MayorofOysterville
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User ID: 3800
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
The Israelis in the West Bank have full rights and their towns are fully integrated with Israel.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
They did actually implement the first part and nominally give them their own countries in four cases. The West Bank is less of a country than the independent Bantustans were all imports and exports are controlled by Israel. Palestinians only rule disconnected towns surrounded by the Israeli military and settlements.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
The Bantustans weren't part of South Africa either. Though I think the West Bank is the better example. Israeli Arabs aren't apartheided you are right. But Jewish and Arab settlements are treated very differently in the West Bank. As well that the expansion of settlements has created an intertwined society with very different rights depending on race and religion. The actions of settling the West Bank are making a Palestinian state impossible.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
China also has good relations with, Israel and the Gulf Arabs, who are not really against Israel these days. They want to make money not pick sides in Middle Eastern disputes.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
That's why I said in the PLO 90s. Hamas throws a wrench in things, but it could still work many West Bank towns are under full Palestinian control, the PLO are not as willing to die as Hamas.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
You are totally right, but as a small country clinging to the coast highly integrated into the global economy they'll have a much harder time going it alone then the Soviets or Iranians. It doesn't seem very stable to me. But it also seems no Islamic power can push them out and also they have nukes. So who knows how it ends.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
I really think this is just your lurid power fantasy. Conservative religious Westerners expect both men and women to remain chaste until marriage. So why don't you insist on that? Modern Western dating norms don't punish fuckboys or sluts so why don't you just push chastity for everyone? (if you don't just hate women that is). There are plenty of religious denominations in America that insist on chastity for all parties prior to marriage as a norm. And this is how it has historically been in Western countries. The conservative religious insist on chastity as a norm for all parties while the more secular or part inclined have a period of serial monogamy and/or courting. If you read Chaucer or Shakespeare I think you'll find that Anglo society has never treated women like chattel and plenty of people "had some fun" before settling down.
Now I will say that this period has expanded beyond reason and the endless dating roulette is something of a social ill. But why resort to something so draconian (unless you just really really want to). Northern European society never had anything like this and still had marriage or family formation. The Romans did but classical morality is totally alien from our own and it wasn't just this. I wonder would you accept your father having the power of life and death over you in exchange for the power of life and death over your wife? It doesn't matter though, because this way of thinking is just totally alien to Christendom, enlightenment philosophy and modern morality so it's a total nonstarter.
For marriage to work, a man needs to be able to kill his wife when he finds her in bed with another man. Instead, she files for divorce and gets rewarded with cash and prizes.
Believe it or not most men are not constantly terrified about being cucked. But couldn't you just allow the cheated on party to get all the assets in a divorce? Isn't that a more sensible solution to the problem you describe then reducing women to chattel. I feel like you could get a lot of people on board with that, so why not go for that? And why gender it? Why not say adulterers should get the death penalty? Also also your whole framing is wrong a women is not "rewarded with cash and prizes." she is rewarded with her half of the estate that's the whole point of marriage most people end up poorer after a divorce because they're wealth has been split in two. And in this day and age it's not hard to avoid that simply marry a women with a career or gasp one who makes more money than you. Then you get to divorce rape her when she catches you in bed with some Thot! If she doesn't poison your wine first!
I'm being a little tongue in cheek here but I just don't think it's that hard to find a faithful wife. Women want commitment and like casual sex less then men. Most of my social circle is composed of practical minded middle class people who are married and just don't have this soap opera drama you are describing. The don't need some draconian social order to force their wives to stay with them, and indeed why would want that? Why would you want a wife who is only staying with you under pain of ruination and imprisonment? Some of my friends parents got divorced when I was a kid but it wasn't the end of the world and most have now re-married. But divorce is down and it's not that hard to game the stats. Both on first marriage, both college educated, married after 27, same race, same religion, gets your starting odds down to 15%, Though I suspect (though lack the data) that believing women should have the status of chattel raises it significantly.
As well as presumably wanting your wife to be a virgin? If you were a member of a conservative religious denomination you could find one easily and if not why on earth would a secular Western women remain and virgin waiting for you?
If you execute or castrate ninety-nine fuckboys, but miss fuckboy number one hundred, he gets to spoil a hundred nice girls.
The vast vast majority of Western guys do not think a woman is "spoiled" because she has had sex before. Western secular dating norms assume both parties have has several relationships before marriage. In our serious monogamous society, women see their sexual value go down for being virgins too long. A lot of guys after university will be more reluctant to date virgins and her girlfriends will view her as a bit of a loser or or a prude. Now some women will wait out of a sense of romance or anxiety about sex but there is a negative pressure on it in our society and the way you are thinking about this is just totally alien to modern western secular dating culture, and ignorant of it.
I think that these posts by you and Jim are really just a lurid fantasy. Do really think it's common for upper class women to sleep with poor refugees? But more I think you just want these solutions. I don't think you are actually proposing this to solve the problems you want to solve because there are much easier actually politically feasible ways to address what you are saying. And since wives have never been chattel in Northern European society I think you just really really want to own women who have no rights. I think this is just shady thinking to get what you want. You can go to Afghanistan and have that. To which you and Jim will no doubt respond， “But they are uncivilized barbarians!"... yes well exactly.
Why would it be absurd to have to move to a place to date the women there?
Anyway you don't need to do all that, most foreigners in China in a relationship with a Chinese woman don't speak Chinese. I know a few actually where the woman learned English to be with her foreign bf/husband. Anyway there are plenty of eligible young women who speak English. And even more late 20s women who want to get married quick. A ten year tourist visa plus frequent visit or downloading a Chinese dating app would work. No foreigners pay money to buy an apartment in China either as a condition of getting married unless they are; A planning to live there forever or B rubes.
Actually if you go to China as a Western guy and can't get a date you're the most hopeless guy imaginable. Dating in China for white guys is the easiest thing in the world and Chinese women grade on a huge curve for autism.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
Israel could work as an ethnostate. But they'd have to give up the Palestinian areas they control. If they'd turned over the West Bank and Gaza to the PLO in the 1990s they'd likely be much more of a stable normal country today.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
If you created a tunnel connecting the two with a rail line and highway it could work.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
I think this is a function of extreme casualty averseness. If they had occupied Gaza and put a different government in power they could have avoided inspiring the hatred that they did and installed a government other then Hamas. Instead they leveled Gaza from the air killed more civilians then the Russians have in several years of war and Hamas is still in power.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
Affluent liberals who attend such things want all sorts of people punished many of them weaker. And while they aren't Soviet sympathizers the chain of transmission of their support for Palestine comes from a 70s milieu who were Soviet sympathizers. Also affluent liberals are pretty divided about Israel-Palestine. It's their children who are hardcore anti-Israel.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
I had no idea maritime insurance was such a monopolistic cartel.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
Somewhat, but the men and women are in different places. I'd guess the women from the article are middle class to wealthy and in the cities which are majority female. The poor farmers with no prospects and no wives may as well not exist for them.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
The casual dating market is not that big in China outside of major cities and even then in particular cohorts. In general dating is considered a serious business and serial monogamy is much less common than the West. I don't think marriage is as gated as the article implies.
As for your second point China loves a good unhinged mass campaign.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
Ironically Chinese cities have this dynamic. The leftover men are all out in the countryside and the women all in the cities.
In general I think the article gets some things right but is somewhat a miss. For one despite the excess men is not evenly spread at all the cities are full of eligible young women who are often not dating as well. I teach at a Chinese university and so have a front row seat to the Chinese dating scene and many of my female students are ambivalent or hostile to the idea of marriage or children. The thing is these girls would be stupid easy to date. Any Western guy under the age of 35 or so could easily pick up most of them get married and have two kids.
Chinese society is not really set up for dating for one women are generally expected to work but also often take care of relatives because of the one child policy this can create big burden on the wife. She'll often be expected to move into a small apartment with her inlaws and then look after her own parents on top of that plus probably one kid. That's a lot of pressure when you could just not marry and maintain your freedom. It doesn't always happen but the expectation of the inlaws and a traditional family supported society with few children creates a big pressure valve.
Chinese guys have no game, I mean some do but in general Chinese university students act like high schoolers and often shy middle schoolers. I have trouble getting university aged guys to work with the girls. I often can't get them to be in randomly placed groups with them without threats of marking down their participation grade and even then they are often too scared to talk to them. This isn't so surprising when you realize dating is banned in virtually all Chinese high schools and I've even seen schools go as far as making the girls cut their hair to make them more androgynous. and dating isn't just banned Chinese high school students don't have time to date because they are chained to their desk studying all day everyday. So how do they develop those skills? Many do but many don't I still know plenty of eligible women under 35 who any westerner could pick up and yet they don't have any prospects they just quietly work their office jobs. Some will quickly get a semi-arranged marriage when they feel they are aging out but many don't. You'd think in a country with so many men they'd go for them. But a lot of Chinese men won't date leftover women.
China's gender gap is even weirder than it first appears because men and women are in different places the excess men are in the countryside in places with very few women and doomed to being single unless they can get a bride from southeast Asia, while most of China's cities are majority women especially among the younger cohort. Which again makes dating these women incredibly easy because the gender ratio of where the women are favors men.
Lastly the gold digger type women referenced in this do exist and a weird thing about China versus western culture is how openly materialistic you are allowed to be. But they likely won't have trouble dating as they are willing to doll themselves up and put themselves out there in a way a lot of meek women working in offices aren't. I wouldn't say the BMW girl is the norm though, plenty of my students have directly referenced themselves in opposition to that as it's a well known meme in China as well.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
I think installments would probably generate better discussion if they are in depth enough.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
You could get it back if the English got united about it. Isn't England still 80% English? Now that won't happen because it seems the UK elites hate anything English but it could.
I feel like America is too much of a propositional nation for that to work. We've had mass immigration for a long long time. KMC's America was lot by the time of the civil war with all the Germans, Scandinavians and Catholics that were filling up Northern cities. In some ways the Confederacy was the last gasp of Anglo America but with it's fall it was well and truly dead. KMC is not totally wrong but his politics died with the Know Nothing party more than 100 years ago and even at their peak they weren't able to stop immigration. The idea of America's posterity died with the civil war and I don't know how you could revive it since the majority of white Americans aren't pure Anglos. And a significant portion of those who are, are extremely woke New Englanders.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
Really? Kidnapping a president and threatening to wreck shows the US is willing to go pretty far to stop countries giving Cuba oil.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
But the US still won't let people give oil to Cuba. Does it really matter they didn't buy it? The US was willing to kidnap a head of state to stop them giving oil to Cuba and put a huge amount of pressure in Mexico to stop them giving them oil. Cuba has plenty of friendly countries willing to give them oil and the US is doing everything possible including military action to stop that.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
They don't care about blockades of international shipping. The petrodollar has been has been a boogieman of the far left for decades they are just happy to see one of their demons slain or wishcast it bein slain. The same way goldbug libertarians don't care what would happen to the economy if we switched to the gold standard.
Regardless I don't think this is normalizing anything. This blockage only happened because the US started a war and assassinated most of the Iranian leadership. It's not just a blockade for kicks. If the US did the same to Egypt or Singapore I'd imagine they'd react similarly and close their straits but as long as we don't do that I don't see any reason to worry. If anything the US blockade of Cuba sets a much worse precedent for what you fear. Iran did what they said they'd do if they were attacked, close the straights, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to avoid by simply not attacking them.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
I really don't think you are modeling this correctly. The far left was still pro-Palestine when the Arabs were stronger than Israel. As a result of Soviet propaganda, and principles of national liberation. The original PLO and Palestinian cause was much more secular, much more leftist and inline with many other "national liberation" groups that the far left liked. The far left in general doesn't like Hamas and in in group discussions frequently blames Israel for creating Hamas and "tainting" the Palestinian cause.
Israel is also just in the far lefts outgroup in fact it's one of the most hated outgroups they have. Just like in the original I can tolerate anything but the outgroup they can tolerate Hamas even if they don't love them but have a burning hatred of Israel. It's not a function of power dynamics if the Palestinians somehow came out on top and actually did drive the Jews into the sea they wouldn't flip sides because Israel is inherently evil and tainted for them.
MayorofOysterville
1mo ago
Given a multinational coalition doesn't appear to be forming, Trump asked them and they all said no, and given that the squeeze in Hormuz got Trump to ask for a ceasefire, is it really so stupid? The Iranians calling the shots have a lot more at stake than the US and Israel. If they play this wrong their dead and as of now their government is in an existential state of total war it's the best chance they have. If they make peace without showing they can hurt the US they are dead men walking so why not do the gambit. It's their best shot at not dying from an Israeli airstrike.
People in the West Bank should have equal rights. Israel should either annex it and give everyone citizenship or withdraw. Creating an interlocking jigsaw of Jewish and Arab towns with the Jewish ones fully integrated into Israel and the Arab ones surrounded little Bantustans is not sustainable or stable.
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