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SSCReader


				

				

				
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joined 2022 September 04 23:39:15 UTC

				

User ID: 275

SSCReader


				
				
				

				
2 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 04 23:39:15 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 275

So I can speak to this, given as I know a number of the players and did indeed work for the Tories directly in a previous life. Boris is smart, and not quite the buffoon he sometimes makes himself out to be, but he isn't a 150 IQ super-genius. He was sunk by a combination of breaking the rules his government set and probably lying about it on the floor. But that on it's own wasn't enough. The Tories can be a frighteningly effective political machine but they like the Skaven are often hamstrung by their chronic back-stabbing syndrome. A slight weakness was pounced upon which if the economy had been going well, would probably have not been a huge deal. There was also the Pincher scandal but again that is really just a pretext. Boris starts getting briefed against by his own side, letters of no confidence gets lodged with the 1922 committee and at that point it becomes a matter of time.

MPs usually won't go public with no confidence until they are fairly sure that a lot of their colleagues agree, so it usually goes from 3 or 4 to much larger numbers in what seems like a blink of an eye. Those that break cover first risk trouble if they are wrong but gain political capital if they lead the charge and win.

Truss is a fairly reliable, right wing politician but nothing special, and not particularly principled in my experience, but Tory party members preferred her her to Sunak in the final vote.

Truss put forward a mini-budget which was going to cut taxes (expected for a Tory) and raise spending (not so much), creating so called "unfunded tax cuts". The markets went into freefall and the Bank of England had to step in to buy government bonds. She asked her chancellor to resign and u-turned on most of those changes but given they were her campaign promises the sacrificial Kwarteng did not appease the rest of her party. The same tipping point began and while the 1922 committee in theory can't get rid of her for a year, they could change the rules to do so if MPs agreed.

Then Suella Braverman (the Home Secretary, one of the big cabinet offices) resigns after (I am reliably informed) a screaming match with Truss. Truss, I am told wanted her to announce a liberalization of immigration rules, so that the economic benefits of increased immigration could be used by the OBR (Office of Budget Responsibility) to show Truss's approach (with her new Chancellor and old rival Jeremy Hunt) would be fiscally positive rather than negative. A political slight of hand if you will. Suella however is an immigration hawk to her bones. And refused to go along. She was forced to resign after she used personal email to send a confidential document to a colleague (which normally is a slap on the wrist kind of affair) and used her resignation letter to pointedly say that when mistakes are made the person making the mistake should resign.

In cabinet resignation letter terms, this is the equivalent of calling the PM a fucking idiot. With Truss already weakened she did the one thing you should not do. Lawyers say never ask a question in court where you do not know the answer in advance. In Parliament the equivalent is do not declare a vote a confidence motion unless you know you will win.

Labour had forced a vote to ban fracking (which they had no real chance of winning) and the Tory whips office (at the behest of Truss) declared this to be a three line whip vote. i.e. if you do not support the government you will have the whip removed and have to sit as an independent MP not a Conservative.

However, due to the previous issues there were apparently enough Tory MPs who were willing to take that risk, that just 10 minutes before the vote the decision was made that it was no longer going to be a three line whip vote. But that communication did not get through, the whips were still attempting to ensure all Tory MP's voted the government line. Whips are chosen for their ability to shout and get people in line and having one grab you and frog march you somewhere has happened before. This report is mostly a nothing burger I think, but a politically useful one for the Opposition.

Many Tory MP's abstain from the vote, including the Chief Whip and other party grandees. Truss is therefore finished. She resigns. The 1922 committee knows this looks terrible for the party so they are going to rush through a new process, hoping that MPs will agree on one single candidate (which will prevent party members having a say) but if not they will hold an unprecedented online vote for party members next week.

I don't think Boris will get the nod, he still was technically found guilty of a criminal offence but the problem the Tory party is that they don't have a good successor. Sunak is the favorite currently as he came second last time, but that still means he did not have the support of the Conservative party members. This is a problem. Hunt might have been able to swing it as he had enough influence that Truss had to bring him in as Chancellor in an effort to get his faction onside, but he has ruled himself out.

Honestly if I were advising any of the candidates, my advice right now would be, sit this one out. There is a good chance you will be out in 2-3 months either through an election or another internal issue. It is also worth noting that the Conservatives electoral success (swinging a number of working class Labour areas, as a result of Brexit/immigration) has also caused some problems. Just as Democrats have to contend with getting Joe Manchin on board, the new Conservative MPs for these areas know that their voters are not economic conservatives. One of the reasons Truss's budget got her in trouble is because those MPs are a new bloc that has to be appeased internally.

All in all a mess for the Conservative party, but one they are fairly used to.

Aidan/Audrey’s acts are a near-perfect scissor statement.

I don't think this is correct. A scissor statement (or act in this case) is basically one where one side thinks it is unambiguously correct, one person thinks it is unambiguously wrong and neither can understand how anyone could possibly hold the opposing view, because it is so CLEARLY true/false, right? I don't see anyone (maybe lizardman constant aside) really saying yeah shooting kids was absolutely the right thing to do, and how could you think otherwise?

Even in the TRN statement which seems to be the closest to defending the shooter, they basically say, yes the shooting was a tragedy, but don't forget it is also a tragedy for someone to feel this way to the point they murder and commit suicide by cop. Now they are a trans advocacy group so they are only making this statement because the shooter was trans, and likely wouldn't have said anything if the shooter was a cis-male but even they aren't saying yeah, it's a good thing more kids are dead right?

So I don't think this even comes close to being a scissor statement/act.

and I think the satirists at GW either noticed the same trends or could extrapolate from the exaggerated stereotype/strawman

Well whether it was satire originally is up for debate actually! It was medieval society in space. In other words the Adeptus Mechanicus is what you get if Catholic monks takes over future science. They are very competent at getting things to work, but they make everything into doctrine, have heretics and schisms (but see Flanderization below).

Rick Priestley was a Classics and Ancient History graduate and states that 40K is what happens if a medieval society was a spacefaring one.

"Possibly the biggest influence is history rather than fiction though - actual religious practices and beliefs. I downplayed that aspect of it all when I was at GW, because you wouldn't want to be seen to make-light of people religious belief"

"But I have in the past pointed out the parallels between Christian mythology and the 40K background - with The Emperor as the 'sacrifical god' whose suffering redeems mankind (some other religions have this idea of the 'sacrificial god or king' - there is a lot of this in Frazer's Golden Bough, of course, and also in The White Goddess by Robert Graves should you be interested in such things). The concept of sacrifice within religion is very common - and it has a lot of resonance within Christianity - and the Emperor in 40K has taken on the Christ-like role - with the dual identity as 'dead' and 'eternal god' (though impossible to know that of course - but people have faith and faith alone is enough to sustain the universe) and with Horus cast into the roll of Satan. The original description of the Horus Heresy (Chapter Approved I think) is actually a fairly obvious rewrite of the war in heaven and casting out of the fallen angels - with Space Marines as 'angels' a theme which persists even to this day, I believe."

"that the mystical, pseudo-religious stuff just overwhelmed what science I actualy put into the original game."

" I don't think it was anything specific. It goes back to stuff like Edgar Rice Burroughs (Barsoom) and was a common theme on TV with things like the first Star Trek and Dr Who - where you had a kind of technician/wizard ruling class - Eloi and Morlocks even with HG Wells - so I think treating technical or scientific knowledge in that revered, practically religious, way wasn't such a leap really."

"Well - I coined the phrase in - I think - the Book of the Astronomican in terms of The Horus Heresy - although it's possible we'd described things as heretical before that. It's just part of the pseudo-religious nature of the background - I don't think the word has a different meaning in 40K than the real world - it just suggests sectarian disputation and the sort of controversies that created the Great Schism, the Albigensian Heresy, and endless similar nonsense in the real world. I don't think that contemporaries of the 'Horus Heresy' would have called it that - it's a retrospective name - but of course GW couldn't cope with that kind of concept - they portray a consistent mind-set across ten thousand years of history... which of course is another nonsense 🙂"

"BIFFORD: Is the Imperium of Man supposed to be an indictment of religion?

PRIESTLEY: That wasn't the intent! It's a dystopian future in which people believe crazy stuff because not to do so would would bring society (and humanity) tumbling abut its ears - so the various institutions of the Imperium are massively invested in things that may or may not be true... I just gave those things a pseudo-religious context because it's an obvious parallel with religious schisms during the European Reformation."

BIFFORD: Oh? What "crazy beliefs" are you referring to exactly? And how are they essentially to society's survival?

PRIESTLEY: That the Emperor is a 'god' that he is capable of expressing his will in some material fashion - that the institutions of the Imperium are divinely directed - that they are working to the same end - and (this has tended to vanish over the years) that ancient technologies are activated or controlled by magic or inhabited by spirits, that ritual tasks have magical power... for example... I once wrote a piece that we didn't use in which a subterranean worker in the Emperor's palace had the job of replacing all the light bulbs as they stopped working - but over the years the supply of light bulbs ran out - but the job still existed and was inherited generation to generation - but it had evolved into painting all the dud bulbs white so they looked like they might work - it had become a ritual, extending over centuries, that had accumulated shamanic significance within the underworld of the palace - but was ultimately... nonsense! Within that society our bulb painter has a role and respect, and the society has cohesion - albeit a bit crazy."

"At a time when most people didn’t go to college we were all graduates – Phil Gallagher studied Russian at Cambridge – and both me and Graeme (and Nigel Stillman for that matter) had studied archaeology so we brought a lot of broad cultural and historical references into our worlds."

Rick Priestley reworked Rogue Trader which was an idea he had before because it was part of the deal for him working on other things. Neither he nor Brian Ansell were aiming for a satire at that point. He specifically points out he wasn't trying to make light of people's beliefs.

The reason it has become a satire is because it was then developed by people later who would only see such a "backwards" future as anything else but a satire of religious zealots and fascism. But Priestley did not envisage it as such. And indeed he can't bring himself to play or interact with 40K nowadays because it has drifted so far from his original vision. In his version, aliens worked alongside mankind and it was much less xenophobic and much less grim dark. Indeed the original creators were almost all parts of the liberal academia you talk about, and were proud of it. A lot of the satire there is was inherited due to the fact the Priestly was told he had to put in rules so that 2000AD, Rogue Trooper and Nemesis the Warlock minis/ideas (GW properties at the time) could be used. The Adeptus Mechanicus was very competent in its initial state, it has been (as the whole setting has been) Flanderized over the years.

I think it is pretty clear though from its history, the one thing it is not is a satire of academia. It was reworked to be a satire of religion and fascism. Though how satirical is is has waxed and waned over the decades. Priestley's initial intention was basically just what if you put Medieval Europe into space. How would that look? What if Benedictine monks were the scientists? What if knightly orders were angelic super-soldiers. What if God was rebelled against by his creations in such a place? What if there were also Space elves and dwarves and orks? And also Judge Dredd? and the Inquisition? What if I took almost every Christian medieval trope and just "bunged it in" (his own words). Look at his words above, and his other interviews.

Priestley et al were historical academic wargaming nerds and probably did not write 40K as a satire as such, but it inherited some satire from 2000AD and was then interpreted as such entirely by following writers as GW became a big business. Priestley's initial conception of the Imperium is much closer to a homage than a satire. And Ansell's initial conception of the Chaos Gods was much more nuanced than them being evil. It was quite possible to a good heroic Chaos worshipper, with all of them representing both the negative and positive emotions within humanities collective unconscious.

The original 40K - Rogue Trader universe was not much of a satire at all, it was Priestley (primarily) homaging his passionate interests (history, wargaming/war, roleplaying, science fiction etc.) into one big dystopian, but nuanced world. Now of course I am not sure 40K even understands the word nuance. But there we go.

Absolutely, the British government made some terrible mistakes that permanently set the country backwards. They wrecked the Midlands with planning systems.

I moved from the Midlands in the UK, to the Rust Belt in the US (via London in the middle) and both ended up in the same way. I think capitalism and the cheap manufacturing from abroad is a much bigger factor in both than any government policies. Both industrial, steel and coal mining areas in very differently run countries when it came to regulations ended up becoming half-empty rotten shells of themselves. The common factor being the ability to get cheap coal and steel and manufactured goods for much cheaper global competitors.

Planning regulations might have been part of the mechanism, but they weren't the cause. Which doesn't mean that the regulations were not themselves an issue mind you.

You don't get to those positions through qualifications, but through politics. Which explains why the plagiarism stuff on its own didn't sink her. Only once her support was weakened through the Israel stuff was she vulnerable enough to be taken down.

Having worked in both, the upper echelons of academia and the Civil Service/politics are very similar. You have the full confidence of the board/minister..until all at once you don't. With very little in between.

If your subject is not a very online Mottelike person who loves as it has been put "words, words, words" then don't use this approach at all.

Talk to him in person, and have a conversation about how it feels, base it in emotion. Losing a son, how does that feel? What dreams did he have for his son? What things did he want to do together, that a daughter is less likely to do, like hunting and fishing.

He will likely counter that his daughter might like fishing too. But the seeds will be sown. He has to change his own mind.

Feelings trump facts when it comes to persuasion and changing hearts.

I think this is misrepresenting the position of most of the working class Red Tribe Trump supporters I know. Sure, there is an element of "owning the blank" that happens on both sides. But they absolutely do aspire to greatness. They have a very heartfelt belief in the greatness of America. That's why the Trump's slogan was so successful. They are very serious people, with serious problems. That even I as a neo-liberal myself acknowledge are true and correct. Their small towns and cities have been hollowed out my decades of neglect and policy. Their kids are turning to drugs at tremendous rates. Getting good healthcare coverage is difficult.

and Trump for all his faults speaks to them in a way no-one else really does. And many of them acknowledge that he is a serial liar, cheater and has an ego the size of a small moon. But at least he talks about going to bat for them. DeSantis and Haley may be conservative and know the system better than he does, but they also pattern match to exactly the same kind of Republican politician who has sided with big business over the little people for the last 50 years.

See Fetterman's success (even after a stroke!) for another kind of "working class joe" kind of vibe (even as it isn't really true for either Trump or Fetterman). My old neighbor, told me he would vote for Fetterman way before he would vote for DeSantis, and he is diehard for Trump, all day every day.

The truth is, they have been taken for granted, and that has created a level of anger and despair. And for all Trump's opponents may well be better at navigating bureaucracy they are not well situated to tap into that emotion and channel it positively. I think DeSantis is an excellent political operator. But he has the charisma of a wet paper bag where the bottom fell out and spilled your shopping all over the floor.

Trump, I predict will (barring any weirdness) easily win the primary, and it will be a 50-50 shot against Biden, depending on how the economy is feeling in a few months. His big weakness of course is that he is divisive, his supporter's love him, but his opponents hate him, so he drives turnout both ways. I think he probably narrowly loses because of this, but I am by no means certain of that and he could easily win.

But to be clear, Trump supporters are very serious people, they just have very different priorities that you do or I do. To many of them, it is absolutely not a contradiction that abortion is a bigger deal than immigration. Sure a conservative utilitarian might point out that immigration is more of a "threat" to conservatism, but they are not utilitarians. While they certainly do care about mass immigration it isn't a big leap to understand why they might think (what they see as) murder of children is a teensy bit more important than illegal border crossings. Especially when it is possible deport people after they enter the country, but you can't reverse an abortion. Having said that, they support Trump who wants to build the wall, so it isn't as if they are against doing more than one thing at the same time!

I am assuming you were in the City Centre which is indeed somewhat neutral territory for British/Irish flags for exactly the reason you state. But go a l little beyond that in Belfast and you will quite easily know which side you are on based upon the flags flying and which colours the kerbs are painted. And Israeli/Palestinian flags as well.

There is a reason why I joke that living in Northern Ireland is good preparation for moving to the US as a Brit. Flags almost everywhere, armed police on the streets and much more religious than the average Brit would be used to.

But it is precisely the media's fault that terms like "state media" are so badly received. Just as it is the media that marks certain dictators as "reformers" and others "strongmen" with "regimes" to aid its attempts to manufacture consent. They constructed this complex of Words That Hint At Things.

So, because the media doesn't want to be marked by its own taboo-words and bad branding everyone is supposed to pretend that an entity funded by a government mandated license, whose supporters claim would fail without aforementioned government mandate everyone is supposed to ignore the correct labeling?

Is it the media's fault that terms like "state media" are badly received? Or is it the fact that a lot of state run media historically and observably tends to be biased towards the state and people can recognize that? The media doesn't have to tell me that a Ukraine government run news media organization and a Russian government run news media organization are likely to both need to be taken with a huge pinch of salt when reporting on the Ukraine war/special operation. Or that the news organization run by the Saudi or Iranian governments is unlikely to be taking stances the government does not like.

The media does not create authoritarian states. It certainly will (at least in the West) tend to downplay the authoritarian nature of states that are our allies and upsell the opposite. But that doesn't mean differences don't actually exist. The fact that a state run media arm should be regarded with suspicion (on reporting to do with anything to do with the government at least) is because historically that has been a problem. Our media didn't create that idea even if they over/undersell it depending on circumstance.

Having said that the Beeb is an interesting construct. Its funding mostly comes from the public by way of a government law for the License fee. However its existence is part of a Royal Charter which mandates its independence from the government itself. So is it accurate to say it is government funded? Kind of yes, kind of no. It doesn't get its money from the government but whether people have to pay it and how much IS determined by the government. In theory its supposed to be an independent reporter on the government and not biased towards either the government of the opposition.

In practice (and in my direct experience in interacting with the Beeb) it is kind of pro-establishment generally (which makes sense), with a slight social leftward lean and a slight conservative economic lean. Though it is I think slightly more positive towards whichever party happens to be in power at any given moment overall (which again makes sense from an incentive point of view). This is from dealing with the Beeb when working for both the Conservative and Labour parties.

If the point of the tag is to point out the level of possible bias then I don't think the BBC should get the same tag as a directly operated state organization. Though it's probably fine to get some sort of tag. I'll note Musk himself says he thinks the BBC is one of the least biased outlets for whatever that is worth. The BBC is big enough and important enough in the English speaking world that you could probably give it its own unique tag.

If the point of the tag is to "own the media" then sure keep it, it's just partisan sniping with little meaning in any case.

Lower brain volume was detected in children with lower household income — both Black and white. However, Black children are more likely to live in lower-income households in the US, as they are in the UK, so they were more likely to be impacted.

They do say the above, so they are saying the fact that black people are proportionately more likely to be lower income is because of racism. They have an explanation. It may not be correct, but they aren't being short circuited in the way you think.

My experience among these elites of the world is they do not have contempt for the working class because that requires some measure of emotional valence towards a group they basically have little contact with. Their contempt is reserved for those close to their station. The nouveau riche as it were (in influence terms).

Its more they are entirely detached than contempt. Notably I was brought on to the higher echelons of the civil service and then into politics and lauded as being from below decks so to speak.

My dad was a headmaster, I went to grammar school and university. I'm middle class but I might as well have been from a council house in Stoke from their perspective.

"Thor is a useless man and Jane (his ex-girlfriend) is the real hero now"

Spoilers:

That Thor movie was not good, but it didn't do that. The tone whiplash scene to scene and criminal underuse of Christian Bale were the main problems, but Jane doesn't overshadow Thor at all. She's very inexperienced, makes up bad catchphrases (for which she is mocked) and is definitely less action competent than Thor through the movie. She has a couple of tricks he can't do but that is about it. She even sits out the first part of the final battle as taking part will kill her. Her contribution to winning wasn't even something from her, but Mjolnir which she only has because of Thor.

"Love and Thunder never shakes off the idea that Jane is a superhero only because Thor has allowed it. Instead, it explicitly suggests that!

In another Korg-narrated montage reliving the crumbling of the couple’s relationship, one scene tells us that Mjölnir, in a departure from the comics, is not just responsive to those who wield it but also sentient and able to follow commands. So when Thor realizes his relationship with Jane is ending and he commands Mjölnir to “always protect her,” what Love and Thunder is actually suggesting is not that Jane is deserving of the hammer but that she’s gotten it only because Thor permitted it."

I don't think it's worth making an effort to watch because it just isn't a good movie, but it definitely doesn't position Jane as better or more powerful. Stormbreaker and Thor himself outmatch her considerably. And it is as above suggested in the movie, Jane isn't able to wield Mjolnir because she is worthy, but because Thor altered the enchantment to always protect her.

The only real decision she makes is whether to die at the end of the movie by using the powers one last time to help or to die later from Stage 4 cancer.

Black men and women do not like or trust each other at all

You're overstating this I think (I say this as a white man married to a BWD leaning black woman), it's still a minority position and "dating out" is still very much not the norm. So saying they don't like or trust each other at all is going way too far.

What is true is that there are fractures caused by (perceived?) double standards of black men dating white women being unhappy black women date white men, and of "dusty" black men who cheat/abandon their families, which is the core of the BWD complaints. And fractures the other way about black men who feel black women date white men for money or for racial reasons ("Black men keep telling me white men are keeping them down and making excuses, if so then why should I date the servant and not the master?")

I'm pretty much the only white guy at most family functions and most of the other guests are still dating/married within their race, so don't generalize too far I think. Having said that, some of my wifes friends have apparently changed their dating preferences to include white men after seeing the success of our relationship after initially having a lot of doubts about interracial dating so there is that.

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.

And when the bottleneck goes the other way companies can push down wages and so on. It's just swings and roundabouts. Each side can use the power they have when they have it. Why should it be any other way? There is no moral requirement for workers to make things easier for companies or indeed vice versa. The adversarial approach sometimes puts out of work a lot of people and sometimes causes companies to sink. and that is entirely ok. It's part of the emergent processes for finding the balance points between capital and labor. At a societal level it works. Each side has their own levers to pull, at different times. Expecting them not to do that is a fundamental error. Your employer is not your friend, and your employee is not your friend. You are engaged in a transactional agreement, nothing more.

Its where you have a large civilian population to draw from, that are currently at least roughly supporters but not actively involved in violence, and where your aim is not to simply kill the population.

Internment and events like Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland, were great recruiting tools for the IRA. If they had simply killed every Catholic, that wouldn't have been an issue. But theres a spot where killing and mistreating becomes a catalyst and a spot where it degrades the numbers of people willing and able to fight.

When you are at a war footing with the majority of the populace are in direct service to a regime, then bombing them is unlikely to make things worse. They are already conscripted or volunteered. However if say only 5% are in service to a group then bombing civilians might make more sign up than you kill.

The question is if bombing Gaza is like bombing Nazi Germany, or bombing Derry. And how many are you willing to kill?

Its basically a straightforward calculus, how many are you willing to kill or maim, vs how many not in service (who survive) will be provoked to service via your actions.

The more you are willing to kill, or the greater the proportion who are already working against you, then the more bombing will help rather than hinder.

And of course as with the Brits in the Troubles, if your allies have a cap on the number they will let you kill before they get squeamish and put pressure on you, then, you may not be able to unleash your full might.

That cycle has to end at some point, and the end of WW II seems like a good stopping point for that sort of shenanigan.

I think the history of peaceful resolutions to conflicts (of which there are not many) is that the stopping point has to be now. You can't go back and re-litigate what happened 50 years ago or 20 or even 5. And this has problems of course. People who had their loved ones killed recently will not be ready to let it go. But if you want peace then you have to work on an agreement from where things are now.

Whether Israel should have been created after WW2 is irrelevant. Whether Israel should have been building new settlements or blockading Gaza is irrelevant. Whether surrounding nations should have attacked Israel in 1967 is irrelevant. Those things happened and are part of history. For a peaceful settlement enough people have to be willing to ignore that and negotiate based on what today looks like and on what they want tomorrow to look like.

Clearly that won't happen any time soon. Tensions are running too high. But at some point if there is to be a real long lasting peace deal (and that is by no means certain), then at some point in the future Israelis are going to have to get past the deaths that occurred at the weekend and Palestinians will have to get past the deaths happening now.

For Northern Ireland, they didn't try to roll back the clock to a prior point, the agreement is based upon agreeing that Northern Ireland is currently British, that this can change in the future with the democratic assent of the people and that individuals can be British citizens, Irish citizens or both. There is a lot more to it, but those are the main points that addressed what Nationalists wanted (to be Irish, for Northern Ireland to be able to be part of Ireland) and Unionists wanted (that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and that they are and will remain British citizens).

As much as you have to learn history to not repeat it, sometimes that history will cause you to repeat it, if you cannot learn to let go of its emotional hold on your decision making. When it comes to deaths and hurt and war, if you want to create a peaceful outcome for the future, remember what happened, learn from it, let it inform you, but don't let it rule you.

And that is tough. It's especially tough if you have lost someone personally. It is hard to decouple when your father was killed by the IRA or your brother was shot by the UVF. Many Israelis and Palestinians will be out for blood to pay for the lives of their kin, that's an entirely normal human reaction, no matter who is to blame for the initial set of events which led us here.

So I would support more oversight and protection against human rights violations, in this case right to life, that are perpetrated under the guise of science.

The FDA was only in charge of saying whether the drug itself is safe and effective (or safe enough technically I suppose) though. Whether the drug SHOULD be used is outside the FDA's purview. The FDA isn't committing the (proposed) humans rights violations itself.

You could outlaw most abortion and still have the FDA sign off on the drug as safe but it only to be legal to use for cases where the legislature thinks it needs to happen (incest/rape etc.).

The science says this drug ends pregnancies X% of the time with A B and C side effects Z% of the time when taken in Y dosages under Z circumstances. Whether ending a pregnancy should happen is not something the FDA has any say in. So that isn't a human right violation perpetrated under the guise of science.

The FDA says you CAN use this to terminate a pregnancy. But they can't tell you if terminating the pregnancy is legal or moral. Assuming abortion is a human rights violation and is allowed then that would be the fault of the state and federal legislatures for not outlawing it rather than the FDA, surely? Or arguably the fact that enough people don't agree that it is a human rights violation so as to elect politicians who would carry out that agenda.

Otherwise the ATF is on the hook for any human rights violations carried out by firearms they have deemed legal under the relevant statutes as well. Which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

I’ll agree to a point. I think these are absolutely crimes, however, I don’t believe that anyone else of his social status would have been prosecuted on them.

It's not social status which made him vulnerable, but his lack of political protection. You think people didn't want Bush that bad? But he had cover from his family and the deep layer of political allies and hangers-on built up over decades.

Remember the people moving behind the scenes are sharks. They don't operate on hate. They are dead eyed U-boat commanders with a battleship in their sights with no anti-sub destroyers getting in the way. Trump is being moved against because it is rationally the best political way to beat him. He loves a close in knife-fight, he has big guns, his populist support gives him armor, but he is weak in real political operative allies. His staff picks turn on him or go down in flames, his lawyers turn against him. His weakness is below the waterline not above it. That is what separates him from other modern presidents.

You don't sink the Tirpitz with another battleship, its too risky. If it lacks cover you send planes or subs. You only need a couple of good hits to take it out with little risk. If you lose a few planes or even a sub, who cares? It's a good trade.

Why move against Trump in ways, you didn't against other presidents? Because you CAN.

Interestingly, a Democratic nominee Trump would have less of this weakness because the DNC is very good at using its connections for the benefit of their candidates while the RNC is either less capable of this, or somewhat ideologically opposed to it overall (or both).

Many people claims to be in favor of free speech and free thought until it conflicts with their own beliefs. This is I would argue the default for most people, left and right. There are a handful of principled libertarians who are able to maintain their stance but it is very rare in my experience.

Prager is an example. Elon Musk also. He wouldn't lift Alex Jones' ban because of it's closeness to his emotions around losing a child. It is useful to claim to be in favor of free speech and thought when you are the one being censored. It is then expedient to be in favor of censorship when it is your hobby horses that you are able to censor others on. This is the way of social power and control. And because we are very good at rationalizing our own beliefs it isn't even necessarily a conscious technique

I invite my fellow academics to backyard barbecues with my (self-proclaimed) gun nut Red Tribe neighbours regularly. They don't hate each other and neither side wants the other dead. If you think the majority of normal Blue Tribe Americans want you (as a stand in for the Red Tribe) dead, I think you are entirely incorrect. I am a part time academic who works in a very Blue city and lives in a very Red rural town.

If they did they wouldn't turn up at bbqs and make polite small talk while passing the potato salad with each other. Do not confuse signals boosted by the Toxoplasma of Rage for the views of the majority of ordinary Americans.

If they hated you, if they wanted you dead, then they would be taking direct actual concrete steps towards doing so. Small Red towns like my own would have a rash of car bombings and the like. It's not as if it is difficult to find Red Tribers. Trans issues overwhelmingly affect Blue tribe kids not Red Tribe ones for instance.

Humans can be ugly and people often indulge in schadenfreude when people they disagree with suffer yes. But that isn't the same thing as actively wanting them dead. People often say things they do not mean and do not act on. That's why the saying is "actions speak louder than words". If Arugula eating Prius driving death squads start rolling out into my town then your rhetoric may match reality. But you're not even at Troubles level hate let alone that.

Maybe it's an American thing. You have been the greatest at almost everything for so long that you think you are at hating your own countrymen. When to an outsider you're barely at lukewarm dislike at a population level. You're not even kneecapping people who marry across tribes let alone killing them! You're not even in the hatred game, let alone pros.

If this is what you think of as hate, then you are very lucky. You're pretty much just LARPing as far as I can tell. Performative hate is not real hate. It's what you do when you don't actually have someone to hate properly. You're the greatest most powerful nation on earth. No-one can challenge you. No-one is a real threat. You can neuter one of your biggest historical enemies by throwing a few dollars at a proxy and watch as they learn all over again that you can buy their humiliation with your pocket change, like Yeltsin in an American supermarket.

Like supporters of a football club whose deadly rivals are now three divisions below you, you have to turn that emotion somewhere. But it isn't real. It's a mirage. You're fighting over whether you would win the league by more points if you bought a new goalkeeper or subbed on that teen prodigy for more of the game. Blowing up tiny irrelevancies into fights so you can at least get a scrap in after the match. Your culture war is entertainment. You can root for your side against the other, wear the flag and the shirt and the hat. You yell and scream and jeer like Eagles fans at the Cowboys. Yet you're not even pelting Santa Claus with bottles!

You're not Eagles fans or Millwall fans, you're the country equivalent of Manchester United in the Ferguson era. The only enemy strong enough to be a challenge are yourselves. Fighting over whether you eat prawn sandwiches or a pie. The question is whether Man City or Liverpool will rebound enough for you to have to turn your gaze outward again.

Your internal hatred is but a pale shadow of what it used to be. Barely even worth the name in my opinion. If this is your nations hatred, then everything is going to be just fine. You're just not good at it. You're far too hopeful as a nation. It's one of your most endearing qualities as a foreigner. I've seen real population level hate. I've seen it in Northern Ireland and I've seen it in the Balkans and I've seen it in Rwanda. But not here. And hopefully I never will.

Because it can amount to torture, and we don't generally allow parents to do that. Parental rights are not unlimited.

I lost a child myself, so I understand the pain and grief the parents are going through. But if the child is in significant pain and is not able to be treated ( which doctors seem to agree on), then its a choice of a long drawn out painful death or a quicker painful death. The parents in this state may not be able to make objective choices about what is best for their child.

That creates a loophole of Tolkienesque proportions. All the AIs are women.

Edit: Meant this as a direct reply to @HlynkaCG.

I think the bit you are missing is that the liberal western order is itself a solution to the Hobbes position. Rather than an authoritarian regime, it turns out, if you convince everyone that everyone else is actually a good person, and create a whole strata of social pressures and reinforcements, if you create that illusion so convincing so that you treat people that way...then you can have a bunch of red in tooth and claw apes crammed into close proximity...and almost all of them end up not trying to murder each other.

Far from looking at the weakness of the liberal order, consider its triumph. There is a reason people want to move to the liberal world, because the illusion actually creates a better place.

If you think that Hobbes was right about fundamental human nature then the liberal world order is an astonishing accomplishment. It has successfully pushed the violent to the fringes. Millions upon millions of animals are packed like sardines into tiny metal boxes every day and DO NOT kill each other!

Now yes, it does then struggle to deal with those fringes, because the whole illusion hinges on people essentially believing everyone is decent. But that is a much smaller problem than much less successful places. I've been to Nairobi and Pakistan and China and the liberal order is significantly better.

You're focussing on the Leviathan shaped hole, without noticing how tiny it is compared to what Hobbes would predict. Significantly more freedom than the authoritarian feudal sovereigns he envisaged would be needed to control humanities base impulses.A place where most people act as if a sovereign has presence even when it doesn't. Where large numbers of them obey traffic lights even when no-one else is around! Human nature tamed by human socialization.

The Liberal civilizational illusion is a triumph of order over chaos. An order created primarily by social behaviors and a great lie. A lie that becomes truth when we believe it to be true. An emergent system that has outcompeted every rival. Communism? Wrecked. Feudalism? Imploded. Libertarianism? Can't even get a foothold.

And you are quibbling over how it has not been 100% successful in controlling human nature? Thats like complaining your football team won 42-7, because they let a single touchdown in. Sure its not perfect, but it is very close!

To restate in your example, the whole reason you can have hundreds of people in tight proximity in a tiny metal tube and that only a random schizophrenic causes trouble is because of how utterly brilliant the liberal order is. You don't notice all the things it prevents, because they didn't happen in the first place.

But then again--would Clinton have lost, to anyone else?

Yes, the fundamentals indicate that after a two term Democratic president with a not great economy and not great ending polls, the Republicans SHOULD have won. A generic Republican Candidate would have I think beaten a generic Democratic candidate all else being equal. Both Hillary and Trump were I think below par candidates. There's a universe where Trump never entered and X beats Hillary in a landslide I think.