Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
6mo ago
Like all those African migrants coming into Europe? Or Central and South American migrants moving in the millions into the U.S.?
Supah_Schmendrick
6mo ago
The question of what is "effective" will have different results depending on what the political goal which the warfare is seeking to achieve is. Attempting to clear an area is a different task with different methods than attempting to identify and eliminate particular individuals in a large civilian mass.
Supah_Schmendrick
6mo ago
The definition of a "lynching" from the Tuskegee institute is "a confirmed extra-legal death in which three or more people participated as perpetrators."
"Terror" is very different from "extermination," and distinguishing the two doesn't support your case. Terror can, and often is, employed in order to punish people who are seen as stepping outside of the proper, socially-prescribed role. Thus, a black man who tried to vote in the Jim Crow South, or who insisted on dating a white woman, might well be terrorized with a nighttime visit from the Klan and a flaming cross on his lawn. But if the black man stopped trying to vote, or broke up with the white woman, he would then be left alone - the terror had performed its purpose. That is malevolent, but not an attempt at extermination.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
I don't think that a major state-on-state action is necessary to seriously destabilize Israel - intervention by Hezbollah and significant communitarian violence/obstruction by Israeli arabs could do that. I'm not even sure that any of the local states' military forces have the capacity to do much to Israel in a standard straight-up battle. The asymmetric stuff targeting civilians seems like much more of a problem.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
Also, I’m pretty sure this is how “dry counties” and similar alcohol laws work.
Alcohol is generally treated as special because of the powers given by section 2 of the 21st amendment - if a state constitution grants counties the authority to declare themselves dry, that would be a pretty clear application of section 2. But given that SCOTUS has ruled that the dormant commerce clause still applies to alcohol notwithstanding the 21st amendment (e.g. Granholm v. Heald (2005) 544 U.S. 460 and Tennessee Wine and Spirits Retailers Association v. Thomas (2019) 588 U.S. ----) there's probably some wrinkles here that I'm missing.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
Yes, and what this shows is that a lot of people aren't utilitarians.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
I'm not saying that the differences between AMAAC and AWAAC are not significant. I'm saying that if you're asking me about my life-chances from behind a veil of ignorance, the differences imposed on me by being AMAAC or AWAAC would be swamped by (and in many ways significantly dependent on) other traits about me - inherited wealth, inherent intelligence, inherent beauty, sketchy family, etc.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Well, what now? Apparently the left has pushed too hard and too fast and it’s turning the GOP away. Being LGBT isn’t seen as some harmless thing anymore, especially when it seems being “tolerant” means accepting gay drag nuns on crucifixes. The parodies are no longer a parody, and grooming children to accept gender ideology seems rife in schools even in deep red states.
As another American politician said during another of the country's great culture wars: "We are now far into the [eighth] year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to [queer] agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed - 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half-[queer] and half [traditional/heteronormative]. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."
No polity can long retain serious moral divisions within itself for long.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
The culture war is as much a commentary on whose righteousness can be expressed as much as it is a contest over the definition of righteousness.
Maybe I'm dumb, but I don't see a large distinction between "a definition of righteousness which can be expressed without significant social pushback" and "a definition of righteousness which has triumphed and been accepted by society." Can you elaborate?
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
At least in CA, few liquor-licensed businesses sell only alcohol - there's just not enough clientele. The vast majority are restaurants, convenience stores, or groceries. Particularly with regard to off-sale-only licenses, there's no distinction between "bottle shop that only sells wine" and "Safeway that has a wine aisle in addition to 30k sq. ft. of groceries. It would have been legally difficult to make distinctions on the basis of "if business sells alcohol, then not essential" without also impinging food-sellers (particularly given the lazy & wooden ways that alcohol law is enforce in the state to begin with).
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
I agree that FBI opposition can harm an administration they don't like. However, I don't think that a more competent and audacious administration would have been nearly as harmed as Trump was by Russiagate. The FBI is nominally under executive branch control, and the President has the pardon power - an administration that doesn't concede to opposition pressure has ways of pushing back against rogue enforcement.
Supah_Schmendrick
11d ago
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Either way, I think states’ rights are a dead issue.
States' rights to what, exactly? Anticommandeering doctrine is alive and well. Wayfair expanded state ability to levy revenue extraterritorially, and gave the dormant commerce clause some whacks. States even won the power to judicially interfere with federal enforcement and regulatory policy in Massachusetts v. EPA
Supah_Schmendrick
6mo ago
Unless the idea is to have them as Jewish citizens of the new Palestinian state,
And why should this be so farfetched? Perhaps because implicit in the idea of both Israel and the Palestinian national project has been ethnic homogeneity, or at least hegemony, for the dominant ethny. Two states has always meant division of the Cis-Jordanian territory into two ethno-states, which simply isn't practical for any number of reasons (water distribution, population distribution, transport networks and ocean access, etc.) even before we get to the basic fundamental fact that significant factions in both sides see themselves as entitled to all of the land, and anything less as a bitter half-loaf to be mourned until revenge can be taken.
Supah_Schmendrick
6mo ago
Cannot Europeans simply deny the refugees passage on grounds that Egypt is already a safe country for them?
The Europeans could do a wide range of things, both inside and outside the ambit of international law. Pakistan is expelling nearly 2 million Afghan immigrants. However, there is no will to use force to keep large waves of immigrants outside of Europe - that has been rendered so morally-unconscionable in their view that just about any justification to ignore the problem or refrain from action will be accepted.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
To be fair, B-H has a long history of being shoved together under the same imperial suzerain (Ottomans, Habsburgs, Yugoslav communists, etc.) And I'm not sure what, other than pride, would be incentivizing renewed fighting today.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
It sucks. You know what makes suck-y feelings go away, at least for a little while? Delicious unhealthy foods. Not trying to justify it, just explaining the vicious cycle.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
I'm a (comparative) walrus, and let me tell you, I also shame myself. I avoid mirrors, going out, clothes shopping, and photographs, because just seeing my face makes my gorge rise.
The problem is that the shame turns into a ball of self-hatred and impotent rage in my gut and does not effectively spur me to take effective action; feeling bad about myself makes me more likely to turn to unhealthy foods for a hedonic bump-up, rather than hedonically-unsatisfying but long-term productive things like home cooking (yes I know home cooking can be delicious but I do not derive joy from the process and am currently marginally unskilled, so there's a learning curve that needs to be overcome) and exercise (which is painful, sweaty, and only reminds me how much less capable my body is now than it used to be).
Instead of shame, I need to find an emotional motivator which is a more effective spur to action rather than just recrimination.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
I would agree that some of this is going to come down to the fact that a functional alcoholic that does odd jobs is a lot more likely to be able to keep a shack in a holler than afford a condo in San Francisco.
Eh not necessarily. A big chunk of the legal profession is pretty fucked up, often including abuse of one or more substances (prescription pills, alcohol, illegal narcotics, you name it) and still manages to hold down a job at Manatt, or whatever.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
Why do you assume they would? People are dumb and don't pay attention to what's in their chicken nuggets - suddenly they're going to turn into savvy consumers when it comes to doing complex chemistry calculations to determine correct dosing, and batch testing to ensure that the product isn't being stepped on or cut with fentanyl as it often is currently?
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
Population growth? What population growth? California is shrinking and the U.S. has flat-lined. And yet still housing prices go up.
We are allergic to actually counting the number of immigrants in this country. We're probably undercounting the population by around 20 million, which would definitely be enough to put upward pressure on housing costs.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
I've heard from Peter Zeihan that fracking wells are easier and quicker to get up and running than other types of operations, but I can't remember whether it's on the order of months or years.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Given that California is significantly less black than the national average (5% vs. 12%), it's a similar amount of over-representation when compared to the catchment population.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
or just paid the governor of Coahuila to protect the border from the other side
Sounds quite similar to RIM.
Lin Manuel Miranda?!? You've been behind Hlynka the entire time?!?
(I say, tongue planted firmly in cheek).
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