it would be substantially easier to fit in than doing so in a school in rural Romania.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Pretty much any measure of inflation is coming down at the moment, and is approaching normal levels. And most importantly, wages are rising even faster.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
I don't think this is about race at all. Plenty of the other pictures which are examples of good photos show the mayor with exclusively white people. The point is that regular Londoners probably don't spend their weekends strolling along the most famous and photographed portions of the river. With the eye just behind them it looks like a stock photo or like tourists/day-trippers, not average Londoners going about their business. Now, overall they do say they want diversity, but that seems perfectly reasonable, and there is no reason to think that they therefore believe every single photo must contain someone not white. It's just that overall the Mayor should be photographed with a broad range of people; young and old, white, Asian and black, people in hard hats and people in suits etc. etc.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
people
Well, a person. I'm not being pedantic, one piece of evidence is always insufficient to demonstrate a broad trend, because that you can prove anything.
Could also point to other comments (eg SNP leadership)
Such as?
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Before I respond with anything else is your genuine belief that the Chinese state does not restrict freedom of speech to any considerably greater degree than the British state?
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
you can put me in that camp that we are an evolved species with deeply rooted programming on what leads us to a happy life. And homosexuality to me seems like a couple of your genes are off that may individually have benefits but combined turned your gay, but the vast majority of your genetic programming is still happier in traditional heterosexual relationships. As a society we have decided that a small bit of a person their sexuality should dominate the totality of that person.
This all sounds very Just So. I mean what can anyone who disagrees with this do except to say that what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence?
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
If you believe this you probably consume too much low-quality media. Turn off the TV and pick up the Financial Times, Economist or other such prestige publications.
I don't think the average Democrat engages in much cancelling, or tries to While certainly they (and I) would oppose some (most?) of the measures Republicans introduce here and there, it still wouldn't, I think, stand as a great priority.
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