HaroldWilson
15hr ago
No, I actually don't
That's fine and all, but if that's your attitude you'll probably lose in the long run. If the demonstrably dangerous and mentally unstable having easy access to guns is just one of the risks one has to incur to have gun rights, it seems obvious that more people will decide that gun rights aren't worth protecting.
HaroldWilson
16hr ago
I think it's a perfectly coherent view - the point is that she (Sanchez) is condemning herself (and in a small way all women) to infantilisation. Getting fake tits is essentially indulging and perpetuating male chauvinism - she should be satisfied with her own personhood without having to surgically alter herself in order to please men. The broader point has been a feminist theme for centuries.
Wollstonecraft:
Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. Men have various employments and pursuits which engage their attention, and give a character to the opening mind; but women, confined to one, and having their thoughts constantly directed to the most insignificant part of themselves, seldom extend their views beyond the triumph of the hour. But were their understanding once emancipated from the slavery to which the pride and sensuality of man and their short-sighted desire, like that of dominion in tyrants, of present sway, has subjected them, we should probably read of their weaknesses with surprise.
HaroldWilson
2d ago
this interesting chart
I don't think this really means anything. It certainly doesn't imply that 'actually the US education system is a good as X's'. If you let all the other countries filter out their historic underclass then they'd probably go up as well. Whatever reason you ascribe that underclass status to, it has to be at least partly self-reinforcing a la Ogbu.
HaroldWilson
2d ago
Not really because, as well as the things Stefferi points out, Stalinism is a much narrower concept than 'leftism'. When someone asks for 50 Stalins, the whole point is that they're not actually asking Stalin to do anything different, it's just theatrical non-criticism - if there is real criticism it is directed at the rest of society for failing carry forward Stalinism with sufficient zeal. When Bernie criticises Obama, he is asking him to be more (or at all) leftist, but in ways that actually demands he changes central elements of his policy and ideology.
Not a one of those criticisms of Obama is more severe than criticism I see of Trump.
From a like source? The NYT is literally the archetypal Obama-ite left-liberal internationalist publication. If anyone should show him unquestioning support, it would be them. The equivalent would be equal criticism coming from, say, Newsmax or Breitbart.
though feel free to look back on Russiagate if you want similar elite conspiracies. There are plenty of Democrats decrying the election, just like with Gore, just like with the next election they'll lose
These are completely different. With Russigate, no-one of any significance was suggesting that there was anything compromised about the voting process itself, which obviously crosses into very new and dangerous territory. Same with Gore - there was no suggestion of fraudulent malfeasance, the dispute being about recount boundaries and timings etc. Plus, luckily, we have a like-for-like way of comparing these different instances. How did the losing party react in the days and weeks after it became clear they would not win?
Hillary:
Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans. This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for and I’m sorry that we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country... We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.
Gore:
Now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken. Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court's decision, I accept it. I accept the finality of this outcome which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College. And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession. I also accept my responsibility, which I will discharge unconditionally, to honor the new President-elect and do everything possible to help him bring Americans together in fulfillment of the great vision that our Declaration of Independence defines and that our Constitution affirms and defends... And now, my friends, in a phrase I once addressed to others: it's time for me to go.
Trump (in a speech longer after the election than Gore):
They cheated and they rigged our presidential election, but we will still win it. We will still win it. We'll still win it. And they're going to try and rig this election too. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal. No, we continue to fight. We've had some great moments. We just need somebody with courage to do what they have to do because everyone knows it's wrong... there's no way this could have happened other than the obvious cheating or a rigged election. There's no way it could have happened
There is just no comparison and it's blindingly obvious.
The only reason no Democrat President is pushing this is that there's no Democrat President, period.
No mainstream Democrat (as in a sitting Senator o/e) ever cast any doubt on the integrity of the voting counting process in 2024. Next.
The government is not more sacred than the people it rules. We are citizens, not subjects, and not lessers.
Obviously I don't disagree. But the J6 riots were different because they attacked the very legitimacy of the democratic process - their aim was to, by force, overturn the result of a democratic election and install a new leader. That was and is unique, as was the extent to which they were indulged and encouraged by Trump.
And of course, once that context couldn't be repeated, Trump won again. Fortifying an election, and loudly bragging about it, makes it easier to counter the second time around. The Trump campaign was much more aggressive this time around, to their success.
Cult mindset. Luckily I'm well adjusted and can believe that sometimes Trump wins fair elections and sometimes he loses them. Your mindset literally cannot comprehend the world in which a majority of voters simply voted against Trump in one election. It's also completely unfalsifiable, another cult warning sign. When he loses, it was rigged. When he wins, he fought back against the rigging.
HaroldWilson
3d ago
I understand a 50 Stalins criticism to be that someone's positions aren't extreme enough and he should lean into them even more
If that were true then Stalin would be a desperately confusing example to use for the reasons @Stefferi points out.
It was the first one I found by googling that sounded good enough.
Fine but the two are obviously not equivalent. Manchin was a sitting Senator and former state governor. 'Dace Potas' is a journalist who is two years out of college whose various bios tout him as a writer for such pillars of journalism as USA Today and something called 'The College Fix'.
HaroldWilson
3d ago
Sanders is claiming that Obama isn't left wing enough, which is a 50 Stalins criticism
This is very silly. On this basis it is impossible for a left-winger to give anything but 50 Stalins criticism to those on the centre-left. Obviously Sanders will claim Obama isn't left-wing enough, because he's... to his left.
HaroldWilson
3d ago
Not really - the point is that if you don't want to have children, unless you are actually a practicing and believing Catholic (o/e) there is no reason at all to use 'natural' family planning. It is currently low-status, but it's also worse than the alternatives - not that those two are necessarily connected, but they are both true. Using your 'conceptional' decisions as a means of reacting against the aesthetics of the modern world is very silly indeed.
HaroldWilson
3d ago
it's not at all mainstream opinion
Being very critical of Obama wasn't mainstream among Democrats, but obviously being critical of your own sitting President is generally unheard of these days. How many mainstream Republicans criticised GWB? Left and right factions of the Democrats criticised Obama to what I would consider a normal degree for a sitting President - there were Blue dogs who attacked him semi-regularly and some progressives who did the same.
That most obvious bellwether of mainstream liberal opinion, the New York Times wrote an endorsement for re-election in 2012 that was very enthusiastic, yes, but very conventional and offered such qualifications as
We have criticized individual policy choices that Mr. Obama has made over the last four years, and have been impatient with his unwillingness to throw himself into the political fight
Elsewhere, the NYT editorial board was sharply critical of Obama on all sorts of issues all the time. There are too many to list here but here are a few from various points in his Presidency:
Deepwater Horizon:
But a year and a half into this presidency, the contemplative nature that was so appealing in a candidate can seem indecisive in a president. His promise of bipartisanship seems naïve. His inclination to hold back, then ride to the rescue, has sometimes made problems worse.
It certainly should not have taken days for Mr. Obama to get publicly involved in the oil spill, or even longer for his administration to start putting the heat on BP for its inadequate response and failure to inform the public about the size of the spill. (Each day, it seems, brings new revelations about the scope of the disaster.) It took too long for Mr. Obama to say that the Coast Guard and not BP was in charge of operations in the gulf and it’s still not clear that is true.
He should not have hesitated to suspend the expanded oil drilling program and he should have moved a lot faster to begin political and criminal investigations of the spill. If BP was withholding information, failing to cooperate or not providing the ships needed to process the oil now flowing to the surface, he should have told the American people and the world
Libya:
Mr. Obama made the wrong choice, trying to evade his responsibility under the 1973 War Powers Act to seek Congressional authorization within 60 days of introducing armed forces into "hostilities" -- or terminate the operation. The White House claimed that the Pentagon's limited operations are not the sort of "hostilities" covered by the act. It is not credible.
NSA:
Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.
2011 Budget:
What Mr. Obama’s budget is most definitely not is a blueprint for dealing with the real long-term problems that feed the budget deficit: rising health care costs, an aging population and a refusal by lawmakers to face the inescapable need to raise taxes at some point. Rather, it defers those critical issues
Privacy Bill:
The draft bill released by the White House on Friday only vaguely reflects those ideas and is riddled with loopholes. It seems tailored to benefit Internet firms like Google and Facebook and little-known data brokers like Acxiom that have amassed detailed profiles of individuals. For good reason, many privacy groups and some Democratic lawmakers have criticized the draft.
there are entire Reddit communities devoted to conspiracies about 2024, you know
I can't quite tell if you're joking. On the one hand, we have the sitting President of the United States alleging that millions of votes were cast fraudulently. On the other, we have "Reddit communities". I wonder, might there be a slight asymmetry between these two things?
Indeed, J6 was actually uniquely acceptable compared to other protests, given it actually directed itself against the ruling elites
This is such a strange rendering of the riot in abstract terms. Indeed it was directed against ruling elites, but unfortunately in this case those elites were democratically elected representatives of the people certifying a fair election, and the rioters were targeting them because the process had failed their cult leader. Good job for those J6ers that the same election riggers who had the power to magically turn the result against Trump didn't show up for 2024 (or 2016), I suppose. Perhaps they overslept.
HaroldWilson
3d ago
the current government controls people through threatening their driving licenses
This is a pretty odd thing to say given how generously drivers are treated in much of the Anglosphere. To actually get banned from driving in the US or UK you have to be preposterously negligent. Recently a footballer here in Britain was caught speeding eight times in as many weeks (and none of them were even close), lied to the police after some of them and was given a driving ban of less than a month. There are perhaps few less sympathetic groups in the Western world than suspended drivers.
HaroldWilson
3d ago
Well we make policy for aggregates, not for individuals. X number of possible self-defence use cases obviously cannot outweigh an infinite number of cases of firearms purchased by unsuitable individuals, there are no solutions etc. etc.
HaroldWilson
3d 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
13d ago
That's why I said 'even'. Anyway the thing is you have to actually understand the consensus to know why you're against it. People aren't avoiding the Economist because they have considered and rejected the sort of mainstream centre/centre-right arguments it advances about given issues, they just find the things it writes about boring.
low-mid-high IQ meme.
I would bet my house on the IQ of the average Economist reader being higher than that of the average consumer of almost any new media/social media outlet/person with a non-trivial following.
HaroldWilson
13d ago
Fine, but I simply don't believe anyone goes to social media because they think that's where the informed people are, they just can't be bothered to read. 95% of people wouldn't even have the basic knowledge with which to begin questioning something they read in the Economist.
HaroldWilson
13d ago
Better reporting: Respondents wanted journalists to spend their time investigating powerful people and providing depth rather than chasing algorithms for clicks. Employing more beat reporters who were true specialists in their field was another suggestion for improving trust.
I'd like this to be true but it seems very trivially not. Not in the sense that most people wouldn't say this, I don't doubt that at all, but they are either lying or have no self-knowledge. If people wanted depth they would be deserting popular 'mainstream' news for the most high-brow alternatives, not the worst social media slop. If they wanted to they could even just go and pick up a copy of the Economist and become part of the most well-informed 5% of the public on world news, but they don't.
HaroldWilson
21d ago
they co-opted sacred heart month
This feels slightly paranoid. There are only twelve months in the year and whichever one you chose you could be accused of co-opting something. The Sacred Heart month is also a strange choice to try to co-opt as an act of totalisation because it has almost no cultural currency in the Anglosphere except maybe within American Catholic communities; in fact it it's relevance is fast becoming exclusively as a counter-signal.
HaroldWilson
24d 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
I mean you've put in a bit of an autistic way but the idea that women shouldn't indulge the male gaze is a very common feminist one across time. This is the whole idea that lies behind critiques of 'lipstick feminism'. It's by no means a consensus view, in fact there has been a lot of debate on whether fashion/beauty is liberatory and agentic, or infantilising, but either way it's definitely not an uncommon feminist position.
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