SSCReader
7mo ago
The mod note was: Low effort top level post. This is against the rules. I strongly doubt that you don't know this. 1 day ban.
So it wasn't because it was not Culture War, but because it was low effort surely?
SSCReader
7mo ago
counts as punishment from God for our sins?
If God exists and that's His punishment then I can only assume He doesn't mind that much really. He has (we are told) previously flooded the earth, destroyed entire cities, cast people out of paradise, given crippling labor pains to all women for all time, incinerated people alive and entombed whole families in the earth, sent explicit plagues and death for tens of thousands, so allowing people to do perhaps unwise things to themselves is not exactly on the same level of Godly punishments we are told He previously indulged in.
It's so underwhelming as to suggest it probably isn't actually a punishment from God at all. Either because God doesn't care, or doesn't act on the mortal plane in that way anymore, or more likely because God doesn't actually exist.
SSCReader
7mo ago
The primary selection criterion
Unless you think there is any chance he would have picked a Republican black woman, I think it's highly likely the primary selection criteria is "being a Democrat", whether being black or a woman ranks above being reliable or not being too powerful, or not having already announced they would run for the full seat is probably debatable, but it's not going to have outweighed political affiliation.
SSCReader
7mo ago
Notably McCarthy has not asked for support from the Democrats. Probably correctly realizing that doing that weakens his position with his own party. If the Democrats want to make things awkward for him, voting for him is exactly the way to do it. He wins this vote, sure, but it's a terrible look for him and he would probably be gone in a month or two.
This is not a backstab, because it is what McCarthy expected to happen. Remember winning the vote is not the only thing at stake here for him. Losing clean is probably preferable to winning due to your opponents voting for you. It would taint him for close to a third of his House brethren.
The Democrats best way to help him is to stay out of it, which means voting against him, so doing what they are expected to do. If any of them do vote for him, that will be the interesting scenario.
SSCReader
7mo ago
I'd like you to acknowledge that, transhumanism in both this specific and the general sense is as consequential as getting thrown out of heaven. We're talking about changes to the nature of man, sex and identity here.
I shall acknowledge no such thing, as I don't think they ARE comparable. Making changes to yourself and your own identity is something everyone should be free to do. I would in fact say that is the core aspect of being human. That whole pesky free will thing. It might turn out to be a bad decision, perhaps they will hate what they become. But that is their choice. Far from being a horror, being constrained from that free will would be the horror.
There is also a difference between a punishment and a consequence. A punishment requires intentionality on behalf of the punisher. A consequence does not. The outcome for a trans person may well be bad, but I highly doubt it is bad because God is punishing them directly. Reality has no intentionality in my view. God doesn't punish you for not looking where you are going and getting hit by a lump of metal going 60 mph. Reality does that without any such divine interventions required. So it is with transhumanism. And that is the true black pill. God is not responsible for our outcomes, only the vast uncaring universe is. There is no intention, there is no design. You pays your money and you takes your chances.
You could feel that his options are tightly constrained by his thin majority in the House and his opponents holding Senate and Presidency. He doesn't have many good options and is unlikely to be able to cut spending, so avoiding damaging chances for Republicans in the next voting cycle (which a shutdown might do) may be the very best that can be done. Patience in politics is rare, but it can be valuable.
SSCReader
7mo ago
Even constraining our situation to one where the Christian God exists however my point is that His punishments are clear and direct. He doesn't give you mildly bad outcomes as a punishment. He smites your city. He floods the world. He lets you see the promised land then exiles you from it. He forces you to choose to kill 70,000 of your followers.
KMC's point was that the bad outcomes WERE God's punishment. But this is not consistent with this version of God. It could be consistent with YOUR version* of the universe's intentionality as God, but that isn't the God we were discussing. And since Jesus died for our sins, even those direct punishments ceased, with the idea that anyone can be forgiven and find God, through Jesus Christ. Trans people could be punished after death if their actions are sinful, but God's punishments are no longer during life. And even when they were, they were very direct.
*It could also be consistent with no God, a blind watchmaker style God and so on of course.
SSCReader
7mo ago
A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain.
This would indicate that the poor outcomes for trans people after surgery are NOT temporal punishment from God (because even if they fervently convert and repent it cannot be undone and thus punishment would remain), however.
SSCReader
7mo ago
I have consumed memes about bad things happening to Blues in politically-charged incidents, and experienced positive qualia.
That's because you are not thinking about them as people at that point but faceless statistics, I would wager. If you sub in some Blue person that you actually know and care about, a friend, relative, an in law. Do you still feel the same way? I heavily suspect from what I know of you, that you would not.
Being happy something bad happened to a faceless member of the outgroup is as easy as it is meaningless. The question is do you hate the individual Blues that you know just because they are Blues?
Because that is what would be required for the breakdown of society in the way you talk about. Not that you are vaguely happy some random pink haired trans activist is hit by a truck with a MAGA bumper sticker while they tried to block the road, or that your Blue equivalent is vaguely happy some redneck in a cowboy hat gets beaten with a chair by a black paddleboat crew. That is entirely normal! We like it when bad things happen to the faceless other side, because they are wrong and bad, otherwise they would be on our side. That is an entirely normal human feeling. Our societies have had to deal with that since we started living together in groups bigger than 5.
But if it was your Blue brother in law, who you talk sports with at family weddings and who treats your sister well, who was hit by the truck, are you still happy? If so, then yes you are probably over the edge in partisan hate (in my opinion). But from how you write, I don't think that applies to you, and from my interactions with both Blue and Red Americans (given I am not American but live here), I don't think that is true of the vast, vast majority of them either.
I live in a Red town, but I work in the city in academia. When I have a bbq and my worlds collide, people are perfectly ok with each other. The local hardware store employee does not end up in a death match with the university HR rep. They eat hot dogs together while complaining about how people who prefer ketchup to mustard are evil (real example!).
In my direct experience most Americans do NOT hate each other across the blue/red divide. Because they barely know each other and true hate requires knowledge. They may dislike the opposing tribe, but that is not the same thing, and confusing the two is a mistake.
SSCReader
7mo ago
I think, if that is how people are thinking and feeling they should be able to talk about it here. I think my almost namesake is wrong on a lot of things. But I think he truthfully believes what he says, and as such it is pretty important to know that. Particularly if there are other people who feel the same way (and there are I believe). Now of course if everyone said the same thing this place would be the worse for it, because it would be more boring and echo-chambery.
Generally I think he is civil to people here and I have no problem with him saying what he says, even if I disagree with him, and think he is way too pessimistic and thus can only see (what I would perceive) as negative ways out.
SSCReader
7mo ago
I think Republican representatives would have (correctly in my opinion) have seen that as Democrats helping him out.
SSCReader
7mo ago
On the contrary, kind feelings however they are fostered are a strong protection. Not necessarily at the individual level of course.
One of the reasons the IRA was forced to cone to the table was that their own people had begun to support them less due to a couple of bombing campaigns that killed children and OAPs. These victims were still of the outgroup, but their was outrage even with Catholic communities. How people felt about the victims killed in their name was crucial in the ceasefire.
Before that the British dialed back on internment and brutal tactics to suppress Catholics after British citizens condemned things like Bloody Sunday and several shootings where teenagers ended up dead. The government responds to public pressure.
In the US, it was seeing black people brutalized by the police and having dogs set on them while peacefully marching that triggered enough support, that finally tried to remove layers of legal discrimination.
Seeing your opponents as people, as lives lost and ruined is a key factor in keeping, and returning to peace, and even when those differences have been built on hundreds of years of hatred and violence, it can still be done. We can still see dead Protestants or dead Catholics as abhorrent even after all of that.
Red's and Blue's are no different in my experience. Most Americans whatever their affiliations do not want to see their opponents murdered. Your levels of division are increasing, but you're not even at the levels the US was in the 60's and 70's let alone where Northern Ireland was in the 60's and 70's. Tensions wax and wane over time. Your fatalism is I believe misplaced.
Back home we would say that everything is bigger in America. I recently attended a wedding in Texas, and the saying that everything in Texas is bigger, apparently makes Texas, the America of America. But the people I met in rural Texas were not particularly different than the people I meet in Pennsylvania (though the church was huge as was the liquor store!) A union of a Philly city boy and a Texas rural girl, and the union of their families. Even North to South, rural to urban, the divisions in America at the personal level, simply do not look that great especially compared to history.
And it is, make no mistake at the personal level that will drive or heal the divisions you do have. Mobs and governments can be dumb and violent and can do terrible things, no doubt. But if the next day the public looks at bodies on the street and is repulsed, then there is a cap. Even at the height of the BLM riots, very few people actually died compared to the numbers involved (though there were some). Even in mobs and with mobs facing armed police, largely widespread death was not the result. Even for those who believed an election was stolen, and were there when the decision was being made ended up with very little death and destruction. Everything may be bigger in America, except when it comes to mob and government violence it appears.
I am not American, but I think you will get through this as your great nation has got through so many other (in my view) worse positions.
SSCReader
7mo ago
His last dumb political move was thinking Democrats were going to save him because he kowtowed to their spending wants to avoid shutdown, hitting the cooperate button as Democrats continue to slam defect, which is a fitting microcosm of his entire political career.
McCarthy did not ask Democrats to save him and was aware in advance they almost certainly would not. McCarthy wanted to avoid a shutdown so he worked with Democrats to do that. McCarthy's issues are representative of the split within the GOP and nothing to do with Democrats hitting defect.
Whether you count the Freedom Caucus as hitting defect against the GOP by forcing outsized limitations (based upon how many of them there are) upon McCarthy to get him chosen, or McCarthy hitting defect against them because he did not go along with the agreements he made, none of it has anything to do with Democrats.
SSCReader
7mo ago
As an update and as expected it is now confirmed the connection of HS2 to Manchester will now be cancelled. Not that it was any huge predictive power of mine, and I was certainly not alone in my cynicism, but I predicted this near 13 years ago. It was always the weakest link in the plan and any cost increase along with the government always being south facing was going to be its end. When a major local authority (not Crewe) in the Midlands (that I used to work for) reached out to me to ask for advice with putting a proposal together to lobby for HS2 to run through their largest city, I told them, that I would not advise spending much on the campaign as the chances were it would never come to fruition in the first place, and even if it did it was unlikely their bid would be successful logistically. Regrettably I think they ended up spending a significant amount on said campaign regardless.
I'll go on record to predict that the promise of upgrading existing transportation infrastructure in the area using "every penny" saved by scrapping HS2 over the next decade will also almost certainly not come true either.
SSCReader
7mo ago
Maybe they realised that actually reducing immigration was impossible (perhaps due to obstruction from the civil service and judiciary, or just a lack of state capacity) so better import immigrants that are more likely to vote for your party.
Despite Blair's incomplete neo-liberalization of Labour, the Conservatives are still the party of Big Business and (to massively simplify) "line goes up". Migration contributes to both of those and they are under significant pressure from large donors. The Tories could have cut immigration in half while still remaining in the EU. The fact they never did, was an indication that the campaign on reducing immigration through leaving the EU, was just a strategy (and an effective one!), and this is demonstrated by the fact they have never taken any action to reduce it since.
SSCReader
7mo ago
Communism is intuitively not terrible to the average person, because almost certainly they will have seen it, or something like it work at very small scales. Probably within their own family. You have resources coming in and in general within your direct family, those resources are allocated to who needs them not to who brought them in. I buy my kids clothes and food and toys much in excess of the economic value they produce. I give money to my brother when he is down on his luck even if I don't think he will ever be able to do the same for me. Money I've saved could just as easily go to sending my kid to school than me using it to buy myself a sweet new ride on mower. It's not exactly the same, but it has the same feel.
We could link that to BurdensomeCounts (I think?) prior post on how our intuitive thinking breaks down when dealing with above Dunbar numbers of people. If we see something that works with our direct local community, it's kind of grandfathered in to our thinking when we start looking at large numbers of people.
Also in the US at least, due to the historical issues with slavery, the tension in thinking between "that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; ..." and enslaving a group of people and their descendents has created a national guilt of sorts around racism.
We see this tension right at the beginning in the Founding Fathers who wrote things like: “the only unavoidable subject of regret.” and “we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” So this isn't some modern invention. The tension was seen right from the get go.
The reason racism is seen as so bad in the US is because of this collision between the idea of the US as the "shining city on the hill" as part of its founding mythos and how then failing to live up to their own ideals is seen as a "hideous blot". This kind of meta belief is in my experience as an outsider shared by many Americans whether on the right or left. The Civil Rights Acts et al did not cause it, they are the symptom of it.
My Trump voting conservative neighbors, believe that a man should be judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin and that is part of the foundation of their belief set. That America is a place where dreams can come true for anyone, where anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and have a chance of success, where Man is created in God's image. This is inherently at odds with treating a sub group of people as cattle. It can be rationalized away, because we are amazing at rationalizing away contradictions, but as HyncklaCG will always remind us, there is a reason Republicans were the original abolitionists. "The Radicals were heavily influenced by religious ideals, and many were Protestant reformers who saw slavery as evil.."
Comparing racism to anything in the US is going to be tricky because racism is a cloud that hangs over the national sense of identity, the tarnish on their otherwise exceptional outcomes. Not compared to the rest of the world but compared to their own standards. It's like a straight A student who agonises over a single D compared to a student who barely passes any of their classes. The very thing that pushes them to be exceptional also means their (perceived) past failures hurt that much more.
The question then would be, why would you expect Americans (in general) to think Marxism is worse than racism, when their only real direct experiences with anything like communism were probably somewhat positive, and that the juxtaposition of the inspiring rhetoric of their nation's founding has one tarnish which looms to an outsize degree in the collective consciousness. It is not comparing like with like.
It would be like going to Ireland and trying to find a legislative cause as to why they might think Marxism is more socially acceptable than Religious persecution or British Imperialism. Each nations cultural and social beliefs can only be understood in relation to their own historical context. The success in the export of American cultural values does also muddy this of course. Is racism more or less socially acceptable than British Imperialism in Londonderry/Derry would be an interesting comparison.
SSCReader
7mo ago
I think at small scales it certainly can be. A Christian household where the main breadwinner, explicitly puts his children and wife above himself when using the fruits of his labour to sustain them and make them happy (something I see in the conservative families around me all the time), and their charity in looking after unfortunate souls in their family/town.
Acts 2:44–45 “And all that believed were together and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need
Has at least some overlap with:
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"
Now that breaks down at scale, I completely agree, and absolutely in practice pretty much immediately, but there is certainly something there that echoes. Communal living can work at small scales with high trust (such as in a family or religious group).
SSCReader
7mo ago
Comparing fascism and communism is more nuanced than most people would think I would agree. but do you think the average American is likely to think of their household as fascist, regardless of what critical theorists think?
We're talking about people's perceptions here, remember.
SSCReader
7mo ago
Churches can be democratic (Quakers) or monarchical (Catholic), or at least different churches have different methods of leadership as do families.
But my point is that Marxism does have some overlap with Christianity,and just as feudalism does and so does democracy. Christianity contains within itself multitudes, and Christianity contains elements that are compatible with the divine right of kings, and elements that are compatible with Marxism and elements that are compatible with capitalism. It's probably one of the things that has made Christianity so successful as a religion. It contains Prosperity theology and ascetic Puritanism both. And it does share some teachings with Marxism.
SSCReader
7mo ago
Nope, but the reason for that is not because their family arrangement is more similar to communism than fascism, their perception is due to the cultural signals they've been inundated with their entire lives and have thoroughly internalized. Those cultural signals were indeed influenced by the perception of the Critical Theorists, so what the Critical Theorists thought actually does matter because of its influence on culture and academia.
Or is it because of the national mythos and about defeating Nazism in WW2? Being integrated into the founding mythos of being the beacon of liberty and justice, combined with having direct examples in the US of racial discrimination and making the connection to what Nazis were doing in Europe?
Did Critical Theorists invent that connection or is it a logical one? I don't think Critical Theorists have had a great deal of influence on church going, conservative rural Americans. I think their own ideology and experience is enough to explain why they would reject fascism but have some non-negative views of communal living. Leftish Social welfare policies are popular in poor areas because they benefit from them, even if they are otherwise conservative. You don't need to explain that with critical theory, just as you don't have to explain why struggling people in high immigration areas might be against further immigration. Some things just follow.
SSCReader
7mo ago
but then the foreseeable and threatened next vote on the floor to vacate McCarthy which Democrats refused to do anything about despite it being caused exactly by the previous vote to cooperate has nothing to do with Democrats because the vacate vote is caused by McCarthy's failure to keep his promises to his caucus? in a legislature with two major factions?
You misunderstand. The Democrat's propping up McCarthy would have doomed him. He knew that, he said he would win with support from his own side or not at all. Having to be propped up by your opposition is political suicide when your whole job is wrangling your party. You don't get into his position without being a decent politician and this is basic politics. I think he probably could have bargained with Democrat's to not vote for vacating in exchange for the CR bill. But his public comments thereafter indicated that he did not, and that he understood why that would have been a bad idea. Some quotes from McCarthy
“They haven’t asked for anything. I’m not going to provide anything,”
“Hakeem Jeffries and I have a good relationship,” McCarthy said. “That doesn’t mean they’re going to vote for me. I understand where the Democrats are. I’m not asking for any special deal or anything else.”
and from Gaetz which illustrates why getting support from Democrats would have doomed McCarthy either way:
“I have enough Republicans where at this point next week, one of two things will happen. Kevin McCarthy won’t be the speaker of the House, or he’ll be the speaker of the House working at the pleasure of the Democrats. And I’m at peace with either result, because the American people deserve to know who governs them,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju.
I am going off what was said, plus what an understanding of politics tells me was his best option, and both of those align. If you want to put rumor over that, you certainly can.
SSCReader
7mo ago
The communist regimes reorganized and destroyed the working system of farming, and it led to a drastic under-production of food. That is fully the fault of communism.
I'm unsure of this. Let's say they had instead a super smart communist AI which predicted that speedily changing the farming system would kill millions, but still wanted to go ahead with the change due to its ideology, and so instead it invented better fertilizer and farming robots and actually increased production. Would that then be a success for communism or would it be a success for the super smart AI which happened to be communist?
Was the outcome foreseeable? And could it have been avoided while still following communism but in a smarter way? I think it could. Which would tend to suggest communism is not wholly responsible. On the other hand every ideology has to be of use in the world we have, not the one we want. If communism can only work if you have a super smart AI, then trying to push it when said AI does not yet exist, is an issue in and of itself.
And I do think that is part of the answer as to why people don't necessarily assign all those deaths to communism in the same way as to Nazism, that we do treat murder and criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter somewhat differently. Whether that makes sense scaled up to a national scale is a different question of course.
SSCReader
7mo ago
Right, that may be another factor as I mentioned below. We do on a human scale treat murder, manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide differently, even though the end state is still a death. Whether that makes sense scaled up to millions of deaths is a different question.
SSCReader
7mo ago
For the record, I do not think Jesus is joking in that passage. What that guy actually needed to do was give everything away and follow Jesus. That was the thing he was not willing to do.
I actually agree with you here. I think making it a joke, is probably tonally not in line with how Jesus speaks. But likewise it isn't a global stricture. Some rich people can get into Heaven, some can't. I think that is the most consistent reading.
But some Christians apparently believe He was joking, and some believe He meant that all rich people were barred from Heaven. Can people with all three interpretations all still be Christian? Probably I'd imagine.
When I say Bob built my house, I am not saying , I wouldn't have a house otherwise, because I would have employed Fred or Charlie to build it instead. But it wouldn't be exactly the same house.
And if you ask who did build "this" house, Bob is the factually correct answer even if some other house would be here otherwise.
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