SSCReader
7d ago
the forced passivity feels more akin to foot-binding or raising a vegan cat than religious beliefs.
My grandparents were raised in a super pacifist offshoot of Christianity, you also have Jainism and the like. Passivity is also part of what people get to indoctrinate their kids into. And of course I am sure the other way round, you can put your kid in boxing and martial arts at an early age if you want.
It's possible the US would be more cohesive if public education was centralized and everyone was taught the same value system, and parents were not allowed to go against it. But I'm not sure it would be the US at that stage, quite.
I kinda feel the same way about my sister in law (who is Catholic and has huge problems with Catholic guilt which she incessantly complains about), raising my nieces and nephews in Catholicism. I think she is causing them significant damage. But if my brother is ok with it (he like me is an atheist) then I keep my mouth shut. People get to raise their kids in ways I find stupid and damaging.
The alternative is you giving swords to their kid secretly, me telling my nieces and nephews that God doesn't exist and is made up, and so on and so forth. But that's not likely to be any better I don't think in the long run.
SSCReader
7d ago
But this isn't like some parasite was controlling his brain, his mental illnesses, if they existed, were just as intrinsic to who he was as his good qualities. I don't see how this is different from me saying "I'm really a nice guy I'm just suffering from untreated assholeism"
With bi-polar though for example, being on medication can literally turn you into a different person. My exes mother had bipolar and on medication she was a sweet Christian lady who baked cakes and wouldn't hurt a fly. Off it she was a foul mouthed, paranoid who lacked impulse control and used to beat her kids with metal coat hangers.
Which was the "real" her? The difference between a mental illness and just being an asshole, is an asshole can choose to not be so. With a mental illness you can't.
SSCReader
7d ago
If we're going to allow people to teach their kids there is an invisible man in the sky who judges them, then you're going to have to allow this. You can brainwash your kid into almost any belief set.
Personally I'd take banning this in exchange for banning exposing kids to religion until they are 18, but I don't imagine that would be too popular.
SSCReader
11d ago
Sure, but that is not a 0% of pulling through as a going concern. The population could drop 80% as you point out and you can still be a going concern. The US might not be a super power any more and it might take a long road to recovery, but even what you are describing is not a zero percent chance of pulling through.
Depending exactly how a civil war breaks out and where the fighting is concentrated, the damage could be greater or lesser. It could be 3 states vs 20 with the rest sitting it out. There is simply no way that we can say 0% is the correct figure with something so nebulous.
SSCReader
11d ago
There is approximately a zero percent chance that America as a going concern could survive a significant portion of its population concluding that they were being ruled by actual tyrants. Things would go so bad so fast it would make your head spin.
It did once (twice?) before right? Sure a Civil War would be bad, but countries come out the other side all the time. If one side wins conclusively I see no reason why America wouldn't carry on. Both the US and the UK have had actual real civil wars and both survived (and thrived in fact!) as going concerns. The US is even to an extent the product of a Civil war (you call it Revolutionary, but you're still just fighting against people from the same nation at the time). I can see circumstances where that wouldn't happen of course, but it seems like setting the bar at zero percent is just ignoring history needlessly.
You can in fact kill large numbers of your civil war enemies, burn down their homes, conquer them and force them back into obedience for hundreds of years. You can in fact lose a Civil War, relinquish your former ruled areas and still be a going concern and then later become firm allies with the very nation formed from that Civil war with both of you still being going concerns.
The chance of any of that certainly isn't 100% but I don't think it's 0% either.
SSCReader
13d ago
Inferential distance is nothing to do with this. We're supposed to both say what we mean and assume that people are saying what they mean here. You inferred something from what I wrote, that I did not say, which says more about you than me I think. I take very seriously that we are supposed to try and communicate openly and charitably here. So perhaps reflect on that. Especially as you also did the same for the OP.
In any case (and again without assuming motivations of the OP being coy, just taking what he said at face value), it is unlikely that people did not intervene because the attacker was black. Because some people did intervene and because many of the witnesses only heard things, and therefore weren't aware in there was an attack at all let alone that the attacker was black.
SSCReader
13d ago
It seems to me you tried to use that article as evidence of racist reporting from a racist time, but it backfired.
What? No. My referencing that article was meant to illustrate that the newspaper would report on other actual black on white crimes. It may well have been sensationalized I am sure. But that's the whole point. That it is unlikely they sensationalized Genovese in order to cover up the involvement of a black man, because they were willing to report on (in possibly sensationalist ways) other black crimes.
To be clear I used that example to demonstrate not racism but that they did in fact report on such crimes while mentioning black criminals. I think you have entirely misunderstood my position. I don't think that story was ridiculous and racist particularly. You seem to have imputed that yourself. I didn't say anything like that at all. My post should be read at face value.
SSCReader
14d ago
Look at what the SF mayor said about the zebra murders:
What has that got to do with the New York Times? I think I showed that the specific paper at the time is unlikely to have been trying to cover up a black man committing murder by making the story a sensation all over again 2 weeks after it happened by writing a story about bystanders not acting, which is what this whole discussion is about. Not only would it have been counter-productive (they could just not have talked about it any more!), it doesn't fit with the other types of stories they were running. This appears to be more likely to be yellow journalism than trying to distract from a black man murdering Genovese.
SSCReader
14d ago
Sure, i am not saying they are the same crime, I am saying the newspaper in the 60's was very different than today and given other headline and stories they wrote it's unlikely they decided to hide a black mans involvement by digging up an angle about bystander apathy 2 weeks later. They could just not have gone back to the story again if that were their goal.
SSCReader
14d ago
Deportations can be done easily and cheaply without any government involvement.
I'll note most of your examples will require government involvement though. Just on organizations. Someone will need to make sure the banks are following the law and checking fake green cards or whatever. Someone will have to police the liquor stores to make sure they are in fact checking passport stamps. The IRS will have to have to have more staff to investigate fraudulent payments and so on and so forth.
You're just shifting the government involvement from directly deporting them to monitoring all the organizations which will make their life more difficult, but whose incentives often run to not bothering unless they have some risk of getting caught and punished.
It's potentially workable, but only with government involvement.
SSCReader
14d ago
Was the media that politically correct in 1964? The Times that did the Genovese story also published this in 1965:
An investigative article by The New York Times claimed a connection between the Fruit Stand Riot and militant bands of anti-white youth gangs "trained to maim and kill" and "roam the streets of Harlem attacking white people"
Which doesn't exactly seem like they were shying away from reporting on black on white violence at the time.
40 people being unwilling to intervene seems like on it's own is a more eyeball catching story than a stabbing and rape regardless of racial dynamics. Which is basically what the journalist said, when asked about it privately. It made for a more interesting story.
Remember clickbait journalism is not new.
SSCReader
14d ago
Except...it's probably not true:
No one doubts that Kitty Genovese, 28, was stabbed to death in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., in the early hours of March 13, 1964. However, the story of the impassive witnesses seems to have sprung up about two weeks later.
Trial testimony established that Winston Moseley attacked Genovese not three times but twice, with a 10-minute hiatus in between, argues Levine. When the first attack happened, on Austin Street, a shout from a window scared Moseley away. In addition, a retired police officer recalls that, as a boy, he saw Genovese staggering down Austin Street and Moseley fleeing in the opposite direction, and that his father called the police. Others have also said that they called, Levine adds.
As Genovese made her unsteady way around the corner and down an alley to the back vestibule of the building where she lived, Moseley returned and attacked her again — out of sight of the Austin Street windows, says Levine. A man whose apartment had a view of the second stabbing contacted another resident, who immediately called the police, according to the trial. That woman then rushed to the mortally wounded Genovese, holding her in her arms until the ambulance came, according to trial testimony.
In 2016 the New York Times (which was responsible for claiming many witnesses did nothing), admitted it's story was flawed and inaccurate. And that many fewer people were probably aware of the attack than they claimed and that of those who were aware did take some action (such as calling the cops).
"While there was no question that the attack occurred, and that some neighbors ignored cries for help, the portrayal of 38 witnesses as fully aware and unresponsive was erroneous. The article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived. None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital."
"Immediately after the story broke, WNBC police reporter Danny Meehan discovered many inconsistencies in the original Times article, asking Gansberg why his article failed to reveal that witnesses did not feel that a murder was happening. Gansberg replied, "It would have ruined the story.""
The attacker was initially scared away by someone intervening, but that person did not realize Genovese had been stabbed, so when she got up and walked off he assumed everything was ok. But the attacker disguised himself and came back and found Genovese in the alley where she had collapsed where he then raped her. But that was actually also reported to police at the time, and a neighbor did come out to help, but it was too late. Most of the so-called 38 witnesses who watched and did nothing while she was murdered, were not in fact aware that a murder was happening at all.
Remember, the media even back in the 1960's was still about getting eyeballs and the whole story was the result of a single New York Times article.
SSCReader
18d ago
No. Shame is a useful social tool, but it is not a precisely controlled spigot. Invariably some people will judge more harshly an activity that is judged to be problematic than you had planned.
Hate the sin, not the sinner, is a nice idea but we can see from history how it works out. Some number of people will hate the sin and the sinner and will act upon it in ways you do not like. We've seen it in Christianity and we've seen it with cancel culture.
That doesn't mean shame should not be used. Just be aware it is not a precise instrument. Some people who do the the shamed activity or are the shamed type, will likely suffer harm.
If you think x is bad then be prepared that some looney at some stage will murder a hooker or something and justify it through the same rationale you used to shame it. You may consider yourself slightly responsible. You may be right. As long as that is the cost you are willing to confront head on of your ideology then thats all you can really do. Social norms have to be enforced. Shame is a powerful tool in service to that objective. As with every tool evaluate the cost/benefit trade off before you use it.
SSCReader
21d ago
By my observation, the anti-LGBT crowd generally don’t desire to go on the offensive, they just want to be left alone.
Then you probably don't live in the right areas of the country. People still disown their gay kids. There are a lot of very socially conservative spaces in America, they are just not visible online mostly.
SSCReader
21d ago
I’m not entirely convinced that anyone can know the internal experience of any group that you are not a member of.
Forget groups, I’m not entirely convinced that anyone can know the internal experience of anyone else.
We just had a whole discussion about how one man thought no men would be willingly be kicked in the balls to have a child. And was immediately corrected several times over by multiple other men. So clearly even for men, for a fairly universal experience of being kicked in the balls our individual internal experiences vary massively.
SSCReader
25d ago
Sure, that could be a cause. But the claim was that Blue mental health is worse than Red mental health because you hear about it more. That they might have different causes that vary over time isn't relevant to whether that is true or not. If Red mental health problems currently seem to manifest in different ways and thus are not as visible and thus not being counted as mental health issues at the rates at which they occur, that would be separate from what is causing them.
Why there are mental health issues is irrelevant as to whether we are measuring them accurately and if they appear at the same rates in the same ways in these different populations at any point in time. Conditions of course vary over time in both populations. If we were in 1975 then we'd also want to be seeing if those urban drug overdoses were hiding mental health issues, if we were doing the same comparison back then.
SSCReader
25d ago
I heard legends of people doing stuff like playing bloody knuckles or sack tap, but never have known anyone personally who did that.
We used to play a variant of conkers, where when your conker got broken you had to let your opponent take a swing at your knuckles, that used to hurt like hell.
SSCReader
25d ago
Different balls, different pain I guess. I mean don't get me wrong, it hurts, but it's not on some other level of pain than other types for me at least.
SSCReader
25d ago
Right? It's normal for every day to be an MMA cage fight against a little monkey.
Certainly with my boys it was. Though they were more into wrestling and elbows off the top rope AKA bunk bed. Ohhhh yeaaah! I certainly got a few black eyes and knees/kicks, to the groin over the years, sometimes while trying to catch them while they leapt off something high, without considering the consequences.
SSCReader
25d ago
Not cjet but this is from Albion's Seed. A book analyzing American culture through the lens of British groupings. Cavaliers would be ex-gentry and influence plantation culture, Scotch-Irish borderers, working class rural types, then the more known Quakers and Puritans were the main 4 I believe.
The idea was that many of America's current sub-cultures can be traced back to the groups they descended from. (Southern gentlemen, Appalachian rural folks, and so on and so forth).
SSCReader
25d ago
Speaking for myself: Getting shredded from thighs to feet by trying to jump a barbed wire fence (and failing). Being glassed in a bar fight. Intestinal cramps from ulcerative colitis which literally made me vomit and pass out from literal pain for the only time in my life. Getting a healthy tooth removed by an old school dentist back in the day, while just on laughing gas. Migraines when I was younger, used to take me out completely for a few hours.
A kick in the balls hurts, but it's mostly over in a few minutes, unless you are very unlucky and rupture something I suppose.
SSCReader
25d ago
Uhh, I would. Getting kicked in the balls is painful but it's not that bad. If that's what it took to have kids, I'd certainly at least have my current 3.
I got kicked and kneed in the balls playing rugby and football, why wouldn't I do it for something much more important?
SSCReader
25d ago
Except men commit suicide more often and are more likely to be conservative. All that counting the number of people who say they have or are in treatment for mental health issues, can tell you is the number of known people, people who seek treatment or talk about it.
Men more often keep it in until they snap. Working class men specifically (who went about 63% for Trump) make up the majority of fatal drug overdoses, alcohol related deaths and suicides it appears. Self-medicating, coping and keeping it inside until you can't is the male strategy basically.
Blues have worse visible mental health is perhaps all we have the data to say. But I think there are enough signs that say that a lot of Red men particularly suffer what Blues would call mental health issues, they just don't talk about it and suffer through it in silence, until they drink/drug themselves to death slowly or kill themselves directly.
The truth may well be that Blue women particularly talk about it too much, and Red men particularly, don't talk about it enough. Which is going to confound any easy way to compare rates of mental health issues.
SSCReader
28d ago
Depends on the exit poll. You can find 56% (Guardian), 52% or 49% depending on where you look. I took the high end because if that doesn't count as droves then neither does any lesser number. You could split it and say it is roughly 52% plus or minus 3 maybe.
Really we'd have to define the terms of what does greater problems and droves mean before any of the numbers can tell us anything. For me "droves" would have to be over 60% at least and consistently getting under 50% would be greater problems attracting X. But that's really just squinting at it and going off vibes. One could make reasonable arguments for very different numbers I am sure.
Absolutely, which is why the time to do that would have been at the founding. Trying to do it now would be a huge mess to say the least.
The only thing I would disagree with is that power honey pots are inherently bad, they do attract wasps, but to do anything requires power, so wasps must be planned for and tolerated. The optimum amount of government power is more than you think, because otherwise the honey pot will still exist and will be exploited by wasps anyway. At least if the hive is in charge you might get something useful done while the wasps are grifting.
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