LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
No bio...
User ID: 657
Civilian casualty figures for the invasion of Gaza are on par with other urban assaults by western militaries. You can contrast this with the battles in the Ukraine war, which are a lot a lot worse, and Assad’s reconquests of major Syrian cities, which are also way way worse.
This is not true. The civilian casualities in Gaza are significantly higher than that in Ukraine, the invasion of which by Russia people have been rushing to call genocide, including many people here. For simplicity I will just takes about deaths specifically and not casualities.
As already posted below the OHCHR estimates 9,701 civilian deaths in Ukraine between 24 Feb 2022 and 24 September 2023.
Reliable estimates for Gaza are hard to find but OHCHR estimates the deaths to be over 11,000 between 7 October 2023 and 16 November 2023 (some of whom would not strictly speaking be Gazans as there are also casualities outside of Gaza). So Gaza has roughly the same number of deaths in a month than Ukraine had in a year and a half. More recent numbers from early January suggest this number could be over 22,000 for Gaza. This would put the percentage of Gazans killed somewhere around 1% of the total population.
Now, Gaza is more densely populated and urbanised where the fighting is taking place, but this is also offset by the fact that Ukraine has a much larger population than Gaza and the operations are larger scale.
Regardless, no matter how you cut it, the civilian casualties in Gaza are extremely high and people would not be hesitating to call it genocide if it were any other country.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3mo ago
Part of me wonders how much more stable the Middle East would have been if the UN had made Jerusalem an international zone/international city like was proposed back in 1947. The proposal had overwhelming support from the international community at the time.
If, charitably and by the literal wording, the point of the Pope's document is to say 'you can bless the individual(s) in a same-sex union, but you are not blessing the union itself', this isn't really anything new and is at best just a clarification on existing practices.
But if this is supposedly not a new postition then why even make such a clarification, when in practice everyone knows it is going to lead to more confusion and misrepresentation. Unless the point is to deliberately introduce ambiguity under the guise of clarification, of course.
Regardless, if living in a same-sex union is a mortal sin, then priests shouldn't be blessing individuals actively, knowingly, publicly and persistently living in mortal sin anyway.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4mo ago
Easter is the most important Christian holiday. The secular perception that Christmas is more important than Easter is an artifact of secular society widely celebrating (a secular and commericalised version of) Christmas.
Articles like this infuriate me. I am a pretty mellow individual and it usually takes a lot to get me riled up, but feminist articles, particular those about "masculinity" (God I hate that word and how it's used to pathologise men) I just find so rage-inducing.
Like all feminist piece about masculinity, it's doomed to fail because they cannot contradict the core beliefs and assumptions of feminist theory, which is a major, if not core contributor to the problem the article is trying to address in the first place.
When the author talks about the protector and provider role, and fatherhood being the base for developing a new positive "masculinity", my immediate response is "just what the fuck do they think they think masculinity has been about for millennia?" The feminist answer of course, is that masculinity has historically and currently been about oppressing women. "Hegemonic" masculinity and related terms. Before feminists turned "patriarch" into a dirty word, it actually reflected the reality that historically family life has always formed a key part of male identity, and it wasn't oppressive!
Of course, the author can in no way put any responsibility on to women for the social breakdown - and if they do it admit it, it's a good thing! In fact the article tacitly admits to this by singing the praises of the working woman, but the solution is never an adjustment on the part of women, oh no no no, the solution is always that men have to do more, "be better", and remake themselves into the New Soviet Feminist Man if necessary. How can you expect to build or maintain a masculinity around fatherhood and family when feminism has spend the last 60 years demolishing the family and cheering on its demise? How can you expect men to put family and fatherhood first when women clearly aren't putting family and motherhood first. Someone reneged on the social arrangements around family, and it wasn't men. But apparently men are expected to build a new "masculinity" to try and plug the gaps that weren't created by them.
The end of the article had me rolling my eyes incredibly hard.
It is harder to be a man today, and in many ways, that is a good thing: Finally, the freer sex is being held to a higher standard.
Yeah, because men totally haven't been held to high standards in the past and have been "free" to do whatever they want throughout history. I'm not sure how we the readers are meant to square the circle with the claim that men are protectors and providers but are also "free".
The old script for masculinity might be on its way out. It’s time we replaced it with something better.
"Hey men, you know how masculinity has traditionally been built on men being protectors and providers? Well we feminists decided that actually didn't happen and you were all oppressive bastards who have to pay for the sins of your ancestors. But we now going to give you the opportunity to build a new "positive" masculinity that built upon being protectors and providers in a feminist friendly way! What does feminist friendly way mean? Well, it's kind of the same as before but this time women are under no obligation to reciprocate in any way! Hope you join us with building something better!"
There's something so insidiously evil about selling the cause of the problem as the solution. If only we had more feminism and men embraced it the problem will be solved. True feminism has never been tried! Gotta keep digging ourselves in that hole I guess.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3mo ago
Bit of a false equivalence, because Danzig and Istanbul were specifically made international cities as a punitive post-war measure against Germany and Turkey respectively. A better analogy would be the various international and concession cities of the 19th century, which were generally pretty successful until the wave of anti-colonialism in the 20th century made them politically unpalatable. But even this is an imperfect analogy.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
5mo ago
(Perhaps I'm being rather rose-tinted about journalistic standards in the past and this is all one big "always has been" meme.)
This video essay makes a pretty compelling argument that, yes, in fact the news was (more) unbiased and higher quality in the past and it's not just nostalgia.
Some of the examples are mindblowing. The example of the reporting on the Soviet Union's political affairs is remarkably unbiased and uneditorialised despite it being the literal height of the Cold War.
Those people work with a very loose definition of genocide.
Personally, I'm not particularly interested in the question of whether Israel's actions meet the 'definition' of genocide, formal or otherwise. I get why it is important (least of all for the ICC and other international law proceedings) but at some level it just becomes a semantic question. I do think those who claim Russia is committing genocide against Ukraine but refuse to make or support the claim that that Israel is committing genocide against Palestine have a huge double standard.
My perspective is that, at best, Israel has displayed a overwhelming level of disregard and negligence to the Palestinian people that amounts to criminality, both recently and historically. At worst, I have to take at face value the multiple statements, both recently and historically, of senior Israeli officials that they want to utterly destroy Gaza and/or the Palestinian people. I both these things to be horribily immoral and should be rebuked. Whether they meet the formal definition of genocide I don't particularly care to argue.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3mo ago
Probably because the US has a need for Israel in the Middle East as basically the best army in the region. Perhaps not 100% capable of paying for their own bombs but extremely capable at using those bombs to modern military standards.
This seems like a bit of circular reasoning. The US support Israel because it has the best army in the region. Why does US need to support Israel? Because the Arabs (generally) hate the US and the US need geopolitical support in the region. Why do the Arabs hate the US? Because the US supports Israel.
Additionally, the US actually gets very little from Israel. Israel fragrantly acts against US interests and ignores US calls all the time. Even the most milquetoast request from the US to Israel to maybe tone it down just a bit is just blatantly ignored. Israel demands the US intervene on its behalf all the time but rarely reciprocates. Prior to post-WW2, the Americans were actually seen very favorably by the Arabs.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
10mo ago
It's almost always framed in how it's bad for women though, typically 'college graduated women can't find husbands (because they will never marry down).'
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
11mo ago
I would like to bring attention to a small but significant culture war kerfuffle that occurred on Monday, during the Australian Parliament Senate Estimates.
For those of you who are not aware, Senate Estimates is a series of hearings held by the Senate standing committees originally meant to scrutinise the budget and spending of the executive government and its agencies (budget estimates), but in practice is used to scrutinise all activities of the executive government, not just budget and financing.
The exchange I want to discuss occurred on Monday 22 May earlier this week, when the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts (it's a weird combination I know) was being question by the Rural, Regional Affairs and Transport Committee.
In the exchange, Senator McKenzie and Senator Canavan (both Nationals) question Mr Jim Betts, the Secretary of the Department (i.e. the most senior (non-ministerial/partisan) public servant and head of the Department). The Senators question Mr Betts over an alleged event where Mr Betts wore a Black Power t-shirt during an official address to departmental staff. The exchange is too lengthy to quote the whole thing here, so I recommend everyone read the Hansard (transcript) of the exchange.
To summarise the exchange briefly, Mr Betts is questioned on whether he wore a Black Power t-shirt during an official department briefing, Mr Betts is evasive with his answers before it is revealed that the t-shirt in question contained an Aboriginal flag in clenched fist, he claims that the symbol is merely a symbol of "solidarity" with Aboriginal staff and that it has no relevance to Black Power, and continues to be evasive when pressed by the Senators on whether this constitutes a political statement breaching the standards of impartiality of the Australian Public Service. The exchange ends with Mr Betts essentially challenging the Senators to report him to the Australian Public Service Commission for breaching the code of conduct.
It's also difficult to convey the tone of the conversation (unfortunately, I don't believe the video recording of the hearing is yet online), but I have to point out that Mr Betts is dressed in a very casual short sleeve shirt and not a business suit (as would be appropriate for this event, as is sarcastically mentioned by Senator McKenzie), and is wearing a rainbow lanyard (as he will mention). Mr Betts talks in a very condescending but hushed and rushed tone, showing no respect for the Senators, and the Senators, for their part, talked in a generally aggressive, and particularly in Senator McKenzie's case, sarcastic tone.
The reason I wanted to highlight this exchange is because it highlights the woke institutional capture of Australian government institutions, though I suspect this is representative of countries in the Anglosphere. To make it abundantly clear, the clenched fist in Australia is absolutely a symbol of Black Power imported into Australia from America, and used by the "Black/Indigenous sovereignty" movement within Australia. Mr Betts would absolutely know this, and I feel fairly confident in saying he is outright lying here. In fact, the fist was prominently used last year when Senator Lidia Thorpe (radical left Indigenous activist) made the fist and called the Queen a coloniser during her swearing in ceremony, an event I discussed back on the old subreddit.
So the head of a major Australian Government Department (who is allegedly an anarcho-communist, an allegation he doesn't explicitly deny but merely sidesteps) wears t-shirt with a radically left-wing/woke symbol while addressing staff, and he feels reasonably confident that he is going to suffer no consequences for it. If this does not represent a capturing of an institution by woke ideology, I don't know what does. What I also find really interesting is how Mr Betts attempts to argue his way out the questioning by equating his black power t-shirt with his rainbow LGBT lanyard as just symbols of support and solidarity - a false equivalency because the black power symbol remains far more explicitly political in the way LGBT rainbow is not - but this attempted defence does seem to have some strength. But the conservative Nationals Senators were unable or unwilling to make the affirmative case that yes, LGBT lanyards and flags also do constitute a political statement. Even they had to dance around this issue. They have become so normalised and part of the 'new sensibility' that LGBT flags hanging in government offices is perfectly fine, and desirable even, it's simply about promoting a safe and inclusive culture and it is in no way political! (unless you oppose it then you're the one being political).
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
10mo ago
I guess moving theMotte off Reddit has proven itself more and more to be a good decision
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4mo ago
To talk about the plagarism allegation specifically:
Such an allegation is a bit rich when Hbomberguy is close friends with Hasan Piker, is who is the king of freebooting and stealing content. But I guess it's okay because in the video Hbomberguy makes one, tiny joke about Hasan where he doesn't even mention him by name and he got permission from Hasan to make the joke beforehand. So I guess that's fair and Hbomberguy is principled in criticising everyone, right.
The whole of "BreadTube" rife with plagarism and stealing content - it's just selective outrage against IH because he's an ideological enemy. At the very least, IH did cite the article and substantially valued added even if he could have done more.
In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.
Judges 21:25
The final verse of the book of Judges, the majority of Judges describing the people of Israel committing horrible atrocities.
A mildly interesting competing hypothesis in itself compared to "smartphones and instagram wreck teen girls' psyches".
Why is this a competing hypothesis? I would imagine they're interrelated. It seems obvious to me that conservative parents would have greater restrictions on, or at least greater oversight of their children's social media usage and technology use. And the other way, it is likely a child who hasn't been 'influenced' by social media drivel is more responsive to conservative parenting and a better relationship with (conservative) parents.
The vast majority of 'dating advice' young men are given (by the mainstream liberal feminist zeitgeist) is absolutely terrible and only land them in situations like this if they follow through with it.
I can guarantee at some point someone told OP 'just be honest, straightforward and upfront with women and nothing bad will happen, the worst the woman will do is reject you but respect you for being honest.' And he completely understandably took that advice at face value.
This is combined with the fact we have a sexually liberal, if not libertine culture. The young man probably though that offering some girl to be FwB directly - despite being a literal virgin - was perfectly fine cause media and social media told him that's just how things are. And besides, men and women are the same, so women must think about this hypothetical arrangement the same way he does.
OP is also an actual idiot for thinking his proposal would end in anyway but horribly badly for him and being stupid enough to think going from virgin to FwB playa is in anyway feasible or a good idea. But the problem is that young men aren't allowed to fuck up in a healthy way and learn from the experience anymore, if young men fuck up they're 'literally incels' and a danger to young women who must be ostracised and exiled.
This is what happens when you have a social environmental where the social rules are poorly defined if they exist at all, the advice the young men get is terrible and contradictory, and the consequences for men are astronomical and completely at women's mercy.
Australia’s Voice to Parliament (2/2)
And where does the public stand on this issue? Well public polling seems to indicate that the ‘yes’ has a slight majority, though notably this percentage has been steadily falling over the last year (the Liberal Party strategy working?). Importantly, the people supporting yes (between yes, no and not sure) dropped below 50% recently. In my opinion, much of the support for the Voice in the public is mostly driven by white-guilt-ridden Australians who automatically support any proposal in favour of Indigenous Australians, regardless of practicality or principle. As some critical thought goes into it, the support has dropped. Add in social desirability bias/Shy Tory phenomenon (the gay marriage plebiscite won by a much small margin than was predicted), it seems uncertain if the referendum would pass if it were held tomorrow.
I guess now is a good time to segue to a commentary on the state of Indigenous/woke politics more generally. As you can probably tell, I do not support the Voice on principle, as it is incompatible with liberal and democratic ideals (and even if you aren’t liberal or democratic, then you wouldn’t support it for other philosophical/tribal reasons). It’s also not the first time a body or institution like this has even been tried. Mostly recently there was the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission(1990–2005) which more or less basically tried to do what the Voice wants to do, albeit no constitutionally enshrined. The Commission had to be shut down in 2005 after years of corruption (although in fairness, this was partially driven by the final Chairman in particular). The Voice being constitutionally enshrined as well as having the increasing immunity to scrutiny that woke politics will inevitably grant it is just a shitshow waiting to happen even worse that ATSIC.
For Americans, it might be hard to explain just how (pardon my French, but there’s really no other words to adequately express this sentiment) cucked Australia has become on Indigenous representation/recognition/reconciliation or whatever the buzzword is now. Canadian and New Zealand readers will understand (I feels sorry for our Kiwi brothers who have it worse). The analogy I offer you many American readers is like it’s all the black liberationism woke political stuff has become institutionalised in every institution with official statements. The difference between Australian and America here I think is that America has way more variance, the crazy can be crazier, but in Australia this stuff gets institutionalised scarily fast. Literally every meeting, event or document starts now with a ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ which is basically a statement like a mantra or prayer that ‘recognises’ that the area of wherever you are belongs (in some form, the exact words can and do change) to a given Indigenous group. I’m not sure if I’m even being facetious – in Parliament the sitting day starts with an Acknowledgement of Country and then is followed by prayers. Even worse is ‘Welcome to Country’ which is now omni-present at every major event, is performed by an Indigenous person, who basically “invites” (I would say ‘gives permission’) non-Indigenous people onto ‘their land’ and does some shamanistic ritual. Again, I’m not being facetious, one Welcome I had to sit through included the Indigenous representative doing a ritual to invite the ancestors to come and remove the bad spirits from the audience (my God, how is this allowed in government but a Christian blessing would be the scandal of a century). The Acknowledgement and Welcomes are also becoming increasingly radical too, and it’s becoming increasing common to state that ‘Sovereignty was never ceded’. This was amusingly and frustratingly said in one Acknowledgement by a government employee in a very important government building. It’s honestly hard to describe – look up some (recent) examples for yourself. You get increasingly deluded and discriminatory policies too, for example the Minister for Public Service wanting to increase Indigenous representation in the Australian Public Service to 5%, including executive management, despite Indigenous people making up only 3% of the population and most of them live in remote Northern Territory, Queensland or Western Australia. You get government bodies now who must explicitly have an Indigenous representative as part of their board, even if the organisation has nothing particularly to do with Indigenous issues. I could go on.
The tone of Indigenous activism and Australian society's response has also changed over the years, becoming more radical. Increasing 'blood-and-soil' type rhetoric is being adopted by Indigenous activists (and their naïve supporters). Whereas in the past it was common to refer to an Indigenous group being 'custodians' of an area of land (being semi-nomadic peoples who did not have a concept of land ownership prior to the arrival of Westerners), it's now increasingly common to hear language like 'this is [Indigenous group] Country' and the aforementioned 'sovereignty was never ceded', and some more general claims of the unique and unassailable right that that group to the land that the white man could never possess or truly understand. Similarly, Australian society's attitude towards Indigenous practices and knowledge has gone from liberal paternal 'yeah let them do their own thing and maybe humour them' and 'yeah maybe there is some useful tidbits of information we can glean from Indigenous fire management practices once we get past all the superstitious rubbish' to now being 'we must incorporate Indigenous culture and people into literally everything we do and give it privileged attention' and 'Indigenous knowledge and superstitions ways of knowing have some special quality that makes it them literally True and superior to Western™ knowledge, stupid Westerners have been ruining this sacred Country'.
I want to know where the Liberal Party, and conservative politicians more generally, are in all this. This stuff has completely infected government, in addition to all the usual suspects like education and academia. I’m not sure how they allowed to this to happen. Are they just somehow completely ignorant of how un-impartial and politically woke the government bureaucracy has become? Are they grossly incompetent or powerless to do anything? Have they also fallen victim to this in their own ranks, and lack the ability or backbone to purge it from their own party? Or do they also just support it, if less radically so, being naïve small-l liberals buying into the motte-and-bailey? I have no idea, but from my perspective it feels like they have their head in the sand. It’s been discussed here before about how the Republicans seem to be completely unaware about what they’re up against in the US, still acting like it’s 2008. It very much feels the same way here, if not even more so.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1mo ago
On the one hand, the US public appears to be overwhelmingly favoring Israel over Hamas (>80%), but I am not sure if this means as much as Israel's supporters claim. I've seen many pro-Palestinians and anti-Zionists denounce Hamas for other reasons and I got the sense that not all of them were for sake of optics.
It really fustrates me to no end how many pro-Israel hawks present a false dichotomy between Israel and Hamas, and imply Palestine is necessarily synonymous with Hamas. It doesn't even make sense as a direct comparison - it really should be Israel and Palestine. It's incredibly disingenuous.
Apparently, the Israel-Palestine conflict only began in 2005 with the creation of Hamas. It was all peaceful before that.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3mo ago
Corrected, thanks.
does Feminism actually have any realistic solution to how men should react to female promiscuity?
Feminism's answer or 'solution' to any problem is always the same. Men have to be more and more accommodating, to the point of remaking men if necessary. If women are unhappy, that's because men (i.e. the patriarchy) are making them unhappy! Women feeling like sluts and devalued after years of sleeping around! That's only because the negative spooks the patriarchy is slut shaming you and trying to control your sexuality! Men have to learn to accept women's sexuality (sexuality, of course, means sleeping around)! Women feeling unfulfilled after 20 years climbing the corporate ladder and having no family? That's only because the patriarchy is trying to push you back into oppressive gender roles (at a abstract, psychic level if necessary if not discrimination can be found)! Men need to accept women can be girlbosses! Feminism is just a long list of demanding men accommodated more destructive behaviours from women and give them more.
Really, this is nothing new, this is how women have excerted influence for millennia. Women complains, men accommodates or makes changes. Moral panics. The difference is that feminism is leading women down a endless self-perpetuating death spiral, a train with no brakes. Other moral panics would reach a critical point and dissipate. Here, the dissipation that feminism is pointing at is women, men and society itself.
Are Pets Replacing Kids?
I have noticed a growing trend of people talking about their pets like children, and pet owners being increasing referred to as parents, mother or fathers of their pets, and the pets as children. Often this goes as far as to referring to multiple pets being referred to as siblings, or even pets referred to siblings of actual children. For examples on social media, you can look at asinine "feel good" animal related YouTube channels like "The Dodo". I'm hardly the first to comment on the phenomenon, a quick internet search for "furbabies" turns up countless articles. However, while most media coverage on this phenomena is playful and positive, my intuition has long been that this isn't just a harmless, fun phenomenon, but rather these 'parents' are really using these pets as a substitute for children. Perhaps attempting to fulfil an unrealised, subconscious need to raise offspring in a social environment hostile to the raising of actual, real human children.
Like any good researcher, I set out to find information to support my prior assumptions. I looked at U.S. data mostly for its abundance, however the overall quality of data is pretty poor, it's particularly hard to find reliable data on the historic rates of pet ownership and data relating to the pet industry going back further than 30 years or so ago.
Based on the APPA's APPA National Pet Owners Survey, the percentage of households with a pet has increased from 56% in 1988 to 70% in 2020. In absolute numbers, the number of pet cats and dogs increased from 108 million in 1996 to 188 million in 2022. But it is not simply the number of pets that are relevant, but the relationship owners have with the pet. Perhaps the most shocking statistic I saw was the growth of the pet industry. The US pet industry has grown from $53 billion in 2012 (~$68 billion adjusted for inflation), to $124 billion in 2021, the industry doubling in size in just a decade! A near doubling also occurred in the prior decade too. The growth has been driven in large part by the increased demand for luxury pet products. The US fertility rate dropped from 1.91 to 1.66 from 2012 to 2020 during this time. By comparison, the US baby products industry was worth $29 billion in 2022. Some (unreliable) survey data says that three-quarters of US pet owners consider their pets 'furbabies'. It should be noted that Millennials slightly overrepresented in many of these pet statistics. US pet owners are also more likely to be female (60%).
Now onto my speculation on the issue. Despite a lot of hand-wringing over the economic costs being the major driver behind young adults not having kids, those same young adults seem to be willing buy a pet and spend significant sums on them, treating them as a pseudo-child. Perhaps a pet is still a cheaper alternative than a child, but in my opinion the economic argument still doesn't hold up. As I like to point out, the fertility rate of the US was higher during the Great Depression, the worst economic period in modern history, than it is today. So the social factors must be playing a greater role, something that has been discussed quite extensively on theMotte in the past so I won't go into detail here. To summarise briefly, but technology, contraception, sexual liberation, feminism, the two-income trap and modernity generally may all have played some role. But humans are still ultimately biological and social creatures, and I think there is likely some innate driver to engage in parental (maternalistic/paternalistic), childrearing behaviours, for both men and women, but particularly women. When social pressure and event stigma prevent people from having children, they have substituted in the closest available, non-stigmatised alternative, pets. What I think is troubling is what will be the long-term consequences of using pets as surrogate children, because pets are not, in fact, children. Using pets as surrogate children is possibly contributing to the fertility crisis, providing a band-aid solution to the unrealised desire of childrearing. Children, as actual thinking humans, can form meaningful relationships with their parents and others, and contribute to community in ways that pets can obviously not provide. Thus furbabies may be accelerating the atomisation of society. When parents enter their elder years, they can rely on the support of their adult children to help. Children will also ultimately provide net economic utility to society, where as pets, as much people might love them, do not.
I personally find the whole phenomenon of pets as surrogate children disgusting or fundamentally morally wrong on a deep, visceral level. It feels so unnatural and perverse to me. I do love animals, including pets I have had in the past, but I would never dream of treating them remotely as people or children. As pessimistic as this is, my instinct that the rise of furbabies is hyper-representative of the cultural, social and moral decline of the West, and is strongly associated with the fertility crisis and the demographic collapse many Western or developed states are or will experience.
Australia’s Voice to Parliament (1/2)
The Voice to Parliament is one of Australia’s largest active culture and political wars, and I think encapsulates the whole macro global culture war on a (relatively) micro scale.
What is the Voice to Parliament? Well, half the problem is that no one seems to know what it is, as we will soon find out. The Voice to Parliament (the Voice) is a proposed government body of some kind intended to consist of and represent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous Australians) enshrined into the Constitution of Australia via referendum. The Voice would have some kind of involvement with the Australian Parliament and the legislative process. The referendum to enshrine the Voice is expected to take place at some point this later this year, and would also enshrine ‘recognition’ of Indigenous Australians in the Australian Constitution. This marks the end of the consensus on what the Voice even is (or would be). Details about what powers the Voice have or how it would function have been incredibly vague and hotly debated.
The Voice is the latest in a long line of attempts to get constitutional recognition (of the special status of) of Indigenous Australians. This is by far the boldest attempt too, attempting include a permanent constitutional body with some legislative power as part of it. The Voice most directly originates from the 2017 ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’, which keeping in with the theme was/is an attempt to get some kind of unspecified constitutional recognition (and power) for Indigenous people. The Statement directly called for “the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution” and “a Makarrata [Treaty] Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.”
After a bunch of government activity looking into the Voice that is honestly not worth getting into, the National Indigenous Australian Agency published the Indigenous Voice Co-Design Process final report in 2021. While this does contain a lot of detail how a potential Voice might work, this is merely a suggestion and is in no sense binding. Mostly charitably (but still concerning), my understanding is that this suggested version of the Voice’s powers would be not dissimilar to the current Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (something I am also sceptical of), which has the authority to review every piece of legislation and legislative instrument and make reports on whether they are ‘compatible with human rights’. The Voice would seeming operate in the same way, except it would be constitutionally enshrined (and therefore virtually impossible to remove in the future), and its member will be made of completely unelected and unrepresentative Indigenous representatives. And I must reiterate, this report is in no way necessarily what the Voice will end up being, and even the report is uncertain what the internal structure of the Voice would look like, offering a number of hypothetical examples.
So what do the major political parties have to say about the Voice? The current Labor (left to centre-left) government, the ones who will be ultimately responsible for putting forward the question and implementing the outcome, obviously support the Voice (or at least their version of it), having previously supported the Uluru Statement and making a referendum on the Voice part of their election promises. But they have been alarmingly sparse on details of what it is exactly they are supporting. The only message they have been clear on is that the Voice won’t have veto powers over Parliament (something that is of genuine concern). Pretty much the only detail is now-Prime Minister Albanese’s draft referendum question he proposed back in 2022 in the lead up to the election “Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?” along with some draft words to add to the constitution which are similarly vague.
The Liberal Party (right to centre-right), the major opposition party, has yet to openly state their position on the Voice referendum, instead repeatedly asking for more detail about how the Voice would function before they state their position. While it’s hard to say with certainty, my feeling is that the Liberal Party generally doesn’t want to support the Voice but can’t state that position openly for whatever reason (internal party politics, don’t want to give left-dominated media ammo) and is instead engaging on this (effective?) strategy of ‘asking questions’ to undermine public support for the Voice.
The National Party (right rural based), the minor party in the Liberal-National Coalition, is the only major party to actually outright oppose the Voice, although it should be noted that their stated justification is not anything along the lines opposing it as an undemocratic, illiberal body or the privileged status it would grant Indigenous Australians over other Australians, but rather for being “another layer of bureaucratic tape” and that the Voice “will not advance the primary aim of Closing the Gap [term used to describe the difference in life outcomes between Indigenous Australians and white non-Indigenous Australians] and dealing with the real issues faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.
Then of course, there’s the Greens, Australia’s progressive party. They whole-heartedly support the Voice to the fullest possible extent, and while they are similarly vague as Labor on details, my impression is that they would support the Voice having veto power or similar powers to Parliament. The Greens also support ‘Truth and Treaty’ which is a whole other can of worms I would rather not get into right now (it’s all the highly woke stuff about ‘Truth-Telling’ and ‘Justice’ and give more privileges to Indigenous Australians). The Green’s position is actually really important, because Labor does not currently have a majority in the Senate, and they need Green crossbench support to pass any legislation relevant to the Voice if it reaches the point.
As a slight aside, Senator Lidia Thorpe, an extremely woke Indigenous woman and Indigenous activist whose actions I previously discussed in an old Motte comment recently broke ties with the Greens over the Green’s support for the Voice referendum (and now is fully committed to representing ‘Blak Soverignity’). This is essentially because she believes the Greens are not radical enough, and she refuses to support the Voice while a Treaty doesn’t exist yet. It says a lot about someone when they think the Greens aren’t radical enough.
As part of the referendum process in Australia, the Government is required to provide a brochure/flyer/information explaining the arguments both for and against the given referendum proposal (including related funding and research, essentially the Government is required to provide support/funding to both sides of the referendum). The Labor Government took steps towards removing this requirement through legislation, claiming such a requirement “out of step with today’s electoral laws and does not reflect modern delivery and communications methods.” Many opposing politicians and commentators quite rightly pointed out that this as a pretty blatant and undemocratic attempt to suppress the ‘no’ campaign, counting on left dominated media to overwhelmingly support the ‘yes’ vote. The Labor government ultimately backtracked in the face of criticism. One more thing of note is that in Senate Estimates the Shadow Minister for Education (Liberal) recently raised the issue of schools only promoting the ‘yes’ case and likening it to ‘indoctrination’. Which absolutely is what is happening, I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty there are approximately zero teachers in public schools opening advocating for the ‘no’ vote and plenty openly advocating for the ‘yes’ vote. As far as I can tell, nothing has come of this event as of yet.
Re: all the "The Motte is not that smart" comments.
As an Australian, I semi-frequently see people say some variation of "Australia is a horribly racist country" in the MSM, social media, in person or elsewhere. While this is often just a leftwing shibboleth, it's said frequently enough even among moderate voices that it has become part of the cultural conciousness.
When I hear this, I often think to myself, "what the hell are you talking about? Australia is an incredibly unracist country by any comparison. It would be hard to find any country less racist than Australia - maybe a couple in Europe or something (although even that's changing very fast) or maybe New Zealand, but that's about it. China? Japan? Brazil? Saudi Arabia? Nigeria? Italy? All more horribly racist than Australia by any meaningful standard.
The real issue is that Australia is not horribly racist (by any relative standard) but that Australia, being a Western liberal democracy among other reasons, is hypersensitive to racism. Whenever any racist incident does occur (and they will always occur to some degree), it blasted accross the media as an example of how bad we all and how much we still have to improve, even if such incidents are relatively rare and unrepresentitive (I'm sure American and Canadian readers can relate). Ironically, it is precisely because Australia is so unracist that we percieve ourselves as racist.
I feel the same way about this bashful comments about the Motte being really not all that smart. Are you crazy? By any reasonable, necessarily relative standard, the Motte is full of very smart people writing interesting posts and comments on a wide range of topics from a very varied perspectives. This is matched by few other places on the internet. Even if people are wrong (and people are often wrong), they're still wrong in the right kind of way, the way that's illuminating like when you argue an absurd postition to its fullest extent just for the hell of it.
And yes, as per the original topic of this thread, the Motte could be more intelligent. Yes, there are hyper-geniuses doing their third PhD in astro-quantum-biomechanical-neuroscience engineering, or whatever else who are not on the Motte and probably don't use the internet all the much. But by any reasonable standard, the Motte is pretty smart. We just are hypersensitive to our own intellectual inferiority specifically because this is a community build around casual intellectualism and full of people smart enough to realise there are people smarter than them who are not the Motte.
Other commentors have made some good rebuttals but there's an obvious one missing:
The vast, vast majority of people do cannot or could not be bothered putting this much effort into nutrition. You are obviously an outlier, being an amateur athlete who seems to get some enjoyment out of monitoring your nutrition needs like a hawk. Most people cannot or do not want to do this. If you're a 'casual vegan' (in that you just eat vegan and you are not monitoring your food for nutrient content) it is incredibly easy to end up with a vitamin or some other deficiency. I've seen it happen to multiple friends and family who have gone vegan.
It is far, far easier (in fact, it's the norm) to eat a nutritionally complete diet incidentally as a non-vegan. And this is not even considering the mental energy expended on working out whether certain food is vegan in the first place, let alone the nutritional content of said food.
I saw some news articles online about this in Australia earlier today.
What I found really conspicious was that in virtually all the articles there was absolutely no description of the perpetrator of the stabbing other than 'man' or at best 'older man', which was the spark that cause the protest/riot (depending on your political persuasion). There was also no mention that I can recall of the perpetrator being tackled and restrained by a member of the public, and certainly not that he was Brazilian. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the crime was committed by an Irish native.
Except, of course, the second half of all these articles all quote a bunch of Irish politicians and other public figures condemning the riot as the actions of a hateful, far-right mob, or similar words to that effect. Which kind of gives the game away. Do they think by merely mentioning the background of the stabbing perpetrator they will give credance to the 'hateful far-right riot', like invoking a spirit?
It's one of many cases where the news media (at least here in Australia), technically report the story factually accurately, but but omits some details and is framed in such a way to only lead you to one conclusion. They can avoid claims of editorialising by claiming they are merely quoting and reporting on statements made by politicians, which is also true.
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