MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
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User ID: 1783
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I’m the same. I don’t consider most of those activities “nerdy” anymore, as they’re so common that I almost feel like calling being into sci-fi or anime or gaming or even fantasy dice games nerdy is a bit much. Especially when the stuff in question is mainstream. It’s almost a stolen valor thing where kids when I was young had to kind of hide their interest in those things only for later generations to claim it even though the stuff is absolutely mainstream and they only like the mainstream parts of the subject.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I’m not convinced that’s a contradiction. The view that tech was good and would make life better was predicated on a bunch of liberal assumptions.
1). That humans in their state of nature were naturally libertines, naturally good, free from hate anger and so on. This is now demonstrated to be false. Give humans free speech and they’ll use it to control other people, to scam and cheat and rent seek, and preach hate and division. Thus the internet essentially ended up doing the opposite of what the liberals thought it would do.
2). That the neoliberal consensus of the WWII era had won decisively enough that it could hold up when people were allowed to choose freely and advocate for their own ideas. It turns out that, when allowed such freedoms, the neoliberal consensus is mostly popular as a luxury belief system rather than as deeply rooted convictions. Things like LGBT+ might be tolerable in very small doses, but they aren’t things that most people actually want normalized. Likewise, while people might diversity in abstract, but will often pay a fair premium to avoid the consequences of diversity.
3). For whatever reason, tge liberals tended to assume that not only were the computer science nerds on their side, but that they would continue to be on their side. It’s not pretty clear that most people in tech are firm capitalists, don’t like corporate telling them what to think, and reject culture war scolding pretty much.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I think a permanent peace, even if it means being a temporary pariah state works better. The constant cycle of terrorism->Israel bombs the shit out of Gaza/West Bank -> temporary truce while militants rearm and reorganize -> terrorism -> repeat cycle serves no one. It’s not even really peace. Peace would mean that Israel could more or less stand down, and not need to put in all the apartheid regime stuff that it does because Palestinians are no longer a potential threat. Palestine could rebuild itself and either become part of a federated state within Israel or a small state perhaps in West Bank that would not be bombed every 5-10 years.
This is where Western interference is causing the problem. Because the Hamas/Fatah movements are never completely defeated, they simply call for ceasefire, and in some future time it starts again. Probably with better weapons and with the lessons learned from this round.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I mean both sides were playing the media game. Palestine did it much better. There were numerous times when the media was shown images of “good Palestinians who just wanted to help”, except that they were often actually active members of Hamas. There were also faked reports where they’d claim freezing conditions when the actual weather in the region was in the 70s.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
In a federated system, I’m not sure how much it matters. If three states in the southwest USA voted for the Nazi party, the entire government doesn’t go along with it.
Honestly, I think something like the American Indian reservation system might work. A disarmed population with reasonable control of its own territory might be a decent option.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I hope they do. The frustration of the whole thing is that because Hamas survived and is getting a deal, they’re going to use this plan again. It essentially worked. They’re getting their prisoners released, most of who, are members of Hamas, the Strip will be rebuilt, and they not only get to keep power, but because they have the sympathy of the Arab world, can rearm easily.
At the same time, Israel has essentially capitulated. They get nothing except the hostages. They are also much more hamstrung as to what kinds of action can be taken when Hamas rearms for another round. The propaganda networks are in place, and the Palestinians have learned to play PR rope a dope by making sure that anything Israel does is seen as genocide.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I’d question how well that actually works. The thing I suspect is that much like anything else feeding homeless people would invite more homeless people as word gets around that this particular QT gives out free food.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I’m not sure you could meaningfully enforce a ban on maximally addictive features simply because the entire industry is based on getting, holding and selling your attention. As tge saying goes, “if you’re not paying for it, you are the product.” You can’t really do anything unless you’re going to change the business model. The other option being paid subscription, which to my knowledge has never worked for a social media platform. And absent that, the incentive would be to be as addictive as possible, while avoiding the things the public associates with addictive content. This would be a constant arms race, and likely the social media platforms would win because they can always stay just on the legal side of the line and can deploy new techniques before the regulations can be drafted to stop them.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I think the issue of lost trust has an impact on the park and 3rd space issue. Those places often end up attracting homeless people, criminals, drug users etc. because they’re free to the public and thus nobody can stop them. Which makes nobody else want to really use the space for the intended purpose. And thus when people want a third space that they can be relatively sure is safe for them and their family, the admission charge is a feature, not a bug. The same sort of problem plagues the building of public transit. It cannot go anywhere useful (because people move to good neighborhoods to avoid the kinds of people who ride buses, subways, and trains), and because the public transport itself often invites the criminals and homeless and others. You aren’t going to see either thing take off until the issues creating a low trust society are solved.
I think in some cases it’s why the internet has become the hangout of choice. Watching TV or doing things online doesn’t involve contact with such undesirables or the results of their activities. Buying online is simpler because you don’t have to hunt down an employee to unlock the item you want.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I think it’s a shot in the dark. I don’t see Bibi deciding to go with the deal because he already rejected it, and frankly doesn’t trust tge Palestinian side to really keep the deal. Given 75 years of “Israel signs peace deal, leaves area” and “to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Palestinians have rearmed and are trying to destroy Israel — again” he really can’t make a deal. It’s either an unconditional capitulation followed by military occupation to prevent rearming, or the situation as it existed on 10/6. He knows it, everybody who’s looked at the history knows it. And so I think Trump is offering the deal because he wants to say he tried.
This is my read. In the 1990s it emerged as political correctness, which worked for a while until the term Political Correctness entered the public consciousness, allowing people the criticize the phenomenon instead of the content. You could say “why shouldn’t we be able to say what we really think” instead of “boo, minorities” which allowed respectable people to disapprove of it without being branded as outgroup. Once that happened, it turned out that a lot of people in the main stream didn’t like the idea.
In 2012 it was Social Justice and SJWs. These guys won until people found ways to mock the movement, again, without having to publicly condemn the content of the movement, thus saving face was possible. You can mock the SJW at home in mom’s basement with purple hair scolding you for saying something wrong, or for not being a good enough ally.
Woke is receding because it’s possible again to hate the movement without necessarily hating those the movement is putting forward. And again this makes it appealing to normies who have to be respectable at least in public. Being able to talk about woke scolds and oppose racial and gender set asides without losing your ability to be seen as good by respectable people is the way to the end of wokeness.
It seems to me that really on whole Jered Taylor is sort of right. The key to beating back various forms of progressive politics is to make sure that you have your countermovement be one that normie whites can support publicly without seeming too out of the mainstream and where they won’t be considered racist/sexist/homophobic for saying that out loud.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
They’re on the left because they value other coalitions they are in. I’m not suggesting that a person can only be in one group, I can be in the NRA and the Labor bloc at the same time. I don’t think you aren’t doing coalition based politics just because a person might be part of several. It’s just that for a bock to win on an issue you have to get enough potential members of that bloc to make that their top issue.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I think it depends on the brand. Companies that cater to left leaning and left coded things or hobbies will likely continue and maybe double down a bit. Things geared to the general public will probably quietly drop DEI, I expect any company that’s right coded will be shouting from the housetops.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I totally disagree. Affinity groups around tribes or causes is how electoral politics work. Labor organizes around unions, Christians organize around various advocacy organizations, AIPAC, various trade groups, environmental organizations, you name it, all of them are to one degree or another affinity groups. What doesn’t work is individual political actors or very small groups, because without a large bloc, and especially a large bloc with big bags of cash, it’s not really possible to get modern politicians to bother.
I find the opposition to such an idea to be one of the best propaganda wins in recent history. You almost can’t actually have the conversation with people who don’t already agree to the proposition. Everyone else stops up their ears at the mere mention of the idea of a white advocacy group. I’m not proposing that they push segregation or anything of the sort, I’m not looking to disenfranchise people. But even the suggestion that there be a white group with a seat at the table when the ideas of DEI and affirmative action and even other policies around affordability are discussed. It’s like a cognitive kill switch to bring up the idea that they are allowed to have ancestral pride, advocate for their interests, and promote their culture just like everyone else. They might on the margins be okay with Irish groups marching on St. Patty’s, or Germans forming cultural heritage groups to drink beer and eat sausages.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
Assuming they’re racist against nonwhites, yes.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
Well yeah. It’s how politics works for the most part. For rich people it’s a sport and they have tons of free time and money to spend bankrolling things that they can brag about at dinner parties. And for the most part that’s all they care about. Palestinians are a popular cause because the Israelis on TV mostly look like Europeans, and the Palestinians are brown. Besides, saying Islam has a violence problem makes them feel bad.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I think it’s less a racial reckoning and more about them being pretty much outed as caring mostly about the concerns of the laptop class and their pet causes than actually running the country.
They don’t care that crime and drug use in cities is horrible. They care that nobody mentions it, and that they don’t put too many minorities in prison. This hurts poor blacks quite a bit because they don’t have the wealth to leave and go to lower crime areas. Working class jobs are a bit harder to come by because we’re importing millions of working class Mexicans and Hispanics willing to work for McDonald’s wages doing construction and restaurants and trash pickup. If you’re in that class, especially for blacks who have less education and fewer opportunities, this is a bad thing. But saying that is racist. And when people can’t get legit jobs and earn their money, crime looks attractive, especially if the authorities have outright stated they don’t want to prosecute crimes.
Environmental stuff, in abstract, I think is okay. The problem is that it’s basically being done on the backs of poor people. Costs are higher because we refuse to dig up the oil and coal reserves we have. We put huge roadblocks to development and manufacturing, often in the form of regulations. This might be okay for the elites who don’t care how much anything costs, but if you’re counting pennies, yeah the fact that your gas costs $5 a gallon matters. Tge fact that regulations have doubled tge cost of food matters.
People know that pattern by now. They watch Americans suffer, especially poorer ones, knowing that help is not on the way. At least not for natives. And that’s what hurts democrats. If you’re not needing something that the elites see as important, or you’re in the wrong social class, you aren’t getting help. Poor people in North Carolina are still sleeping in tents hoping to not lose their land. Immigrants in New York get fully funded EBT cards and free housing. And it’s not super surprising that people are turning away from the party of neoliberalism and lazy identity politics is losing support.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
Considering that the main difference between Sunni and Shiites one one hand and Christians on the other is religion, I’m not seeing much of an open question here.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
You and guys like you are always smugly going on about how “PMC liberals” — your ever-present outgroup, whose machinations are directly responsible for every last bad thing in the world — don’t know what everyday, salt-of-the-earth black people are like, so they have to rely on the accounts of grifters pushing an agenda. (An agenda taught to them by, of course, PMC whites.)
They aren’t responsible for literally everything that happens. But what they have is a set of objectively harmful luxury beliefs (for example identity politics), are insulated by their money from the consequences of those beliefs, and because they have much more time to be politically active, and have more money to throw to NGOs that say things they like to hear, they have an outsized influence on politics. It’s the “make middle class women clap” phenomenon that’s been going on for decades. Political leaders listen to them, artists listen to them, etc. because they have time and disposable income.
I don’t think they invented blacks or Hispanics caring about race. They’re minorities, and banding together to solve problems is simply how problems get solved when you don’t compromise the majority of your area. Hispanics do the same. The big difference is that until recently whites were a big enough majority in America and Western Europe that whites didn’t feel the need to do the same thing. Christians didn’t feel the need to band together before because they had a supermajority in elections and therefore their issues were dealt with. The reason so many here don’t like PMC liberals is that the issues that are brought up by whites and Christians are issues that PMCs oppose as backward and uncouth and so on, and they’re thus funding and working for groups that oppose white identity politics.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
To be fair, political parties are clinging to images of themselves that are most likely to get themselves power. They don’t exactly have a loyalty to “the people” except in the sense that in a democratic system, the legitimacy of a government is supposedly conferred by plebiscite. But I don’t think any politician really spends so much as ten minutes a day worrying about the welfare of the people in his own country. They care about winning elections, they care about pushing agendas important to their bloc. But I don’t imagine either one of them care very much about what narrative wins them power. I expect the democrats to drop the blue collar thing pretty soon, not because they’re going to change their mind, but because it’s seen by the general public as false. Nobody sees the democrats as in the corner of the common man. The democrats represent the PMC and fashionable identity politics causes (the kind that the PMC likes, rather than things that make life better for minorities). They represent the manicured hand of the upper classes who only see plebeians through the lenses of Noblesse Obliges. The right represents the blue collar workers.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I’m not sure it’s strictly a race issue. Arabs are mostly Muslims and Islam has a whole host of really bad ideas embedded in the religion. Even if we don’t allow random Arabs in, conversion is a problem as well because the religion is predicated upon Islam supremacy and imposition of Islamic laws and social structures on any society it encounters. They wouldn’t just impose a Mosque of England and you could live perfectly comfortably practicing your own religion without fear or having to follow the rules. Islam simply cannot accept other beliefs as equal to their own.
Mexicans are okay people, and generally seem to be taking up labor jobs, which I think is why Trump did so well among black men who might be competing for those labor jobs. Whites don’t care so much unless they’re in the trades because they aren’t around them as much.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
It seems like an isolated demand for criticism. The left spent 4 full years refusing to talk about Biden having dementia, getting lost during conferences, etc. were they afraid of authoritarian Biden? Or were they circling the wagons in an attempt to maintain power and credibility?
I think this is why the conservatives aren’t keen to criticize Trump. Not because they’re afraid of him, but because the current moment of American politics is basically warfare. They know that the left will take anything negative said about Trump or MAGA and use it to attempt to drive wedges and discredit Trump. Giving the enemy a way to build a narrative against them is stupidity. If they disapprove of him doing something that the left considers “authoritarian”, that will absolutely be used. That’s what happened with Liz Chaney. She said that what Trump did on 1/6 was a coup attempt, and her participation fed that narrative and was used to justify the hearings that later to provide backing for the law fare. If dissent is necessary to prove Trump isn’t an authoritarian, but any dissent proves Trump is an authoritarian, there’s no point.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I think even here, I’m not completely sold on the notion that every single incursion into every country is a threat to international order. The results of this are not obviously better. We’ve replaced colonial rule with protectorates where the target country can sing a national anthem, compete in the Olympics, and design a flag. The country is still effectively controlled by forces outside itself, but it has to “choose” to do what we’ve decided is in the best interests of the RBIO (Rules Based International Order). Even internally, groups that for whatever reason don’t like RBIO or the results of that system are suppressed. And it still hasn’t lead to fewer wars, or us getting less involved in said wars. We’ve been involved in wars for most of the post WW2 era, and as many peace activists have pointed out, the road to “we’re about to bomb the shit out of someone” is always talk about two things: Human Rights, and Hitler.
To me this is the gift that keeps on giving (to arms dealers). Disputes will always happen, and a good number of them will be over territory. And some of them are legitimate concerns. But even if most of them aren’t, getting involved in every dispute just means more shooting.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
6mo ago
I think we can agree on that. Influencers are not so much about their fans per se but mostly an avatar for a movement that attempts to publicly dunk on the other side either by arguments or slick presentation or by making your side feel more glamorous or cool. I watch Vaush a good bit and it seems like his niche is to try to put a nerdy face on left leaning politics. Others are trying to put a posh face on right leaning politics. Or whatever the case may be, the influencer is mostly involved in packaging the idea in ways that appeal to different audiences. If you want leftism in nerd-face, you want Vaush among others. If you want right wing nerd-face, it’s Mentis-Wave and that sphere.
I mean I’m not disagreeing. I think especially in its modern and postmodern forms liberalism has failed nearly as completely as communism has. And as the contradictions become more obvious, the need to reassert control over the public is going to get much worse. We’re in the stage of the fall of liberal democratic politics in which the results of elections are being declared “threats to democracy.” Or where our freedom of speech is so sacred that we’re going to demand the cancellation of people for crime-think, labeling of hate-facts as misinformation or disinformation, and people are considered militant nationalists for positions that their grandparents took for granted.
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