SSCReader
3mo ago
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.
SSCReader
3mo ago
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!
SSCReader
4mo ago
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.
SSCReader
6mo ago
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.
SSCReader
6mo 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
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.
SSCReader
4mo ago
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.
SSCReader
6mo ago
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.
SSCReader
5mo ago
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.
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.
SSCReader
1mo ago
I think the issues is, that your approach doesn't do anything better, than the materialist approach you decry.
If you can't tell a predictive dream apart from a normal one until after, then functionally nothing changes. If some percentage of farmers who pray for their crops to grow it works, but we don't know when or why, then we are going to have to use fertilizer and act as if there is no such intervention. If you can't tell whether the trauma of watching your wife get murdered in front of you is going to give you (or her!) telekinesis to stop the attack, then you are going to have to try plain old violence.
If you can't tell if you are in the world of 40K's warp, or the world of the Christian God, or the world of Bigfoot, then you don't know if you should be trying to manifest the Imperial Truth, or following the 10 commandments or sending out hunting parties into Oregon. And given there is a near infinite probability space, and you can't predict, measure or know which of the 40,000 options you should be doing, then probably you should not do any of them. Or maybe pick a couple at random, but being aware that your chances of being right are near zero.
The reason why materialism is ascendant is that it can be used every day in the smallest of ways. Christians don't just pray for a church to appear, they build them out of brick and mortar. Islamists don't just pray for their enemies to be defeated, they buy guns and go and murder them. From the point of view of everyday life, a world where God exists but does not answer prayers, and a world where God does not exist are identical. Materialism is at the very least, mostly right. Whereas, all of your examples can't be collectively right. Some of them must be wrong, because they are contradictory, but you don't offer any way to tell which.
I would suggest the traumatic transcendence is unlikely because the world is FULL of trauma. If that was all that was needed, then the world should be full of observable examples (even if they can't be repeated!). Were Jews not under enough trauma? The man forced to watch his family murdered before he was tortured to death by cartels? Gang raped girls? Either this has to be so unlikely, otherwise we would see many more examples, (at which point it is again functionally irrelevant) or it simply does not happen.
Bacon's position likewise has a problem, if we have collectively realized our own reality and we can't opt out of it or change it, just by being aware of it, then it is once again fundamentally useless, you can't tell the difference between a world where it is true and where it is not and the only correct response must be to live in the world as it is. Incidentally this is very similar to the collective reality as posited in the Mage: the Ascension White Wolf RPG, where the "awakened" mages are able to substitute their reality (magic) against the consensus reality of humanity as influenced by the Technocracy. But they could do so repeatedly, though risking the punishment of the universe in so doing. (As an aside Roger Bacon was an influential mage in that reality), their long term goal was to break humanity free of the current paradigm, back to the older one where consensus reality was much more malleable.
However the reason humanity embraced the current paradigm was because it was safer, dragons and demons and other monsters (there were those seeking to inflict madness and corruption into the world) were banished by the light of reason, which meant that there were arguments that Mages were trying to wake humanity into a much more dangerous world and that they did not have the right to do so. Even if Bacon is correct, is a world with less predictability actually better? Or have we manifested this world because it is the one where we have the best chance?
SSCReader
7mo ago
Why does the employer not simply fire the people doing the organizing? Sure you can all vote to make a starbucks union, but...I just won't hire anybody in your union.
The question there (setting aside laws and the like) is, what if there aren't enough people to hire otherwise? Remember that unemployment is pretty low in the US currently, so are there enough people you could actually attract, in the area you need them, for the lower wages you are refusing to hike? With the skillset you need, and all at the same time so you don't have to shut down anyway because you need at least a 100 or 300 or 3000 factory workers all at the same time? And then you need to train them, and who is going to train them with your experienced staff just been fired?
That's a gamble in and of itself. And the more people are in the union, or who won't work as scabs (because they are in an affiliated union or something) the harder it becomes. Now if truckers refuse to deliver to you because they are crossing a strike line and so on. A strike is a balancing act where labor does hold some cards, because replacing them will cost time and money, and a short term shock can kill a company. They leverage that in exchange for better conditions.
Recruiting large numbers of new workers is very expensive and it takes time your cash reserves may not be able to support.
Firing everyone who tries to unionize (again ignoring laws for the moment) would be a signal that you want to hamstring the power of labor. Which is entirely reasonable for an employer to do, but then it is also entirely reasonable for labor to move to an employer who doesn't if available. If you can manage it and keep your staff then you win, but if they have other better options you lose.
Then of course labor can elect politicians who put in place anti union busting laws which is also entirely reasonable for them to do, leveraging their numbers for advantage. And employers can leverage their advantage (wealth) to lobby politicians for anti-union laws. Whomever is more effective gets an advantage and so round we go. That's what it means to have the adversarial relationship you spoke of. Employees using the options they have available to try and better their conditions, with Companies doing the same.
SSCReader
5d ago
Shame is an innate and necessary part of the human mind. It's a warning alarm, and it exists to warn you of the existence of a serious problem. Turning off the alarm doesn't make the problem stop existing.
But what you feel shame about is culturally formed. Kids don't feel about being naked or touching themselves until they are trained to do so. Catholics don't feel shame about the things they feel shame about until they are trained into it.
And that means your alarm can be false. Like people who internalize that they should feel shame about approaching members of the opposite sex even respectfully or who feel shame about feeling sexual attraction at all.
So you can't use the alarm to tell you there is a serious problem. All it can do is warn you that you have internalized that X is a problem. It doesn't do much to tell you if X is a problem really.
My grandfather was raised in an ultra strict Quaker offshoot, where any contact with the outside world was seen to be wrong and that music was sinful. He felt ashamed of listening to a choir in the less strict Church of Ireland he later moved to. Is hearing a Christian choir a serious problem he should have been alerted to? Or was his sense of shame miscalibrated because his society was simply wrong?
In other words, I agree shame and shaming is an intrinsic part of the human condition and that it exists to bring together societies through incentivizing behaviors your society see as positive. What it can't do is actually tell you if those behaviors are or are not positive in and of themselves. Because shame is sub-conscious.
And just like with feeling shame about a choir, the seeds of the sexual revolution lie in the fact that if you shame too much it becomes just as much of a problem as shaming too little. We historically shamed too hard and too deep and as with all oppression, a revolution will form. The previous norms of sexual shaming were crushed, because they were not moderated, because so many people ended up being shamed that they were in fact able to overthrow the shame mongers. That is the lesson I personally think all ideologies need to learn. Shame too many people (whether for sexual immorality or for racism or sexism or whatever), then there is a tipping point.
You might argue the results have been wretched, but obviously enough people felt the previous situation was ALSO wretched enough in order to overthrow it.
SSCReader
2mo ago
Please find me an Irish congressman addressing Irish in America in Irish
Well the main language in Ireland is English, and Irish is not even spoken by a majority of the population there, less than 40% have "some" ability to speak it. It's highly unlikely then anyone would be addressing a full speech in Irish, not because they assimilated to the US, but because even most Irish people would not understand it! I think your requirements for something that matches her speech are way too narrow but I will give you a brief set of examples below about how strong the Irish grip on America is. The Irish lobby in the US is arguably weakening but it is still huge. And I think it is hard to say her speech is worse than the actual actions taken across decades (from your point of view).
Having said that Peter King was a congressman until 2021 and he spoke repeatedly on the idea that the IRA was legitimately trying to create a free Ireland for his people.
"Speaking at a pro-IRA rally in 1982 in Nassau County, New York, King pledged support to "those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry."
"Shouts of "Long live the King" marked the annual St Patrick's Day parade here -- cheers for Peter King, a militant supporter of the Irish Republican Army who led 200,000 marchers up Fifth Avenue. King, the financial controller of suburban Nassau County, was named grand marshal of the parade after a bitter two-month campaign. "I was elected to send a clear message to England to get out of Ireland," he said. "The IRA's violence is only a reaction to violence started by the British Government.""
He spoke to try and stop the US government deporting Irish terrorists:
"Reps. Pete King (R-L.I.) and Tom Manton (D-Queens) will lead the speeches in support of Irish political figures such as Brian Pearson, whom the Immigration and Naturalization Service wants to deport as a terrorist.
"We want to focus attention on the terrible abuse of power by the Justice Department to deport these decent men," said King, Sinn Fein's biggest cheerleader in Congress."
And here we have another congressman saying support for meeting the queen is ok because "more Irish" (implying of course that he is himself at least somewhat Irish) people support it (this his position is not determined by what is good for the US)
"Democratic Congressman Richard Neal of Massachusetts, leader of the Friends of Ireland group in Congress and a vocal supporter of the peace process, told the Irish Voice he was surprised and pleased by the gesture. “None of us are more Irish than Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and John Hume,” he said. “If they say it’s okay, it’s okay for me."
We can also add Ronald Reagan saying Ireland was "home" and talking about how he had so many Irish-Americans in his cabinet that he had to fight them off Air Force One, and that he was an Irishman himself.
"Now, of course I didn't exactly expect a chilly reception. As I look around this chamber, I know I can't claim to be a better Irishman than anyone here, but I can perhaps claim to be an Irishman longer than most any of you here."
"I think you know, though, that Ireland has been much in our thoughts since the first days in office. I'm proud to say the first Embassy I visited as President was Ireland's, and I'm proud that our administration is blessed by so many Cabinet members of Irish extraction. Indeed I had to fight them off Air Force One or there wouldn't be anyone tending the store while we're gone. And that's not to mention the number of Irish Americans who hold extremely important leadership posts today in the United States Congress."
Or the so-called "four horsemen" of the Irish-American political grouping who used their influence to lobby the UK to treat their ancestral homeland differently? Sure they didn't say exactly what you asked.. but actions speak louder than words. They didn't just give speeches, they raised money and influenced government policy.
Whatever was said about Somalia and Somalians it probably also doesn't match up to Irish-Americans raising money for a violent group dedicated to unification of Ireland. Unless you think loyalty to Ireland had nothing to do with it of course.
SSCReader
25d ago
I definitely am not, and thats after going to take a look. The whole place looks deeply unappealing to me
I am sure lots of people enjoy it, but the overlap with here seems to much less than 100%
At the time, there was a lot of vocal critics of the tonal shift from 1 to 2. 1 was a much darker, dirtier, more hopeless portrayal (with some few exceptions, the Tardis and so on), where 2 leaned much more into comedy. You can see some of the follow through of that into New Vegas and beyond where you could take perks or enable the "sillier" elements (Wild Wasteland trait I think). Indeed that trait was a compromise between the developers who preferred the wilder and wackier tone against the more "grounded" one.
To steal a random comment or two:
"I played Fallout 1 and 2 back to back. Fallout 2 felt insulting to Fallout 1. Sure, there's a lot more content, but it's absurdly immature.
LOL PORNO. LOL MAGIC THE GATHERING. LOL ASIAN PEOPLE. LOL SCIENTOLOGY. LOL GETTIN' RAPED BY A SUPER MUTANT. LOL DAN QUALE."
"Fallout was kind of like Wasteland, but different. Fallout 2 was kind of like Wasteland, but worse."
"I'm old and played the games as they came out, though I was young. Fallout is a masterpiece, Fallout 2 is too silly for me. I like the darker tone, which is probably part of why I loved 3 as well. It sucks that 2 didn't even improve the gameplay. Contrast that with Baldur's Gate, which was a great game followed by a sequel that is probably my favorite PC game of all time."
And of course if you want to start an argument on RPGCodex you can simply mention that the retcon (in Fallout 2) about vaults being social experiments rather than actual attempts to save people, was a superior choice and watch the fires burn... not as hot as if you claim Fallout 3 is a good game of course, like the chap above. We prestigious monocled gentlemen have standards after all.
SSCReader
1mo ago
I want you to seriously try and do some experiential religious practice and try to have an open mind as to the existence of divine entities.
You realize most Western atheists were raised Christian? I had an open mind, I went to Church and Sunday school and church camp and prayed and gave it a shot. And I felt nothing. I believed with all my heart until I was old enough to start realizing there were huge holes in what I was being told and no-one had solid answers about them, but that they were still nonetheless certain they were right.
"I want the religious to seriously try and do some proper rigorous thinking, and try to have an open mind about the existence of confirmation bias, brainwashing and socialization. I want folks like yourself to perhaps even try to do experiments, or even learn advanced physics and give it a genuine shot. " - hopefully you can see why that isn't particularly a convincing argument.
We're not people who just haven't tried to believe. We've heard that same condescension for years. If you truly want to inspire people to change, you might want to try a different tack.
I don't think you can have that symbolic approach and keep the benefits of modern science. The ancients were wrong about many, many things, so why would we suppose they were right about religion? And even if they were, how do we tell which they were right about? Zeus? Ra? Yahweh? Quetzalcoatl? Morrigan? Thor? Buddha? Baal?
SSCReader
2mo ago
I can't imagine what it's like to live in right-leaning communities at a time when most believe the election was stolen and they're living under the equivalent on an anti-pope.
It's fine to be honest. Just as the opposite is fine mostly. Most of my Red neighbors don't rant about Biden or Trump all the time. It certainly isn't what i would call scary. Just as with abortion, or that capitalism is murder or whatever, what people say and what people actually do is very different. And what people mostly do is go to their jobs, come home and then repeat.
Almost every Republican who says they think the election was stolen are not going to do anything about it. Just as almost no-one who says that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism actually does anything about it. Let's not get people's rhetoric confused with something they believe enough to actually do something.
You would be perfectly fine living in the vast majority of right wing leaning places in the US, just as your right wing counterpart would be perfectly fine living in a left leaning area. The vast majority of people are simply not that politically engaged.
SSCReader
7mo ago
In PA, Republicans passed the mail in voting law in 2019 (thus nothing to do with COVID) because they thought it would help their rural voters or because they wanted to get rid of straight ticket voting in exchange (depending on the representative in question).
This is what they said then:
"In late October 2019, the Pennsylvania General Assembly was preparing to pass a comprehensive voting reform package that included no-excuse mail-in voting. Republicans, who controlled both chambers of the Legislature, were happy that they had managed to eliminate straight-ticket voting as part of the legislation. Some Democrats, including state Rep. Mike Sturla of Lancaster, were miffed by this and so voted against what would become Act 77. But the Lancaster County Republican delegation to Harrisburg voted overwhelmingly in favor of the legislation (state Reps. Steven Mentzer and David Zimmerman voted against it). The legislation passed in the state House in a 138-61 vote (note 59 of the votes against were Democrats) , and was approved by the Senate in a 35-14 vote. (note the 14 votes against were all Democrats) The state House Republican Caucus website was almost giddy in its characterization of this “Historic Election Reform,” the “most comprehensive effort to modernize and improve Pennsylvania’s elections since the 1930s.” State House Majority Leader — now Speaker — Bryan Cutler, of Drumore Township, discussed the legislation in glowing terms. “This bill was not written to benefit one party or the other, or any one candidate or single election,” Cutler maintained. “It was developed over a multi-year period, with input from people of different backgrounds and regions of Pennsylvania. It serves to preserve the integrity of every election and lift the voice of every voter in the Commonwealth.” What was not to like? Reporting on the new law, CNN noted that it eliminated a “requirement that applicants for absentee ballots provide an excuse as to why they can’t make it to the polls.” “We never checked anyway,” said state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, who’s now the Senate president pro tempore and is seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination. As Spotlight PA reported, Corman hailed Act 77 as the “most significant modernization of our elections code in decades.”"
and
In a column published in May 2020 in LNP | LancasterOnline, Kirk Radanovic, chairman of the Republican Committee of Lancaster County, wrote that “this new mail-in voting option in Pennsylvania will be a crucial tool for the Republican Party and candidates to succeed.” “Anyone can apply to vote by mail, without a reason or excuse needed,” Radanovic wrote, encouragingly. “If you think COVID-19 or the prospect of long lines will keep you from wanting to go to the polls on Election Day, then vote by mail. “Our state senators and representatives have worked to ensure the integrity of this process, including safeguards to protect your vote.” He pointed out that every “mail-in ballot includes a unique bar code that is used to match you and your ballot, a security safeguard.”
PA only expanded mail in voting because the GOP wanted it done, they had majorities in both House and Senate. Mostly it was Democrats who voted against it because they feared the loss of straight ticket voting would hurt them. The fact that barely a year later they were now saying the very law passed by Republicans was unconstitutional and left things open to fraud is you have to admit a little laughable.
There is shooting yourself in the foot and then there is shooting yourself in the foot and then saying:
"Act 77 also had the support of almost all of the Republican state representatives in the Pennsylvania House, including state Rep. Dan Moul, a Republican from Adams County who joined the lawsuit over the mail-in voting law in 2021 "So my bad. I should've checked the constitutionality of that big bill," Moul says."
It's either staggering incompetence or a scapegoat for the loss, but at least in PA, The Republican party were all for mail in voting..until they weren't.
SSCReader
10d ago
/* Don't @me, you know it's a safe assumption on this issue!
I'm confused because the answer to your question seems to be no, it did not take urban liberal Jewish lawyers to deploy it, because the lawyer in question seems to be a Catholic black latina? Whom you quoted. You don't need to make an assumption at all!
SSCReader
1mo ago
To many religious types, embodied action is a type of prayer.
and yet I can act without prayer. I can build a church without praying about it. The question is does prayer add anything to the action. Is a church built by an atheist stone mason, paid for by the church in any way different than one where the mason is moved by prayer? What ACTUALLY changes? You still have a church one way or another, a church built under material principles, of engineering and physics. Will prayer put a roof in place absent material action? Because material action can put the roof in place absent prayer. And that is the issue that must be overcome if you want to go back to a less materialist world.
In reference to the dragons and monsters, I've never seen one, never met anyone who claims to have. I'd submit that even if they were forced to a different plane (and allowing their existence in the first place of course), the direct threat they pose is much less. If as you say they must now act in ways where they cannot be observed or proven, then that in and of itself has reduced their threat massively.
Indeed, that was the whole idea of the Imperial "Truth" in 40K. The Emperor knew that the warp gods existed, but his plan was to spread "Enlightenment" such that the warp would become what he told his followers it was. So that the threat posed was much reduced EVEN if it meant the odd threat would happen and not be understood, the amount of threats would be near zero. Now of course that plan failed, because half his "kids" got corrupted by said warp entities. But there is a timeline with no Erebus where it succeeds and the lie becomes the truth.
If instead of dragons eating people every day, but people know what they are, dragons only eat someone once a year, but people write it off as an accident or an unexplained event, then the risk posed is still much less than before.
In other words if monsters and demons are real and all the enlightenment did was force them to another realm where they had to act indirectly and with more effort, then that is arguably a huge improvement, even if no-one now understands the true nature of those demons. And reversing that course would be a disaster for humanity.
So if you really believe that reality is created by our beliefs then this is a massive Chesterton's Fence. Should you tear down the protections enacted, just because you are unhappy with the fact people now don't believe in angels and demons? Are you sure going back to where people will think into existence gods and demons and angels is better? Sure, maybe we are more spiritual, but is that actually a good thing?
SSCReader
6mo 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.
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
11mo ago
You have to start earlier than that, after all wokeness is a reaction itself.
Did the US have that "conservatism" imported from Europe, assimilated it, had elements react against and create wokeness, then re-export that AND the "conservative" reaction to wokeness again.
Much of the US's cultural information was imported to them. Its why the US is largely aligned with the Anglo world in the first place. Plus Ireland due to high immigration. If not for large amounts of Irish people bringing their cultural exports with them the Presidents wouldn't be touring Ireland so regularly and they wouldn't dye the rivers green (and the beer).
They are re-exporting to us as we once exported to them. Partly because thats what the global hegemon does and partly because of the close relationship.
Lots of funding came from the US for the IRA for example. The US was also a big part of the Good Friday Agreement happening at all.
You have US immigration in Dublin airport so you can fly into a domestic terminal when you reach the US!
The US has a big finger in the Irish pie so to speak (and vice versa) if you believe that nearly everyone i meet in the US after learning i am from Ireland tells me some story about their grandmother being from Meath or similar. Progressivism (or the reaction to it) is hardly only the most recent.
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.
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