BANNED USER: repeated antagonism and bad behavior
Nantafiria
No bio...
User ID: 246
Banned by: @Amadan
Nantafiria
4mo ago
any sympathy for Brits voting for Tories
Of course not, why should I? Why should anyone else? The Brits voting for the same neolibs we keep mentioning instead of more anti-immigrant rightists is exactly why nobody should feel bad for them
Poles voting for PiS
The visa corruption thing was pretty funny, yeah. We are blessed to live in a world where corruption like this makes people well-suited to living in Poland.
Italians voting for Meloni?
I pity the Italian who expects anything of his rulers, scandals excepted.
Less snarkily, Meloni's policies round off to 'fuck illegals/refugees, legal migrants are fine'. This is not a departure from her earlier promises, though I'd still love to see a literal naval blockade of north Africa happen one of these days, just for the fireworks' sake.
Nantafiria
4mo ago
The Israelis care more about their own security than they do about proving paranoid rightists and anti-colonial leftists wrong, as they well should. If the standards of being a good ally include refusing aid, Israel still isn't a uniquely bad ally. Insisting they don't take the money or else they're big meanies is ludicrous.
Nantafiria
4mo ago
Wake me up when the effects of the policies you listed make their way to Eurostat.
Walk a ten thousand miles, get your goalpost, put it back. That's how far away you've moved it.
The line that people were never asked about X and Y is something of a nonsense argument, too. The vast, vast, vast majority of policy doesn't see much debate, because politicians figured out decades ago that policy doesn't get votes, slogans and one-liners and tribalism does. Vibes-based democracy is a new term, not a new concept. This is, as you say, par for the course, and I have no sympathy for people who vote for pro-immigration neolibs and get pro-immigrant governments. They can and should not do that if they want to make a good case.
Nantafiria
4mo ago
My general impression is that Holland and the anglosphere are much less separated than, say, the anglosphere and France
Ehhhhhhhhhh...
anti-immigrant groups in Europe generally root for each other's teams
Yes, absolutely
Nantafiria
4mo ago
If only people on TheMotte spoke clearly, and said what they meant, this place might be better. We even might get to talk to one another without all the smug hinting in the world.
Nantafiria
4mo ago
Yeah, that's on you, not the Israelis.
Nantafiria
4mo ago
That is the narrative paranoid rightists suggest, because 'they betrayed us' has been their playbook since the Dolchstoßlegende. Where Europeans elect rightists more interested in culture than money, they can in fact work against immigration, they do in fact work against immigration, and people who say it never works out aren't looking very closely. Sometimes the left beats them to the punch to take the wind out of their sails. And sometimes, in 4D chess moves that are entirely too funny to me, even the most pro-immigrant nations will take action against immigrants while insisting it's about antisemitism bro trust me bro we surely don't care about the people sucking up benefits. The French are sick of it and in no way get 'the same result'. Eastern European nations where people move away from more than to do it.
There's plenty of anti-immigration policy in Europe to be found, if you care to look. Did you actually care to?
Nantafiria
4mo ago
Us ordinary Europeans keep voting for the people who have been doing this for decades. 'Victim blaming' is mostly a fake and gay concept; vote for neolibs, get neolibs. Simple as.
Nantafiria
4mo ago
Worked is not merely debatable, it is debated even among Christians to this day. It isn't very hard at all to point at times when it did not in fact work, and caused much grief to both its adherents and victims.
Nantafiria
4mo ago
The Netherlands
After voting in our national elections yesterday, the count is out. Official results aren't due 'till tomorrow, but these results aren't vague enough for the details to matter too much: the big winners on the block are the 'traditional' anti-immigration bulwark of the PVV, the CDA splinter small-c conservative NSC, and the merged for this year's social democrat/green merger GL-PvdA. The previous ruling coalition consisted of the VVD, CDA, D66, and CU, which together have lost a whopping 37 seats (there are 150 in total); it is extremely clear that the Dutch people were mighty displeased with these lot and accordingly voted for others instead.
These results aren't terribly surprising, and largely echo what the polls had been showing in the days leading up to the election. The Dutch left has been toothless and marginalised for a fairly long while now; they have no good response to the issues of the day and seem to not really be trying. Our centre-right VVD prime minister of the past (checks calendar) thirteen years ran out of excuses also, and so people flocked to alternatives; the PVV because they are credibly opposed to Islam, and NSC because they are headed by someone who made a name for himself by being someone with an actual shred of dignity and integrity, enough that his brand baby new party is now four times the size of the CDA he was from. In particular, D66 has lost many people who felt betrayed by their comfort with more rightist parties they went to govern with, and CDA has bled many people disillusioned with their own brand of infighting and petty disputes. The VVD's relatively smaller loss is likely because they largely succeeded on a promise of their own: don't rock the boat for comfortable people.
What this means for upcoming coalition negotiations isn't quite clear, but I find a PVV/VVD/NSC combination to be the most likely. Both the NSC and VVD have in the past expressed doubts about the PVV, but these were never very firm, the VVD has already kinda-sorta ruled alongside the PVV, and their seats make them somewhat too large to be ignored. A more centrist GL-PvdA/VVD/NSC combination that some floated has no majority without a fourth partner, and the PVV is frankly a little too large for them to ignore. A bit of flirting and cautious approaching on the sides of the VVD and NSC has been underway for some weeks. As for the PVV itself, Wilders has been polite enough to just tell us what he thinks for himself.
Nantafiria
5mo ago
If that is the society you want to know about, the answer is really quite simple: we don't know, we have never known, we aren't going to know. There are places where these are things you can know; China and the near east have left behind enough writing from their bronze ages that you can see what's up. Greece didn't, and it has been combed over more extensively than most anywhere else has been. It's just not happening.
Nantafiria
5mo ago
What would the alternative look like to you?
Steppe-bound nomadic peoples are poor. They live off flocks of sheep and ride around on literal ponies (yeah) and make war with arrowheads chiseled from rock and bone. They have nothing you can take from them, least of all land that is a blasted icy hellscape half of the time, and an arid plain doing little good by you the rest of it. You cannot destroy their populace, which will migrate away if you invade. You cannot even hold and garrison their land, since this is logistically impossible.
Most of the time, you make do. Once every few centuries, it goes wrong. But I do ask: what would it take to falsify, so to speak, the theory you're vaguely alluding to here?
Nantafiria
5mo ago
Chariots were on their way out by then, but not quite yet extinct in the broader Mediterranean; indeed, the Persians deploy a couple hundred at Gaugamela, many centuries after the Iliad was dreamt up.
Nantafiria
6mo ago
now we're just arguing severity
Of course we're arguing severity, that was the point from the start. Cheating is a bad thing in their eyes, just not the very worst.
the only reason they bring it up is to tar their opponent
Yes, they are 2023 journalists. Their political enemies got them cheap ammunition with which to tar them. Of course they're gonna do that.
I think it's pretty ironic you are accusing me of trying to score cheap political points, since that is the only reason the article exists
It's not ironic. No, I expect better of you than I do of journalists. I expect better of everyone in this place! If that's the bar you're holding yourself to, I think you truly and genuinely need to consider the way you engage with people
Nantafiria
7mo ago
Yeah, I'm hoping to find out why there's a reason to doubt that.
Nantafiria
7mo ago
I'm not dense enough to think the people are Vice think everyone should be polyamorous, into swinging, as well as cuckoldry. For what it's worth, I don't think you are either.
The median Vice employee, let alone reader, thinks breaking your wife's (or husband's) trust is bad; no sacred union is required, for nothing is sacred to begin with. If that means you both go into marriage thinking any of these three rightwing boogeymen is okay, then power to them, so says the Vice liberal. If you drop it on someone out of nowhere, cheat on them, betray what was a generic relationship? Not so power to them, shitty move, so says the Vice liberal.
This isn't very complicated. This isn't news to you, either: I shouldn't have to spell it out. I don't know why you'd imply that this isn't obvious if you weren't trying to score tediously cheap points, so if you will, please tell me what the point of this has been. The ranks of Vice aren't full of people who think cheating on your wife is totally awesome, and to twist around so it kinda-sorta might look that way is tiresome. Not clever. Not enlightening. Just tiresome.
Nantafiria
7mo ago
This is a wonderful post. Thank you for making it; it's the sorts of beauty that makes me glad to be at home in this place, no matter the other material that comes and goes.
I have no incredibly deep other thoughts. The baseball card anecdote amused me, a little; a Dutch YA book includes a similar quip. An old, old man talks about the park ranger's folly: by fencing off pretty areas, telling kids not to climb trees, and being a general menace, he kills the sorts of enjoyment that drives kids into wanting to be park rangers. It's funny how this sorts of attitude can be seen across so many years and places, genuinely.
Nantafiria
7mo ago
I'm sure that may be true, and I'm still sure its people still by and large find cheating on your wife a bad thing. Not as bad as being part of the enemy tribe, perhaps, but 'not as bad as' does not 'totally okay' equate.
Nantafiria
7mo ago
Because this is his home, as it is for many people.
Nantafiria
7mo ago
Why?
Nantafiria
7mo ago
Not the employees or readers of Vice, who will agree with you that cheating on your wife is bad.
Nantafiria
7mo ago
This sorts of thing is some reversed 'republicans pounce' in action and it is every bit as pathetic. Of course this is a story. You don't need 'senseless purity spirals' to consider cheating on your wife and abusing your authority as a literal hero bad things.
Nantafiria
7mo ago
I think they'd say whatever. I also think they don't find people very different from them interesting. At all. They find them vaguely exotic at best, and revulsing at worst. People don't value what you call creative, interesting, and intellectually stimulating very much at all. The median Mottizen might, and it reinforces how far from normal the people here tend to be
Nantafiria
7mo ago
Do you reckon that includes Ashlael and I, or am I correct to assume this is a whole bunch of hot air?
No, and fuck you too.
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