Jesweez
15hr ago
If that’s your model of the country then you would also be in favor of resisting unjust laws, which is how that structure got slowly dismantled over time. Either way the moral imperative shakes out the same.
It’s not a game, it’s the government storming your city and demanding to see everyone’s papers and perhaps snatching up your friends, terrorizing people to be afraid to go out of their houses. I personally would feel like a coward if I didn’t somehow do something against that. At the same time I’m sure I wouldn’t do so because I don’t get involved in putting my ass on the line over politics. I know that about myself, but if the agents were on the streets of my city, where many of my friends are indeed immigrants, I’d feel like a piece of shit for not doing something about it. A lot of people are like me but they are willing to put their own ass in danger for this sort of thing, and I respect that.
I’m interested in this seeming total lock-in to your own perspective that’s happening among many people on the right on this subject. You’d feel the same way if you perceived that masked thugs from the government descended on your own town and started harassing and snatching people from your social network. Wouldn’t you?
Jesweez
16hr ago
It’s always been an American intuition that resisting a government which is domineering you in ways that you think are unjust is the right thing to do. Thats part of the unofficial founding ethos of the country. Giving federal agents prowling your neighborhood a hard time is one of the most American things you could do.
Jesweez
1d ago
Yeah, basically the goal is to ethnically cleanse the country, and if you resist the agents it’s their right to kill you
I just know that I’ve lived my entire life at the epicenter of what you guys seem afraid of, the bluest parts of the country and among college campuses.
I’ve never had anybody say anything or act in any way which would leave me to believe they harbored anything at all towards me for being white, nor have I ever seen this directed at anybody else.
So what am I supposed to do? Cower in fear of something I’ve only seen in extreme online videos? Or just live my normal life with my normal friends and not give a damn about the obsessions of the hyper political terminally online types?
Even if I were concerned with that sort of thing it’s a wave that already had its crest and has been falling since like ‘21. Which holy shit was now 5 years ago, time is moving too fast man…
In the end, just because I believe that certain people are race obsessed losers (sorry, speaking generally here, applicable to both sides), that wouldn’t change my views on things like healthcare spending, environmental protection, the value of scientific research, international cooperation, etc.
Jesweez
6d ago
Nor does your hypersensitivity.
The vast majority of people are normal people.
The online world intensifies a tiny percentage of extreme perspectives and actions.
People on the right are very sensitive to picking these very specific types of bad vibes from social media and pushed to them from their algorithms and then attributing it to everyday reality. (Similar problem obviously exists on the left but focused on different issues).
The world is not that bad out here.
The argument that I should become more sensitive to online microagressions and less in tune with the actual social world I inhabit is unbecoming.
My thesis on recent world events is that there is one simple explanation for everything Trump is doing. Namely, as a classic textbook narcissist, having also risen during the uniquely self centered context of the ‘80s and ‘90s business and television culture of the US, and having been propelled to the highest echelons a narcissist could taste, he’s beginning to sense his own physical and political mortality, certainly moreso than in his first term, and knowing that people will try to tarnish his name once he is out of power, he thus wants one and only one thing. For his name to appear prominently in the history books.
This is very simple and obvious in retrospect, but it ties everything together. Renaming major geographical features. Demolishing and rebuilding part of the White House. His fixation on the Nobel peace prize. (Note the letter he wrote today to Norway, linking Greenland to not getting the peace prize). Finally, major territorial expansion. Wait, that wasn’t the final one. Undoing the world order that was in place since the world wars. Now that would do it.
He’s seen himself as a world order undoer for quite some time now, perhaps since the beginning of his rise to power. But this, this is his greatest taste of the raw history changing might that has yet been possible. Either get Greenland and change the US map forever. Or be the sole reason for the undoing of NATO. History will never be able to ignore him.
What I don’t know is whether he cares much about whether the historical changes that he will oversee and be forever tied to his name in this ultimate egoic consummation will end up being good for the United States or not. There are obvious downsides to destroying a world order which has been meticulously crafted to put you yourself at the top. But riding the coattails of that world historical success was not fit for a man who’s ego needed to be propelled to similar—no, greater!—historical status.
Narcissism often flares out into the absurd. And we seem well along that track. But just how far it will attempt to go, in this, one of world history’s most consequential cases, remains to be seen. Trump is now a great man of history and we can only wait to see what of our era will survive his grandeur.
Edit: of course, file this for an early contender for the most obvious insight of the year award. I just think it’s a more congruent explanation for the whole set of second term Trump events that we’ve seen than a lot of other explanations I see floating around for recent events.
Jesweez
6d ago
Yes, he is acutely retardedly wrong.
He’s giving up the entire system of being the central node in the worlds largest military alliance and being the privileged position in its whole economic organization just to gain a bit of extra territory.
The territory that he’d be functionally losing far outweighs the frozen island.
But I guess “undid the world order” and “committed hegemon suicide” are both solid ways for him to get into the history books and this may be actually the main thing he’s aiming at.
Jesweez
6d ago
The left is made mostly of white people and I’ve never felt anything bad directed at me for being one
Jesweez
1mo ago
It could also be that when Arjuna was on the battlefront of Kurukshetra, facing his own kin on the other side, and thus began to question his moral duty, it was at this very moment that Lord Krishna lowered his disguise and revealed himself as an incarnation of Vishnu, and lectured him specifically that his dharmic duty was indeed not to back down from the battlefield, but rather to stand and fight, which was in fact a manifestation of his divine duty and even of the selfless love (karma yoga) that he was incarnated to embody, and that Arjuna, upon hearing this and understanding the truth of the eternal nature of existence, took up his bow and began to fight.
Jesweez
1mo ago
My new theory is that self-accepting gays and sexually malformed people become the far left whereas self-denying members of those categories become the far right.
Since Biblical times, true engine of history has been and will remain the queers.
Jesweez
1mo ago
I understand that these may be uncomfortable thoughts to consider.
However, I would just like to reiterate that if anyone is suffering in this way, please come forward privately.
With better data on this phenomenon, we might be able to improve outcomes for a generation of sufferers through evidence based practice.
It’s official. Hitler had a micropenis. Furthermore, Nick Fuentes is either a closeted homosexual or a 30 year old virgin.
I’m wondering to what extent far right political worldviews are influenced by the denial of sexual malformations or shortcomings. I decided that this forum would be a good place to explore the extent of this and perhaps collect more data on the phenomenon.
If any posters here at the motte would like to participate in an anonymous questionnaire, please DM me.
can join the military, or you can go to a national forest to survey land for a year.
Bringing back the civilian conservation corps would be cool
Good new deal program there that could get much broader support than only compulsory military service. Also would probably be a bigger benefit for the mental health of the youth, not to mention benefitting the country.
Even things like beautifying broken down or trashed areas, give people a way to serve the country that actually is visibly improving it.
I think both sides could agree on this sort of thing, but it’d be hard not to politicize it.
Jesweez
4mo ago
Those are obviously just the high profile ones. Most of these from our time won’t be remembered in a couple decades.
Jesweez
4mo ago
Yeah the part where they invaded everyone to conduct industrial scale ethnic cleansing campaigns does kind of overshadow their views on tax policy.
Jesweez
4mo ago
By that you mean "moral" corruption
Maybe that is the deeper issue but I had more in mind things like: the president and his associates running cryptocurrency scams on their supporters
That sort of thing didn’t used to happen in the US or even the developed world from what I know.
The moral corruption I perceive is that suddenly the US started acting in ways that I associate with third world governments, and there was only tepid criticism.
Well, as long as they were the correct color. They had quotas for that, just like they did in the '50s, for the same reasons they had them in the '50s
Affirmative action type stuff to me is a side note to what I’m describing.
I agree with conservatives about basing acceptance for jobs and studies on merit instead of skin color.
That doesn’t change the fact that we’ve essentially renounced the role as the country that hoovers up all the intellectual talent and high agency individuals from the world and puts them to work building things here on our soil.
Science that doesn't replicate isn't science, and the initiatives to do R&D were also suffering from the "so long as they're the right color" problem. I guess it's the age-old dilemma where you can either do science or you can sacrifice it to be anti-racist, just from the right's definition of anti-racism instead of the left's. Naturally, this is moral corruption to the left, just like ending racism the first time was to the right.
Look, science has flaws, but it works, damn it!
The survivability of cancer has increased dramatically over the past decades. That’s just one (set of) disease(s). Dementia, Parkinson’s, AIDS, diabetes, MS, arthritis, many of these conditions have seen outcomes quietly yet drastically improve over these past decades. Science is working and still acts as a fundamental engine advancing human wellbeing.
Materials science, computational techniques, and even odd niche branches of science such as looking at what chemicals are in the saliva of lizards, have delivered huge advances in recent decades. And surprisingly, most of this has happened in the US!!
You might be destined to get Alzheimer’s in the future and science poses the ability to save your very brain and being from a terrible fate. Or maybe you will experience a horrific accident and regenerative medicine techniques might save your life from becoming a living hell.
Scientific advancement is occurring, and is good for all of us, and despite our comfort and confidence in continuous advancement, it’s not guaranteed.
The current administration has been a storm that passed though science funding at every level, ripping up grants, discouraging a generation of youth from getting into the discipline, and discouraging people who typically would have come here to work in our labs to stay away and go elsewhere.
The sheer strength of our position as the center of the scientific world might allow it to hunker down and withstand all of this, but that’s not at all the outcome you would hope for.
No, only China. Nobody else invested into the tooling to manufacture the panels for the same reason the US couldn't- too expensive. The West has already lost the battle for renewable energy sovereignty (and already won the battle for forcing Europe into a dependence on American natural gas by successfully provoking a war in Ukraine); the only question is whether we want to pay now to redevelop indigenous green energy generation capacity, or pay later by having to do that anyway when China starts making diplomatic demands in exchange.
I agree and this one is complicated, but we had a role to play in a technological revolution that the entire world is going through and we decided it’s better to sit back and actually attack it rather than get in and help shape it.
It’s like if in the past upon seeing that the English were advancing with this new concept of coal fired trains and industry, we had decided to actively combat its establishment here to preserve the timber industry.
China has the lead but we could have played a role with innovating in this domain and then at least competing to help lead the global buildout that is (genuinely) occurring. Instead, China is the one and only benefactor, and for this is leaps and bounds ahead with the know how to produce and install this stuff and is doing so in every country across the planet. Not to mention that in any conflict has a decent shot at kicking our ass with massive swarms of cheaply made drones and batteries.
Were obviously just missing out on the next supercycle of technological development on the planet when we could have at least tried to be in the game.
Like I say we did stay in the game on AI, since it was genuinely our innovation which came from the US academia and tech industry. Currently it’s the only thing keeping the American economy afloat (although probably also is in big bubble territory).
But instead of navigating this time of challenges skillfully, focusing on our fortifying our competitive strengths, we just adopted the posture of an angry inwardly-turned nation that started attacking its own foundations of power and influence based on passing culture war freak out stuff.
In other words, stuff like affirmative action and all that is just some silly ornamentation we put on top of the most successful engine of power and influence of the modern world. We could have taken away the mild productivity-decreasing AA stuff and kept the foundation intact! Instead, we started chopping the entire thing down.
The baby can only be thrown out with its bathwater for so long. The lightening might be very hard to get back into the bottle, as each former center of world power and influence can attest.
Jesweez
4mo ago
Yeah but that’s the same sort of thing someone from 2019 who was pro cancellation would have said about the cancelled party
Jesweez
4mo ago
It’s so weird seeing the left switch back to defending free speech and offensiveness in comedy and the right now justifying firings over microaggressions.
I guess I got too used to the brief span of time between 2008-2024 and should just expect this kind of reversal in things I assumed were stable to happen several more times across my lifetime.
Jesweez
4mo ago
Average lefty here, happy to respond with specifics?
I just sort of mourn the old United States where acting with blatant corruption was out of the pale.
Also as someone in science I mourn the days when the nation took pride in being a powerhouse in things like scientific research, and in being a place where people all over the world wanted to come and get educated here.
We had this really great thing going being not just the most economically powerful but also the most intellectually productive country in the world, and we acted as a vacuum sucking up all the intelligent and ambitious people from around the world and having them come here to build things with us.
Now we started with this mean style of politics which makes those same people not want to come here anymore. Some might still do it based on a risk-reward calculation, but even then, we’ve destroyed science funding in the country and so even the reward side of the equation also got hit.
Meanwhile, we’re destroying the open market of energy that we used to have and actively persecuting renewable energy technologies. Places like Texas were world leaders in renewables because the tech is just simply good and competitive. No more. Batteries and renewable energies are the technologies of the future of the rest of the world and we’re letting China and the rest of the world just absolutely eat our lunch there. While the world undergoes this technological revolution we just chose to sit it out.
So overall, largely because of Trump and his politics, we’ve become this angry inward focused power that is giving up the very sources of dynamism that make us powerful.
I guess the one thing we have is AI and it’s just about the only area where the United States has an advantage that the Trump administration isn’t trying to destroy while pursuing some misguided ideological end.
Jesweez
4mo ago
What leftist movement has been obsessed with concepts like purifying the racial makeup of the country?
Nazis are called right wing because they share the same preoccupations as right wing politics all over the place.
Just as if someone today is obsessed with making the US or their European country a white ethnostate, it’s not hard to guess that that person winds up being right wing in many other ways as well.
The Nazis were a clear right wing movement that simply adopted a new level of extremism after observing the communists.
Jesweez
4mo ago
As someone on the left I am almost always unconsciously framing my policy viewpoints in the language of the right.
And I feel that almost all of the advice for how to communicate for people on the left preaches this.
This bit of text was a big wake up for me!
Jesweez
4mo ago
The fixation I’ve observed on this forum with the 2020 riots is certainly interesting.
Riots are not exactly an uncommon part of political life, yet judging from what I’ve read from many posters here these seem to have been the formative event for many right wing posters.
Interestingly I would have had no idea if not for occasionally browsing forums like this, and that it still seems to be the center of gravity toward which many conversations tend even now 5 years later confirms it.
This is true.
It creates lots of conflict when the sides are polarized and each perceives different threats, but I guess it does cause us to avoid certain civilizational failure modes.
It’s either this or be like the Chinese and just preserve social harmony above all else. In the end a trade off. Hope you are enjoying the show!
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