JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
Formerly "SandwichWarrior" and "The Upright Man", may or may not be feral, is most certainly quixotic.
User ID: 4009
The character floor for political leadership was repealled on February 12th 1999, and wasn't it "the right" that voted to repeal it, but rather the same affluent liberals now complaining about their opponent's "lack of character".
Nor do I believe that Trump is "a reckless sociopath" or at least not any more so than Clinton or Obama were, rather he is simply not beholden to the pretenses of affluent liberals. You are trying to criticize him for not being "a proper gentleman" when not being a proper gentleman is a core component of his appeal.
You've got the valances backwards. "The olds" as you call them are generally either voting for Massie or they're voting for Democrats. Meanwhile Trump/MAGA's two strongest demographics remain "working age males" and "married couples with children".
Fundamentally, men are not allowed to actively and consciously attempt to improve themselves for sexual gain.
Maybe i just exist in a right-wing media bubble but this seems just immediately and obviously false to me. Telling guys to lose whieght, work out, learn a new skill, or pick up a hobby is overwhelmingly the norm, not the exception. If you think self-improvement is toxic/forbidden you might be succumbing to the woke mind-virus
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
5mo ago
The US taxpayer. See all the wailing and gnashing of teeth surrounding DOGE and the cuts to USAID early lat year.
If an NGO has to cease operations because DOGE cut its funding, it was never really a "Non-government Organization" to begin with.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
5mo ago
Clinton blazed the trail, Obama reinforced it, and now that the Democrats are getting a taste of thier own "machine" politics style medicine they don't like it.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
5mo ago
I was considering doing an effort post on the the decision and the DoT audits as sort of post-mortem/follow-up to my post from 3 months ago
But have been busy with normal life stuff.
I would recommend Freightwaves.com if you want an inside view.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
5mo ago
The montage song is easily one of my favorite comedy gags of all time.
For the record I'm not ignoring you, I just agree with a much of what you've said and don't have anything to add.
You accused me of "making baseless accusations", I tried to explain to you the reasoning behind (IE the basis) of my accusation, and you didn't try to refute any of my reasoning. You just reasserted that I was making making baseless accusations.
If you weren't looking for a better school or a better job why did you leave India? Why do you want to move to the US?
You say "Calling a social arrangement "correct" is necessarily a judgment that it is a proper way to organize society." and my reply to that is that for every complex problem there is a solution that is both "clearly correct" in the sense that it would remove the problem and also very "clearly wrong" in the normative sense. Maybe that's the disconnect.
Perhaps you'd like to examine my debate with @2rafa where I advocate for meritocracy as pure as can be feasible?
I'm reading the "as can be feasible" qualifier as a major red-flag but I'd be interested in a link.
I am not offering you different rationales I am trying to walk you through a chain of reasoning step by step, link by link.
When taken together, your comments in @Gaashk's thread on Freddie DeBoer and your top level post here appear to be arguing that what school you go to and how well you do in it doesn't really matter, and that instead we (as society) should pay more attention to demographic factors.
The obvious question that comes to mind is "Why pay attention to demographic factors at all?" the obvious answer that comes to mind is "As a means of predicting (and thus potentially manipulate) individual outcomes".
Now If "demographic factors determine individual outcomes" And "we want to predict (or potentially manipulate) individual outcomes" Than "It is rational to discriminate on the basis of such factors".
If "It is rational to discriminate on the basis of demographic factors" Than We have just established the "correctness" of instituting some sort of demographic caste system from first principles.
Again, please note that at no point have I made any statement regarding whether said system is "Good" "Moral" "Just" or even "Desirable". "Correct" is not a normative word, it is a descriptive one. If I wanted to make a normative statement I would not be using words like "Correct" and "Incorrect" I would be using words like "Right" and "Wrong".
Is there a step in the above chain of logic that you feel is in error? If so, which step?
Meanwhile "The Bigotry of Low Expectations" isn't something that I just pulled out of a hat. It's been a recurring GoP talking point for over a decade. It is most commonly deployed in opposition to Affirmative Action, and declining educational standards. The "bigotry" in question being the unstated assumption that some demographics simply can not compete on a level playing field. Ask @FCfromSSC if you don't believe me.
Blue Team: Students today just don't have the attention spans to read the classics, we need to revise our expectations.
Red Team: Students today would be able to read the classics just fine if you actually tried teaching them to read.
Would you agree with the statement that demographic factors determine individual outcomes more than quality of schooling?
If so, i would argue that my accusations are far from baseless.
Please recall that i very purposefully side stepped the question of whether the caste system was "good", to focus on whether it was a "correct" or "natural" way to organize society. I never claimed you liked or "endorsed" it. Please also recall that in that in the line I quoted you implied that the US also has a caste system and that it is simply less legible.
The link was to George Bush's famous speech about "the bigotry of low expectations", which is the first thing that is going to come to a lot of Americans' minds if when they hear someone trying to argue that some demographics are just bad at stuff.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
6mo ago
Because there are a lot of powerful people who do not want the problem to be fixed.
Like i said, i initially held my tongue because i understood how my statement could be read as uncharitable or antagonistic. It was not my intention to offend you, and if did i apologize.
That said, can you see how someone might come away from the your post with the impression that you believe that demographics determine individual outcomes more than quality of schooling? If so, do you understand how such a claim is going to be read by a lot of Americans?
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
6mo ago
That's not meritocracy, that is credentialism.
Im not tapping @faceh's sign, I'm slapping it like it owes me money.
The Indian system is more legible and crueler about it; the American system is less legible and crueler about hiding it.
I considered bringing up the issue of the caste system and why it triggers such a visceral resction in a lot of Westerners in last week's thread on Indian immigration but I felt it might come across as uncharitable or needlessly antagonistic. But now that the topic has come up again I might as well say my peice.
All the talk of Indian cultural and genetic diversity is a distraction from the root issue that there are really only two sorts of immigrants from the subcontinent.
The first sort is people like yourself and other users here who see the caste system as simply "natural" and "correct". (Note that I am purposefully side-stepping the question of whether it is "good"). Thier reasons for leaving the subcontinent and coming to the West are ultimately opportunitistic, they're chasing a better job or a better school that they can leverage to raise thier status amongst thier peers back home.
The second sort are the ones who leave the subcontinent explicitly to escape the system.
Ive known plenty of both and have always found the latter far more amenable to work with than the former because as a rule they work harder and are far more grateful for the opportunities presented to them.
Americans love an Apu. What they hate is having thier good will exploited by people who not only do not share thier values, but who actively look down thier noses at those values and the people who hold them.
...and the mask slips.
I would "fix black violence", the same way I would all violence. That is by ensuring that a would-be bad-guy with a gun will be outnumbered by potential good-guys with guns where ever he goes, and then allow nature to take it's course.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
6mo ago
I think Freddie's fundamental problem is that he could stop the trolly at any time but that would mean admitting that he made a mistake.
It turns out that privileging equal outcomes at the expense of equal opportunity makes everything worse for everybody.
Yes, there were slaves under the constitution, but there were also black men and women who were not slaves and said "free men" could own guns and vote just as much as any other man.
Ok so you’re just picking and choosing what is “ok” to conserve?
Yes_Chad.jpg and I believe that a overwhelming majority of US Conservatives would agree with my take on your proposal.
But the ideals in the constitution included a ban on black people from owning guns.
Please, quote me the article and the paragraph in the Constitution, or the relevant line in the Declaration or Federalist Papers.
Also please stop trying to pretend that you suddenly "mostly agree" with me that limiting rights to black people is a bad thing, if you sincerely believed that, you wouldn't be arguing the point in the first place.
Ironically I would point to both Elon and Trump as some of the few modern founders who really do seem to be "grounded in day to day reality" and to me a lot of the complaints I see about their alleged "bad opinions" read to me like the professor's complaints in this scene from Back To School.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
6mo ago
If you think that Richard Hanania or Curtis Yarvin wield even 1/1,000th of the power and influence that someone like Elon Musk or Joe Rogan does, I think that you are deluding yourself.
Why would anyone waste 3000 words trying to "elevate the weight" of their ideas when they can just implement those ideas directly?
Conservative means to keep things how they were.
No that's not what that "Conservative" means, that's what historically revisionist Marxists like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky like to claim it means when straw-manning their opposition. A conservative is someone who has some specific thing that they are trying to conserve. That is the etymological root of the word.
Now within a given context that "specific thing" may be "the Status Quo", but within the context of US politics the thing that "conservatives" are broadly understood to be "conserving" are the constitutional order and the ideals put forth by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence.
I question the assertion that they are trying to appeal to middle class voters rather than the terminally online.
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