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Skibboleth


				

				

				
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Skibboleth


				
				
				

				
0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 16 06:28:24 UTC

					

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User ID: 1226

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the people who pull the strings in the federal government seem to be okay with defacto open borders.

Easy: the US does not have de facto open borders. "De facto open borders" is a mood expression of nativists who don't like current state of immigration enforcement. If we actually had de facto open borders, immigration would be unfathomably higher.

The people who "pull the strings" are wedged because there's no magic solutions to the material factors driving Latino migration. Nobody wants to spend the exorbitant sums it would require to actually physically secure the southern border. Nobody is willing to countenance just shooting them. Unfucking Latin America to the point where you don't have tens of millions of people who'd rather be an illegal or quasi-legal day laborer in a country where half the people hate them than stay where they are is a nontrivial exercise, and there isn't much support for that either (try and sell the guy who wants to deport all the Mexicans on spending trillions of dollars failing to develop Latin America). On top of that, the US is like most developed countries in that it has an aging native population that demands increasingly high standards of post-retirement living at the same time the retiree-worker ratio is getting worse, so it also just needs immigrant labor.

New York and other cities are howling about migrants being bussed into their communities, but so far seem reluctant to change their sanctuary city policies.

NY and other blue states already absorb the majority of immigrants, including illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. The central objection remains that the migrant bussing project is done in a maximally disruptive and uncooperative way.

Otherwise, "we're a sanctuary city so long as none of the alleged refugees turn up on our doorstep" is just virtue signalling.

What share of illegal immigrant/asylum seekers/etc... do you think wind up in California? (Spoilers: it's a lot, considerably more than Texas)

LA and the state of CA have perfectly adequate reasons to oppose migrant busing without exposing themselves as secretly anti-immigrant hypocrites:

  • lack of coordination from TX government
  • Denying precedent for the principle that TX can shuttle indigents or undesirables to CA in lieu of handling them itself
  • Ideological belief that shuttling migrants around is unethical.

The preponderance of evidence suggests this is an exercise in lib-owning, so it really shouldn't be surprising that liberal governing bodies are opposed to it.

Jan. 6 detainees say a D.C. jail is so awful that they'd like a transfer to Guantanamo

Glossing over the performative nature of this gesture, you'd think the travails of the Jan. 6 rioters would engender a degree of sympathy for criminal justice reformers. Instead, the reaction seems to be outrage that Upstanding Citizens like themselves should be subject to the same conditions as common criminals.

Not sure what your point is

That they are, despite their self conception, common criminals, not some weird edge case. That if you think they don't deserve the treatment they're receiving, your problem is with how we deal with criminal suspects in general. That their attitude is fundamentally rooted in a belief that they are not supposed to be subject to the criminal justice system.

The Robert E Lee statue from Charlottesville has been destroyed. Liquidated, actually, and slated to be replaced with some statue for black people, which is striking symbolism of how Americans are being liquidated to be replaced by foreigners.

I can't imagine why African Americans occasionally feel unwelcome in the country of their birth.

The entire point of sending them to Martha's Vineyard is that it was small and ill-equipped for the problem. Specifically, previous efforts to stir shit by bussing immigrants to major cities on the eastern seaboard failed to draw attention or rile up anti-immigrant sentiment (few noticed and no one cared - little enough surprise, as these are big cities and already have very large immigrant populations, including large numbers of illegal immigrants), so it was necessary to step up the shit-stirring. The defense offered - that this is about sharing the burden that border states have unfairly been forced to shoulder* - doesn't hold up to scrutiny. GOP-run southern states have made no serious effort to arrange for the large-scale transfer of migrants or asylum seekers to northern blue states, which is what you would actually do if you were burdened and trying to redistribute it. Instead they (Abbott and DeSantis) have done it about as inefficiently as possible, sending penny packets at considerable taxpayer expense and without regard for the welfare of the people transferred. That suggests that the point was either publicly owning libs or trying to rile up nativist sentiment.

(As an aside, I will not be at all surprised if it turns out that these people agreed to transportation under false pretenses.)

*whether or not it is actually unfair is another matter, considering the flow of Federal money and economic cost-benefit analysis of immigration.

And nobody is arguing that this was disrupted.

I am. I'm arguing it. Obama nominated a candidate and McConnell sat on it for a year.

it was the usual escalation that can be traced back to Bork, at the very least

Bork always gets wheeled out as the excuse, but it's total bullshit. Bork was rejected (unusual but far from unprecedented) and replaced with... another Reagan nominee. Who was confirmed. In other words, what we'd expect to happen. If McConnell had specific issues with Garland as a nominee, he should have held a hearing and voiced them. Of course, he didn't, because he didn't have a problem with Merrick Garland. He openly declared he wasn't going to consider any nominee.

You still haven't answered the question. To whom does the stolen seat belong?

The seat doesn't 'belong' to anyone because it's not a piece of property, but by long-standing American political norms it was Obama's prerogative to fill the seat. Word games and playing dumb about idiomatic use of the word 'stole' can't duck the GOP's flagrant breach of trust.

Except it was the Republicans who finally Noticed, and truly defected rather than be played for chumps.

That would imply that the Republicans weren't defecting constantly, when in fact that was pretty the standard playbook since the end of the cold war.

If conservatives are merely concerned about sexualized performances near/involving children, one might wonder why they don't have similar issues with, e.g. child beauty pageants, dance recitals, or cheerleading?

I find your suggestion that they get the same treatment as common criminals to be rather ludicrous, and I do not believe that you are making it in a good faith.

I think you vastly overestimate how well criminals and suspected criminals are treated.

The criminal justice system did not treat the George Floyd rioters in the same manner, that is, by attempting to catch every single last one of them and keeping them in pretrial detention for months or years.

The vast majority of people present at the Jan 6 riot were not arrested or charged with anything. Justifiably, since all they did was mill around outside. (Many participated in attacks on the USCP, but not in a way where they could be credibly identified).

The 2020 protests led to ~13.6k arrests by early June (FBI). Much like Jan 6, most people weren't arresting and many were slapped with minor charges (e.g. violating curfew), but many were subject to more serious charges.

The problem here is that you are asking me to play along the rules of the game, while your side of the "criminal justice reform" argument is rigging the game to punish my side and benefit theirs. I reject that.

This is a common claim here, but allow me to offer an alternative thesis: right-wingers are really bad at protesting. They don't get that protests - the interesting, effective ones, that are more than just rallies - are as much about the police response as they are about the protests themselves. That means walking the line of riotous behavior, because fundamentally you're trying to garner sympathy by provoking a police overreaction. Too riotous and you alienate potentially sympathetic members of the public, too docile and you just get ignored. The point is to be able to gesture to the riot cop kicking the shit out of you and say "come and see the violence inherent in the system".

Where this becomes a problem for would-be right wing protestors is a) many view anything more disorderly than a Flyers' victory celebration as a riot, so the nuance of this is lost on them b) they don't do much protesting themselves. So they never develop the metis that left wing activist communities do about how to walk the line, how to self-police people who make a little too much trouble, how not to get arrested (e.g. don't film yourself doing crime and post it to social media with a public statement admitting you're doing the crime). They don't even understand that walking the line is something you're supposed to do. Nor do they have the social infrastructure set up to assist when their people do get arrested.

The result is that for the most part, right wing protests are cringe and a bit pathetic, and when it does get rowdy they blunder across the line and get in a lot of trouble. This seems unfair to them because they don't perceive the distinction between their cargo-cult protest tactics and what more experienced left wing activists do. The game isn't rigged, they're just new to it.

Declare yourself trans/queer and you'll have affinity groups supporting you at high-status jobs.

Trans individuals earn significantly less than their non-trans peers and are more likely to work low-status jobs in food service or retail.

Why are so many Americans committed to sneering at and impugning the traditions of their warrior class?

White Southerners are not the American warrior class. Enlisting at a somewhat higher rate doesn't overcome the weight of demographics.

The police in NYC were pointedly less interested in stopping rioting and looting than in attacking anti-police protestors. Their handling of Floyd protests was textbook anarcho-tyranny, deliberately allowing the spread of lawlessness while concentrating their efforts on the law abiding in order to deter criticism.

The failing here is that the systems of accountability are so anemic that police can continue to routinely violate civil and human rights while obliging taxpayers to foot the bill.

In related olds, DisruptJ6 protestors, despite alleging molestation going on for a longer period of time, and interfering with bodily autonomy in much more invasive ways, have yet to be given money

As I noted the last time this was brought up, these are normal conditions. If you have a problem with how Jan 6 rioters have been treated in detention, you have a general problem with how the detention of accused criminals is handled in the US.

Except states set their own curricula and Southern states aren't exactly known for their wholehearted embrace of Anti-Racist memes.

Every degenerate tendency in US Con. politics has originated directly from the South's special position as a rebellious territory that was allowed to maintain it's cultural legitimacy, or second order effect from it

If I'm in a bad mood, I'll say the key failing was insufficiently humiliating the South, but the real failing was giving Southern elites a pass for trying to destroy the country. Within a few decades, the Southern aristocracy was back with its power and status only slightly attenuated.

It's easy to dump on the hillbillies and rednecks, but every corner of the earth has people like them. Somehow, it hasn't been a problem for the Midwest.

Stole from whom, exactly?

The president gets to nominate SC justices. Customarily (see @guesswho's remark about trust), the Senate almost always accepts them, even when the president is from an opposing party. It has rejected them on occasion (or nominees have been withdrawn when it was clear they were headed for rejection). Garland was neither rejected nor withdraw. McConnell simply refused to hold a hearing or consider the nomination.

Yes, in theory, the Senate can do whatever it wants. In reality, what McConnell did was extremely unusual, compounded by the handling of ACB's nomination making it clear that his arguments with respect to Garland were unambiguously in bad faith. If you keep mashing the defect button, don't be surprised when your opposition starts Noticing.

This seems like a willful misreading. Do you think "dominate" means "conquer by force of arms"? Because it's not as if the EU has been putting up vigorous opposition to Russian hegemony absent US spinal prosthetics.

who predict or expect a foreign policy crisis if trump wins , but always fail to articulate what this entails

I can't ascribe this to anything other than not paying attention:

Trump’s go-it-alone strategy would certainly leave our allies to the tender mercies of totalitarian powers. But the U.S. itself would not escape major negative consequences. If China dominates all of Asia and Russia dominates all of Europe, the U.S. would be in a far weaker and more precarious position than it is today. The China-Russia axis would then be able to dominate America economically by cutting us off from trade and raw materials at will.

(for just one example I dug up in 20 seconds)

Maybe you agree with these prognostications, maybe you don't. Saying that Trump's critics can't or haven't articulated their positions is just confusing.

I guess they have to keep toeing the 'orange man bad' line even though he was not that bad

"'Orange Man Bad' is the 'Buy index funds' of political commentary.". If historically left-of-center political commentators who have spent the past 8 years criticizing Trump and his policies continue to do so, odds are pretty good that they actually believe it.

If anything, the sudden flurry of "Oh, Trump wasn't that bad"-type statements from figures who previously criticized him reeks of groveling and bet-hedging. Jamie Dimon doesn't have to worry that Biden is going to punish him for making critical statements. Likewise for his many critics within the party who have 'come around'.

The "suddenly very concerned" part comes from how 98% of the time American conservatives have somewhere between zero and negative interest in treating mental health as a public policy concern and bring it up only when taking a defensive position after a mass shooting (and generally without any actual policy proposals)

Chances are pretty good you're overestimating how male-dominated the audiences for SFF (particularly Fantasy) are, depending on what you mean by 'overwhelming'. Traditionally it's been heavily skewed towards men (upwards of 90% at some points), but the most recent indications I can find are that it is in the vicinity of 60-40 male/female. Reader demographics are changing and preferences with them, along with the general mainstreaming of nerd culture eroding the influence of old school nerds.

If aspiring writers of science fiction and fantasy can't make it without catering to woke sensibilities, then unfortunately the quality of the genre will drop drastically.

I'm skeptical of both premises here - that it is impossible to have success without catering to woke sensibilities or that "woke" fiction is categorically worse than "non-woke" fiction. It helps if you want Washington Post Lit columnists to jerk you off ("a group of living avatars who personify New York do battle against an ancient eldritch monstrosity that represents gentrification and white nationalism, with the fate of cities everywhere at stake"), almost everyone including their co-partisans considers these people insufferable. You can find obnoxious ideological pandering and bad writing under any flag (looking at you, Ringo).

Perhaps more to the point, SFF awards have always trended towards the... I hesitate to use the word highbrow. Intellectually aspirational? Look at Hugo Awards from the past decades. You're not going to find the kind of pulpy novels Correia and Torgersen were complaining were overlooked*. Partly this is because SFF awards try to maintain some pretense that they are more than popularity contest, partly because the SFF community seems to have perennial cravings for mainstream respectability.

I can't speak particularly highly of Hugo Award winners in recent years (though I've also never had much regard for them - see the remark above about craving mainstream respectability), but frankly I blame that on the Puppies. The voting base leaned left before, but the backlash against the organized voting block activated a bunch of ideologically motivated left-wing/woke voters who seemed to vote more for authors than for books. Notably, the winners take a sharp downward turn in 2013 (regardless of how good a series might be, I find it faintly ridiculous to award an author multiple times for different installments). Even after that effort petered out, the after-effects on the active voters remained.

*as an aside: I'd also note that these are not really what I'd consider "shape rotator" fiction, for which I would point towards authors like Arthur C. Clarke (or, more recently, Andy Weir). Groggy authors like David Weber occupy something of a middle ground, but they lack the concrete problem solving dimension I associate with shape

When it comes to modern entertainment, science fiction novels especially have been one of the last bastions of male centric, systematized, shape-rotator style writing. It seems that where the genre goes could be an important bell-weather for the future of the culture war in entertainment.

Probably, but, as mentioned above, not for the reasons you think. Fortunately, writing is a medium with low production costs, especially if you're willing to forgo marketing and rely on digital distribution. There is perhaps no other domain where the exhortation to "start your own" is more credible. In the event that the shape rotators are driven into the outer darkness by the wordcels, they're still going to be able to write novels about bus crashes on the moon.

But frankly, I don't think that's going to happen. White male nerds continue to attain commercial and critical success within the SFF space (just off the top of my head: Alistair Reynolds, Joe Abercrombie, Brandon Sanderson, Miles/Christian Cameron, Franck and Abraham).

Did you pay any attention to the details of the case? Because this response makes me think you didn't and are just resorting to pattern matching against a strawman. The NC state government did not pass some facially neutral policy which had disparate impact:

the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans.

All this right after having a consent decree originally imposed for racist electoral policy lifted. The "golly gee, how did that happen" doesn't fly. If you ask for racial data and then immediately use it to enact policies which are de facto racially discriminatory, the most likely explanation is that it was deliberately discriminatory.

Well what keeps happening?

People keep trying to disenfranchise African Americans.

So are we to impute those laws were enacted for racist reasons?

There's no imputation required in this case - the disparate impact was very much by design.

You think there are 400,000 people in pre-trial detention for homicide?

the theological ground of these ads is spurious

Does this actually matter to anyone? Religion as practiced by most adherents is a loose collection of rituals and superstitions that serves chiefly as a tribal identifier; to the extent that such people follow their own religious doctrines, they tend to pick and choose what already fits their values while selectively ignoring anything that doesn't. This is why, for example, you can have an explicitly pacifist faith that decries the accumulation of wealth serve as the official religion for a bunch of bling-obsessed warrior aristocrats without everyone's head exploding or decamping to a better aligned belief system.

In the last iteration of the thread, someone articulated the point that right now Christianity is very heavily right-coded and enjoys a fairly poor reputation with young people (not unrelated). These commercials seem best understood as attempts to challenge both of those perceptions. It may not be true to some platonic ideal of Christian theology, but you can say that about most Actually Existing Christianity (it's only relatively recently that they mostly chileld.

I think you're severely overestimating the popularity of the Coatesian 'white supremacy' anti-racist paradigm versus normie lib 'don't be a dick' anti-racist paradigm.

(I suspect you also underestimate the prevalence of racism, which leads to further confusion)

I kept thinking to myself who are these white supremacists that they think run the country? If this country was run by white supremacists, they would be doing a terrible job.

Your confusion arises from semantic differences. When someone like Coates or Kendi talks about "white supremacy", they don't (just) mean mask-off segregationists or white nationalists. They don't even mean closeted white racists. They mean the whole accumulation of things which collectively acts to keep white people at the top of the socio-economic heap*. You can probably find a direct quote from one of the above that articulates this without my paraphrasing, but it's late and I'm on my phone, so I'm leaving that as an exercise for the reader.

Crucially, in this paradigm, it is entirely possible for society to be white supremacist despite the fact that everyone including racist white people profess to oppose racism and look at efforts to form explicitly white organizations with intense suspicion. Disparate impact and outcomes are the key indicators.

*though they'll also be quick to note that the US also has a pretty long history of explicitly giving preferential treatment to whites.

This is very different from "a major party is not allowed to contest X position, opponent wins by default".

That's not what is on the table. It perhaps feels that way to Trumpists, because Trumpism is populist movement and thus first and foremost a cult of personality.

Most of the time, even senior party figures are largely replaceable. If a couple of senior senators got disqualified from either party, people would care infinitely more about the replacement process than the people ejected (they're not even necessarily unpopular - as has often been noted, Congress has terrible approval but people like their guys - but their supporters just aren't attached enough to stand by them if they got into real hot water). In the case of Trump, his followers regard him as irreplaceable and are hostile to even considering alternatives. As such, the possibility that he performed some disqualifying act feels like total disenfranchisement even though the GOP still gets a nominee (who probably fares better) (plus the Supreme Court, ~half of Congress, half the state governments, etc...).