Outlaw83
10mo ago
Again, the reactionaries are actually basically right - women's education (and I mean, like basic education, not whatever you think the evil modern western college is) + available contraception = a dramatic drop in birth rates no matter what else you actually try. Iran & Saudi Arabia are having big drops, and as noted, even places like Mongolia are dropping and Hungary's attempts largely failed unless judged on a curve.
Also, as noted, because contraception is much better than even 20 years ago thanks to IUD's, teen pregnancy have fallen off a cliff in the US - something everybody to the right of Stalin was praising as a worthy goal 20 years ago. The Christian Right got what it wanted - far less pregnant single teen girls.
The difference is, as opposed to the reactionaries, I think it's good women have the right to control their own reproduction.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
The people who will stop Chinese hypersonic missiles will be, and I am only slightly being hyperbolic, are trans furry military members in some bunker in Nevada piloting drones or other military gear, not some guy who signed up for reasonable reasons like access to college or career training or the darker reasons.
We already saw this in Ukraine - lots of hype over the true non-woke military, and it's regularly getting shredded by missiles that are largely being guided by a they/them army.
The actual thing that'll probably stop Chinese hypersonic missiles is a combination of they probably don't really exist in the way that anti-woke people hype them up online in the obsessive way they tend too, a corrupt Chinese procurement process that makes the US process look clean and normal, and the fact we've probably got stuff we're working on that we don't have to hype up the way the Chinese do to look strong.
Outlaw83
11mo ago
The problem with this argument is if everybody was actually on your side in nerdy spaces in the first place. There were plenty of people who wanted to kick you out from the jump.
Again, I've made this analogy before, but in 1997, if among your friend group, one of the guys in your local area that is into anime, Warhammer, Doctor Who, or whatever thing you're deeply into is kind of off, occcasionally says cring things or whatever, you may put up with it, because that's the only option you have. But, this did make a current brand of nerd think they had more support than they actually did.
But, in 2024, you don't have to deal with that guy anymore, and thanks to the increased popularity of nerdy things in general, there are plenty of people with more normal views on stuff.
If the option is somebody who might know less about cool thing y you're into, but also doesn't complain there are now non-sexy women or non-white people in prominent places within said cool thing, a lot of people are going to side with the person who knows less because they're less annoying to be around, even if you don't care one way or another.
I'd also argue video games are part of the capitalist system, while crochet groups really aren't, even though there have been rows about crochets involving race. But yes, it turns out people who own businesses want to make more money, and they'll drop their appeal to males 18-34, if it'll help them also win over older males and women.
I think a big thing your side doesn't get is the actual reason for the desexualization of games is actually less evil SJW's, but the fact that programmers, engineers, and actual gamers are getting older, having kids, and it's far more defensible to a wife to be playing a game on the lbig living room TV with characters that look like the modern Tomb Raider, The Last of Us, or whatever the game people have determined is full of 'ugly' people, as opposed to the polygons with boobs of the late 90's.
Ironically, I would compare this to a refugee situation, where refugees sometimes put up with extremist or less than fantastic parts of their refugee community because they all have to stand together. Well, some of the refugees found a new country and they have to follow certain rules and stop saying certain things and don't find that a problem, while there's a smaller group that wants to hold on to outdated traditions because that's the way it was.
Outlaw83
2yr ago
If it's true the Grossberg lawsuit is the reason for Tucker's firing - (there's also a LA Times story that Rupert thought Tucker's 1/6 coverage might get them in trouble), it proves that the Right needs to learn that yes, you can probably make "cancellable" statements about minorities in a college-educated conservative-leaning workplace, because any minorities who work in such a place aren't going to be upset about it or they'll just agree.
OTOH, making jokes about which female Governor candidate you'd rather have sex with is likely to upset even otherwise quite conservative women at that said workplace, because even in a right-wing space to the right of much of the nation, the median conservative woman is still going to be upset about openly sexual comments like that. 1960's/1970's feminism - aka, I can have my own job, financial independence, not getting fired for getting pregnant, and freedom from open sexism in the workplace is basically believed by 90% of women in the US.
The Right needs to learn this, or they'll keep ending up in the same place.
Outlaw83
11mo ago
I mean, yes, there has been social change, but the vast majority of that has been positive in my view, and in the view of the vast majority of people. It's up to those guys to determine if their deepest worry is about the gender or race of their favorite superheroes or the average bust size of the women in video games or whatever is proof that SJW's have taken over. I truly do think 'the SJW's have ruined everything' types do really overrate how much everybody in nerd culture was really on their side, as opposed to people who weren't opposed to the nerd culture of 1994, but also aren't opposed to the nerd culture of 2024.
If your deepest view is culture was great in 1995 and everything was fine, yeah, you're going to be left behind, just like if you're belief that culture was great in 1970, even in 1995, you'd be considered an out of touch old guy that's being passed by. 1995 is actually a long time ago now, when it comes to culture.
I've also made this point before - in 1994, if two nerdy (likely) white dudes are having a political argument, they probably don't have too deep a connection to many of the political arguments, even if they have different views on something. On the other hand in 2024, the left-leaning person is far more likely to have non-white people, LGBT, or other groups that are effected by conservative policies, so it's not a shock that now they have a closer relationship with those folks, they're less likely to be seen as just arguments.
Like, why do I want to be personally friendly with people who want to make the lives of my other friends worse? I'm fair about this - I don't expect somebody whose pro-life, anti-transgender rights, or super anti-immigration whatever to be my friend if they deeply care about those issues.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
So, there was some talk in this thread (or the previous one) about why the Israel/Palestine issue is such a big one in progressive circles, as opposed to country x, y, or z. Well, there were some decent historical and cultural explanations, I think one reason that really didn't get brought up is because there's actual disagreement within the wider left-leaning coalition is why there's more fire, on both sides.
So, as an actual progressive Democratic partisan, let me explain a bit.
Putting aside actual tankies or the 11 Lieberman Democrats left, if you put the median Bernie & the median Biden primary voter in 2020, and had them talk foreign policy, there would be wide agreement - Iraq was a mistake, we were in Afghanistan too long, Russia is bad and Ukraine needs our defense, but American foreign policy has been too hawkish in general, and so on. So, there's no spice, outside of the occasional Twitter dunk of somebody who had a bad take on Iraq in 2004, but even that's kind of hackish and old news to most Democratic voters at this point.
But, there would be actual disagreement on Israel & Palestine, especially if both sides were intelligent median voters because it's an actual complicated issue. At the moment, polling shows the median Democratic voter view is along the lines of, "the Israeli government are a-holes, Hamas is terrible, and the hostages need to be released, but Jesus, the IDF seems to be going overboard on this, and oh yeah, the surrounding governments are full of instigators."
Now, the more progressive voter would be more harsh on the Israeli government, more friendly to the Palestinian population, and so on, but the polling that showed 50/50 support for Israel vs Hamas among younger voters, was likely bad polling. The reason why Democratic views used to be more pro-Israel, is because the Israeli population used to reflect a more liberal view of the conflict, and now it really doesn't, plus wider changes in the makeup of the Democratic coalition.
Finally, the "but Palestinians have bad views on x, why do you support them," is a bad argument, because as progressives, we believe even terrible have the right to vote, and self-government. Only letting people with the right views (or the right amount of land ownership) is the reactionary view. Now, if said Palestinian government passes anti-LGBT laws or whatever, then we'll treat them like we do other countries with no leverage on us - sanctions and such until they embrace the loving arms of deviancy, or whatever.
In the long run, if this is all old news by Election Day 2024, it'll likely be forgotten, and more importantly, the vast majority of even young SJW left-wing Democratic voters are self-centered voters, like 95% of all voters, and will be reminded that Trump wants to put more reactionaries on the court, cut taxes for rich people, limit trans right, etc, make student loan payments higher, et al, and vote accordingly. I'd make a $1 bet w/ anybody here, that as long as the Israeli situation is basically back to some form of status quo, there will be no real movement of the youth vote, or a lack of turnout, beyond the lack of turnout there always is.
After all, Gretchen Whitmer actually lost ground among Muslim voters in 2022 in her re-election campaign (probably due to LGBT issues), but won by wider margin. Which is the only real trouble spot for the Biden team in 2024, since they literally do not care if some college-educated 2nd gen Muslim immigrant in Los Angeles doesn't vote.
Standard Disclaimer: Yes, lots of people are dumb, and will have simple reasons, and weird views.
So, a couple of months ago (I think - time is a flat circle), there was a conversation and some slight complaining about how center-right parties in Europe never work with "far-right" parties, and how that's proof that the elite are against the votes, etc. and it's actually unfair the center-right aligns with the center-left instead of the far-right and there was even some talk it was somehow undemocratic.
Well, I just saw a poll about voting preference for Kamala Harris among German voters that shows something important about the underlying feelings of actual electorate-
https://x.com/ElectsWorld/status/1818288736549159376
% who would vote for Vice President Harris (D):
Grüne: 99 %
SPD: 92 %
CDU/CSU: 89 %
FDP: 85 %
BSW: 52 %
AfD: 26 %
Forsa, 26/07/24
Obviously, the SPD, Green, and AfD numbers all make sense. For those unaware, BSW is the new anti-immigrant economically left-wing party recent created by a former prominent Die Lienke member, so they're sort of cross-pressured on this, ironically.
But, the important number to show is the CDU/CSU & FDP numbers. This is why these center-right parties end up aligning w/ the center-left because on the big issues of the day, the CDU/CSU & FDP voter is closer to the SPD or Green Party than the AfD
Obviously, yes, the chances are some of that 15% in the FDP or 11% in the CDU/CSU will eventually also move to the AfD and obviously, another chunk of the voters if they actually lived in the US would end up voting for Trump the same way a lot of normal Republican's who have voted for Republican's their whole life end up voting for Trump, but this isn't a case of some Elite spitting in the face of their voters and aligning in some globalist conspiracy against the voters.
No, the voters are with the leadership for the most part on this. This isn't going to be correct for every country, but this is also why most of the center felt closer to Communist's than the former National Front in the French parliamentary elections as well. As I've said before, people want harsh immigration policies, they're just not willing to accept the rest of the right-wing culture war and lack of competence that comes with it when it comes to current far-right parties like the AfD.
If you truly think Muslim immigration is the worst problem facing Europe, then that person needs to accept LGBT rights, a massive welfare state, supporting Ukraine, and so on, and you might get somewhere.
Outlaw83
11mo ago
He just called in via phone during Kamala's first speech in Wilmington. Ironically, sounds the best he has since the SOTU.
Outlaw83
2yr ago
It's not so much the media doesn't care about white victims - it's that the African-American community is organized in such a way that if somebody gets shot by the police, somebody in that family knows a pastor or a community organizer who knows another pastor or a local politician who knows somebody reasonably famous or a prominent journalist to get it out there.
Meanwhile, probably half of the white victims' own family will back the cops over the victim.
Outlaw83
11mo ago
Because as a man, to me, a 'financial abortion' is still a fundamentally irresponsible act.
Getting an abortion if you get pregnant and don't want a child, putting aside morality, is a responsible act.
Walking away from a child you've created and that will be born is an irresponsible act.
Except this is the lowest period of non-arbitrary violence against the most anti-social elements of society in probably human history and also the least violent part of human history. In the past, there was way harsher actions against anti-social elements of society, and far more general violence and chaos.
Also, the reason I wouldn't want is you're not a nice, respectful, orderly neighbor. You're an authoritarian with dreams of violent cleanses of people lesser than you, so in aggregate, crime and disorder goes down by 5%, if they're out of bounds of what you determine to be an orderly society.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Because all the efficiency isn't going to the very wealthy?
Again, the only study that has shown any sort of long-term wage depression for workers was in the immediacy of the Mariel boatlift in Miami-Dade, but that's an equivalent amount of immigration nationwide that would never happen, short of Bryan Caplan somehow becoming dictator. Yes, things don't go positively for 100% of people, but most of the actual economic downturn in certain parts of the country is actually due to outside competition from China, not immigration into the US.
Also, fertility is linked to women's education. America could become a fortress with zero immigration, and TFR will keep on going down, as long as birth control and highly educated women with expansive freedom exist.
Outlaw83
11mo ago
As I've said before, the problem is the core of the anti-immigration people aren't willing to give up some of their other right-wing policy goals.
Meloni in Italy seems to be doing fine, if not doing as much as perhaps she promised (like all politicians), but there's no deep state plot to remove her or whatever people claim about anti-immigration politicians, because she's pro-NATO and acts like a normal politician within the Overton Window of Italian politics.
But also, there was a super anti-immigration party on the ballot for the UK. Eighty six percent of the population chose somebody else. That 14% doesn't get veto power via rioting, and that's why you see strong support among the populace for harsh measures for the rioters.
Outlaw83
10mo ago
1.) If you would've told a British person they were basically the same as a Serb or Bulgarian in I don't know, 1851, they likely would've punched you and called you some weird slur nobody knows anymore. But, also, the whole "these ethnic groups are all similar too each other so that immigration was OK, it's just these people won't be able to do it," is literally the same argument made against Italians, Jews, Slavs, and hell, the Swedes at one time. This weird 'we're all white and should have solidarity' is a thing that never existed. As I've might've said before, as the descendent of Pole's, it's actually far more likely some ancestor of current non-college educated half-German guy in rural Ohio did a bit of light war crimes of ancestors of mine, as far as nothing bad has been done to my ancestors by non-European immigrants, so why should I, as argued below, have solidarity with them on racial lines?
2.) I'm quite sure the ole' American assimilation process (which continues largely the same way it always has despite protests to the contrary) will do it's work on Salvadorans, Venezuelans, and whomever else is the scary migrant group of the week. Yes, yes, the culture will change around that - welcome to being in the position of Bill the Butcher in 1863 upset the Irish were changing things or whatever. We're not some European country where people stay on the same patch of land for 9,000 generations. Things shift and change, and whatever you think was the perfect time that we globalists ruined was a time of ruin and destruction for some a generation or two older than you.
As far as imparting cultural sentiments, I don't know, Trump seems to be winning over Hispanic's fine. A little economic success leading to ladder pulling does not know color. It's an American tradition.
3.) Which is probably my inherent bedrock disagreement on where we don't agree - America's not getting worse to me. There are issues, as always, but in the long run, even with Trump, things continue to progress bit by bit.
Outlaw83
10mo ago
There's this weird wish among decent groups of all ideologies for basically tuning the clock back on actual advancement - whether it's my fellow lefties unhappy that America's a productive enough country we no longer can make cheap t-shirts here or conservatives upset the workforce is advanced that nobody would want to hire a 14 year old to do a manufacturing job.
It's actually a good thing for you to be a country where you're so advanced, 13 year old's are basically useless in the workforce! Sure, there are downsides, but there's a reason why the only places where there's massive amounts of low-productivity manufacturing work and cihld labor are some of the poorest places in the world.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Basically, nobody on the Internet supported Joe Biden, but he was the Democratic nominee easily.
I'm not saying Haley is going to do that, but the loud online people are all Trumpian, just like the loud people online in 2020 were all Bernie supporters. It's just Trump also has more support among the rest of the party.
Haley at say, 20% is not a shocking number, and ending up at say, 35-40% in New Hampshire, a very moderate state that Haley is putting a lot of time into wouldn't be surprising at all. So, a few outlier polls currently showing her within 5 or 10 in New Hampshire aren't out of line.
I also think you're likely in your own bubble. The type of people who support Haley, are likely not on media you show, or in areas where you are. Also, NYT polling isn't polling NYT readers, it's usually polling people who watched the debate.
But, as somebody else noticed, the type of person who likely supports Haley at the moment is a combination of college-educated center-right voters, normie suburban voters, and such, that for obvious reasons, don't mention their politcal beliefs on the Internet a lot, because they'll get called RINO's by most of the party, but also are too conservative to ever be Democrat's.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Let's be honest here - nobody is censored here, but it turns out, people don't like arguing 20-on-1 anywhere in society, regardless of ideology. Which is true of left-leaning spaces as well, for conservatives. But, well, those spaces don't do the whole "we're not censoring viewpoints" thing, they just say forthrightly, 'yeah, this is a place for people who agree on x, y, and z. Like it or leave.'
Outlaw83
2yr ago
Yup, there's always these polls that show "x of professors used to be Republicans in y year, but now..." when I can guarantee you that most professors who were still registered as Republican in say, 1980, hadn't voted for a Republican since maybe, Nixon, the first time, and were only registered Republican's because of weird ethnic coalitional politics where they grew up, or being in one of the weird places where the GOP were the more left-leaning party (like say, the South, and that's even kind of questionable).
Put it this way, the amount of Reagan-voting professors in 1980 is probably similar to the amount of Trump-voting professors in 2022.
Also, as noted, there are a lot of moderate professors who'd vote for a center-right European party that was liberal socially, but I suppose most of the people upset about woke professors wouldn't be too happy about that either.
Finally, the culture war, as far as "cancel culture" or "trans issues" go are low salience issues, even for GOP voters, as seen in midterm exist polls. In reality, it's the bugaboo of general right-wing social reactionaries, and centrists stuck in D+50 urban areas. Yes, if you're a standard-issue centrist Dem who works at a college or in media, you're probably annoyed by what the woke kids want to do. But, be like Matt Yglesias or Jonathan Chait, and complain enough online about them that they get annoyed by you, while also writing a lot about how Ron DeSantis voted a lot to cut Social Security & Medicare, and that Republican's still want to ban abortion, as opposed to spending all your time on the woke thing of the moment.
Even CRT/school closures as an issue, is kind of sketchy - people point to 2021 and Virginia, but if you really look into things, voting patterns show the standard drop in voting for everybody as is standard for off-year VA Governor elections, except for 70+ voters, which tells me the CRT thing was a bugaboo to older conservative voters, and that's about it. Even DeSantis and his massive win, is more accurately connected to general shifts in Florida's population (big increase in Venezuelan refugees + more older conservatives from midwes states moving in + COVID "refugees) + DeSantis doing non-conservative things (like using ARP money to raise teacher salaries + broadly supported environmental protections + not f'ng up post-hurricane) + as a bonus, the anti-woke stuff + a massive drop in turnout among Democratic voters. I forget the exact numbers, but only 80% of Democrat's turned out in 2022 compared to 2018, while 107% of Republican's did, and that's not all changes in voting registration.
Now, personally, as a leftie, I'm actually kind of OK w/ Florida becoming a Republican vote sink. Yes, all right-leaning people, upset about your woke swing state, move to Tampa. Upset Michigan has a Democratic trifecta, hit the road to West Palm Beach. Pennsylvania not banning abortion got you down? Panama Beach is looking lovely.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
I mean, it's mostly just cheaper housing or in Europe, a larger safety net. Sure, maybe family closeness helps in edge cases, but it's actually just housing is much cheaper in China, Turkey, or many other low-income countries with no homelessness. Even accounting for cost of living and wages, there are a lot of cheaper housing options in a second-tier city in Turkey, India, or Kenya than the US.
By the same token, the larger safety net helps left-leaning support of harsher treatment of problem homeless people in Europe. You can't have just the stick, and even if you disagree with how we handle the carrot here in the US, you still need some form of carrot.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
Mark Levin has a radio show that lots and lots of people still listen to (1.5 million daily was the most correct-seeming number from a quick Google, but it could be an over or underestimate), especially the type of right-leaning person who still buys books (old people), while RH mostly gets into arguments on Twitter, has a successful Substack, but really has little reach in normie land.
I think sometimes people forget that because of things like Substack, Patreon, etc., somebody can have a very healthy living, while not having much reach. Like, I don't knoe his Substack numbers, but he could have a healthy six-figure income, and have an audience of basically nothing, politically.
Outlaw83
1yr ago
The actual reality is the Sex Recession was either something made up out of bad data, a temporary drop mostly due to women being more worried about COVID than men, especially among single people under 30, or was left-leaning women being more wary of "non-political men" and those men learning how to better sell themselves.
Why do I say this? Because according to the same data people used to write one zillion Hot Takes about how online dating has destroyed young men's ability to get laid, everything is fine - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FyOlWt9aUAAYZsd?format=png&name=small
We're back to the only guys not getting laid actually being probably the guys who were never getting laid. Or maybe the incels aged out, and Gen Z, born into dating apps, know how to deal with them better as they enter adulthood.
Outlaw83
10mo ago
Yeah, Detroit had a bad run with a combination of the capitalistic incompetence of the Big Three ownership + corrupt leadership + the general Sun Belt migration.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of the most economically dynamic and innovative and growing regions of the US are far more diverse, with the places that are less diverse mostly slowly dying out. This includes red states too - Houston, Miami (weird how the amount of Haitians wasn't a worry for all the VCers and blockchainers a few years ago), etc. There aren't a ton of super-white areas of the country with massive growth. Even a place like Nashville is diversifying as it grows.
Outlaw83
10mo ago
Putting aside the weird "save the white and Asian race from dominance by the scary blacks and browns" at the end, I think here's the issue why the people in this thread aren't getting it.
There's the population of women.
There's the population of women that are OK w/ the pain of childbirth (or maybe they're lucky it's less painful for them) and the worries, because they enjoy being a mother that much more, and so on.
Then there's the population of women that thinks the pain is too much, doesn't want children, whatever.
It used to be the latter population was basically forced to be mothers, because that was their only option in society, outside of spinsterhood. Now, they don't, or maybe instead of having five by 27, they have one at 37.
Nobody among the latter group is saying the former group should stop having children. They just don't want to be forced (or "forced") to have more children by the state or society. Group B always existed in one form or another - they just never had a voice before, and if you're used to a society where all women either legitimately or have to act like they want to be mothers, it can sound fake or like some plot or whatever.
So, there's some talk downthread about Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrants and such. Putting aside I guarantee in the late 19th century there was in fact plenty of examples of massive population changes, even in more rural parts of the country. Ironically, many of the same people who put forth those population changes are now the ones scared of immigration, so in 50 years, as is American tradition, these Haitian immigrants will be saying we shouldn't be letting in the Bangladeshi's or whomever.
But, the interesting thing is the questions about "why" anybody puts up with them and well, at least according to local business owners, because they're more likely to show up to do the job and not fail a drug test than the righteous pure American's currently living there.
https://youtube.com/watch?si=nke3DETnGvcaAHE4&v=FA80DOcJnu8&feature=youtu.be - Youtube video
https://x.com/otis_reid/status/1833578554778374462 - Quote from the factory owner.
Of course, 2016 J.D. Vance would probably agree with this factory owner about the get up 'n' go of this socioeconomic group of people instead of defending them from economic competition from supposedly mentally deficient Haitians.
Now, to quote a lot of Twitter, it is true the Haitians are ruining that community's traditions, by actually getting to work and not showing up high.
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