Mewis
2yr ago
Conservatives do not need to articulate a coherent vision of society - by their nature they like things the way they were or at least the way they were when they were kids. Though few really desire a return to the 1950s or the 1920s anymore, I'd say the median right-voter longs for the 90s - peace, prosperity, American power, gays out of the closet but not by much, jokes about transsexuals on TV, and a cordial racial dialogue. If this desire is not articulated by a visionary intellectual vanguard, it's because visionary intellectuals think it's silly and beneath them. Imagine wanting a society that you actually know is possible and desirable because you lived through it! Everyone knows the correct way to reform society is to dream up some ludicrous science-fiction scenario and then try to enforce it on an unwilling majority that just wants to grill.
Mewis
1yr ago
It's about skin in the game - Captains have responsibility for the ship, and therefore should accept the greatest risk, to keep them responsible.
Mewis
2yr ago
Frankenstein is about as Romantic as it comes, but it should be understood that this was the prevailing style of the time - overwrought and emotional. Men wrote this way back then too.
Mewis
2yr ago
The fact is that Ron knows that he needs Trump supporters and he knows that infighting is just going to weaken him.
I really would have given Trump more credit than to think he would launch this kind of salvo at this stage.
The guy just can't help himself. He'd really rather burn the Republican Party to the ground than share the spotlight.
Mewis
1yr ago
It's not that monumentally consequential in a healthy political party. Part of the Democrat Party's problem is this weird desire to keep passing the Presidency to anointed successors instead of actually allowing any kind of party democracy to occur. That's how they got Clinton in 16, Biden in 20 and now look stuck with Harris in 24. But it really doesn't have to be this way, and it wasn't so long ago that it was quite normal to hand the Vice Presidency to an empty suit like Spiro Agnew or Dan Quayle.
Mewis
1yr ago
"recording a video in public while being Palestinian" is not a crime, last I checked.
There is no way to "passively" prevent someone from going where they please, and if that place is a public place, you have no right to do so. You also have no right to claim a public place, and in doing so deny it to your ethnic, religious or political enemies.
Mewis
1yr ago
Why not simply bring down the force of law on these petty criminals for the crimes they are actually committing, rather than this chicanery about nudging social media?
Mewis
1yr ago
Europe has a bigger economy in the sense that we produce luxury goods that are much more appealing and valuable. It doesn't mean that we just produce more of everything. This is particularly true in cost disease vulnerable sectors... Like defense. French winemakers are maybe more productive than Russian factory workers... But unlikely to win a war.
This isn't to say that Russia has the upper hand, but it's closer than the economic data gives credit for. That's how North Korea can be a threat to South Korea despite the economic imbalance.
Mewis
1yr ago
Risking your life is a great way to gain respect... from men. In which case it might work, if what he needs is more self-respect
Mewis
2yr ago
I don't really find this account compelling. The Roman Empire was damaged heavily by the efforts of popular military leaders to seize power, but this pattern started long before the use of foederati in the army. Far from decadence and complacency, Rome was damaged by the irrepressible ambition and ruthlessness of generals and soldiers.
But I would expect people on the right - and I mean all those talking heads, think tanks and high-flying politicians - be interested in figuring out whether DIE actually makes the army stronger - and if not, pushing that fact hard.
Does it matter? If foreign wars are pointless, and America should turn away from military adventurism, does the strength of the army actually matter that much? Is the army naught but an appendage of the state - in which case, it hardly matters what the people in it believe? Or is the expectation that the army could provide a bulwark against leftism - in which case, the army is now interfering in politics? Is it wise to invite interference from an institution that is vulnerable to capture by your opponents?
I think it's worth asking exactly what people want from the military before they treat it as a political battlefield. Because it doesn't seem to me like Americans really have a consensus there.
Mewis
2yr ago
If you are choked, you will stop breathing, and if you stop breathing for a duration, you will suffer brain damage. If your breathing does not restart, you die. It may have been that after the choke ended, Neely was too brain damaged to be resuscitated, which makes sense since most accounts indicate he was choked for a pretty long period of time (10 mins, definitely enough to kill someone).
Mewis
2yr ago
I'm a gay man and I work a physical job. Every person other than me in the company is a straight man (it's unofficial policy to not hire women). It's literally not a problem.
Mewis
2yr ago
Sorry, I don't credit this whole 'everyone before 1950 was a toothless withered crone with 800 diseases by the age of 22 and wore nothing but filthy rags' narrative. Because that's just not how people live.
If you look at totally primitive hunter gatherer tribes on remote islands, guess what. They have colour and culture and ornament. Even when they need to go to extreme lengths to make and maintain those things. They find a way, because people always find a way to express themselves, even in poverty. Would dirt-poor medieval peasants really be willing to spend what would have been a very large amount of money on dyed and colored clothes according to the fashions of the period and location, even knowing their clothes would just be grey rags in two months? I doubt it.
Mewis
2yr ago
Twitter wasn't a tool for progressives to evangelize to others - it was a tool for them to evangelize to themselves, which is just as dangerous.
Mewis
2yr ago
They were punished lightly by the standards of authoritarian countries, but are those standards particularly important or relevant?
People execute with the military and the information they have, not the military and information they want to have - Putin would hardly be the first leader to be undermined by the incompetence of others. I would be reluctant to say that Putin's war failed because of his personal failings. I don't think, for example, that the US war against Saddam Hussein was successful because of some awesome talent on the part of GWB.
Mewis
2yr ago
There's no reason why the UK can't bounce back. Many of our problems are entirely self-inflicted - the addiction to cheap labor, the highly restrictive planning system, the lack of investment, the total aversion of the government to supporting industry, and moronic environmentalism. Whether we will choose to stop sabotaging our own future is another question entirely. If the previous years are any indicator, the answer is no. Neither political party shows any interest in restricting immigration, investing in infrastructure, reforming the planning system, or supporting industry.
Mewis
10mo ago
It's nonsense, anyway - if Kamala was told the questions in advance, she didn't do anything with that information, all she did was give weird scripted answers that barely engaged with the subject while Trump exploded.
Mewis
1yr ago
Newsom has the very real baggage of being the governor of California. My impression is that among many Americans, California is disliked, at least on the level of politics, and seen as a model of bad state government. I'm open to being corrected.
Mewis
1yr ago
The referendum didn't fail because of some ultra catholic silent majority - it comes on the heels of large wins for abortion and gay marriage in referenda. Most people are still good liberals. The fact is that these amendments were half baked from the start.
Mewis
1yr ago
Somehow the richest and most powerful society in the world, one that executes a hundred million cows a year, can't figure out how to execute humans because uh, it's messy.
Mewis
1yr ago
Some things are nearly identical (I couldn't identify the difference between store brand and Uncle Ben's rice, for example) but other things, particularly processed foods, do have a noticeable gap. Offbrand cola is disgusting, for example.
Mewis
1yr ago
My take is that though 'tough talk' is in vogue these days, the usual bromides of 'just self improve' or 'don't be a pussy' or whatever are not necessarily a spur to change. They may, in fact, serve as a defense against change. And I suspect that the change you are defending against is actually getting a girlfriend, and you use these horrible events like your friend getting stabbed or your own feels of unworthiness to avoid doing it. And of course, it is not hard to find unpleasant people on the internet who will join in on this. It's human nature to seek to identify others as inferior, and to hate them for it. I guess I understand this kind of behavior because I engage in it myself. It's easier to tell myself that I'm lazy, small, weak, unattractive and disgusting than it is for me to go out and talk to other men. And I sometimes seek out negative reinforcement on the internet, which is never in short supply in places like Reddit.
I don't really have a solution. But I don't really believe that tragedy and ambulances are inevitable features of having a relationship.
In terms of tail-risk, hydro is probably the most dangerous form of power around. There are dams around the world that could kill hundreds of thousands of people if they failed.
More options
Context Copy link