Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Otherwise all the people who vote for thepoliticians who enact the policies about homeless people you dislike, would be proving those positions correct no? If popular voting is the arbiter.
Not to "well-ackchewally" up the place, but voting for a politician who is an amalgam of dozens of policy positions, and who may or may not ever actually carry through on those positions doesn't actually mean that the voter endorses everything the politician ultimately does (e.g. tory voters who wanted less immigration to the UK and voted for politicians who repeatedly promised less immigration but still got mass immigration anyway). Up-voting a particular comment in a debate is a much clearer signal of what exact position is being supported.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
My point here is that many of the drug addicts you despise are actually struggling desperately. Most have had difficult lives. Some have loved ones that care deeply about them and want to see them get healthy. Others don't have anyone in the world who cares about them, either because they never had a family, or because their families died, or because they alienated them through their behaviors.
But calling someone "dysfunctional scum" or "druggie" or "biowaste" isn't the way to start these conversations. That's the kind of language people use to dehumanize others.
Career criminals often have difficult lives, and sometimes have loved ones who care deeply about them and want to see them get healthy. Others embody the stereotype of someone who turned to crime because the street was the only place where they could find community and a semblance of social contact.
None of this changes the fact that most crime consists of profoundly a-social acts which are a plague to the good order and function of everyone else around the criminal class. The community of those who do comply with the law, who do not prey on their fellows excessively, retains the right - indeed, arguably the obligation - to expel such people from their midst in order to preserve and safeguard the benefits that compliance with law brings. Yes, declaring the criminal hostis humani generis or homo sacer - is a type of dehumanization - it is a declaration that they criminal is someone whose deeds have been adjudged to be wicked and thus set outside the social order. They have been expelled from the community, and no longer receive the benefit of the community's promise of collective defense and care.
In a well-worn metaphor, it is the social body rejecting criminals and siccing its immune system on it. Of course, this response can be deployed too aggressively - a social auto-immune disease. But that a system is capable of malfunction does not mean the system has no function, or that one must be ashamed of it.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
What other eternal truths build and uphold society?
(1) given changing circumstances there are no truly eternal social truths; the meaning and effect of social moves changes with time and circumstance, so repeating previous social moves will not always produce the same results.
(2) humans, in general, are pretty crap at figuring out what they want out of society, and how to achieve it. Their judgment about which social moves are appropriate is not to be trusted.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
All those people in 2021 calling inflation “transitory” genuinely had thought hard about their predictions and genuinely were wrong.
Smart people are best able to rationalize away their personal biases, or cloak their disingenuous wishcasting in plausible-sounding theoreticals. Assuming good faith in all cases is naive, as is assuming that good faith isn't polluted by, e.g. political incentives.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
I think it’s usually that they displayed great verbal ability at a young age, didn’t care about math, then never really cared to learn because they could always coast on their writing/verbal ability.
Hey, I resemble that remark!
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
I thought foot binding was a largely upper-class phenomenon as a result of a Versailles-esque status-game gone bonkers, which then spread among the general population?
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Switzerland literally has the highest percentage of foreign-born population out of all Western European non-microstate countries.
Yes, but 85% migrants are from Europe, and 44% are specifically from other first-world countries like France, Spain, Germany, Austria, the UK and Italy. Also, there is no low-skilled foreign helot class being imported as in the US and UK. "The admission of people from non-EU/EFTA countries is regulated by the Foreign Nationals Act, and is limited to skilled workers who are urgently required and are likely to integrate successfully in the long term. There are quotas established yearly: in 2012 it was 3,500 residency permits and 5,000 short-term permits." Further, the Swiss don't appear to have nearly the problem of islamic radicalization that France and the UK do, and aren't shy about tackling it when it looks like it might become an issue.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Given the finding that second-generation immigrant populations commit more crime than their first-gen parents did, shouldn't this actually be a warning sign - "if the current number of stabbings is bad based on 2000-level immigrant populations of [x], how bad is it going to be in 2044, when the current migrant populations of [5x-10x] turns over to a feisty second generation?"
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
I mean it is pretty silly that there were race riots against migrants because a british-born son of Christian immigrants mentally snapped
When the riots started I don't think it was widely known the (alleged) stabbist was either British-born or Christian. Based on the little twitter discourse I saw, the assumption appears to have been that he was a migrant/Muslim because of the reluctance of the government or press to say anything about his identity. But if there's any better info out there I'll gladly yield to it.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
According to Business Insider, "9 dogs, 1 cat, and 3 goats" have been mayors of various towns in the US, though various towns including Idyllwild appear to have animal political dynasties going.
Apparently Max's page is peddling fake news, however. Wikipedia's "Non-Human Electoral Candidates" page has a large number of, uh, interesting winning candidates who predate Max's tenure.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Maybe for someone in Blue Tribe spaces this is true. It is not for Red Tribe people.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Shame only has utility for steering behavior. You don’t shame someone who can no longer modify their behavior (40 and no children), you shame them only when their behavior is malleable.
Society is not a two-person game. Shaming those who have made bad, but irreversible choices also acts as an exemplar to those who have not yet made the bad choice by acting as a counterweight to whatever benefits the bad choice appears to bring. Pour encourager les autres actually works in some circumstances.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
This is the historical American approach to democracy.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
The Dems didn't come close to invoking "White Identity Politics" here. What part of the "white dudes for Harris" program said "white people have distinct interests which will be advanced by a Harris administration"? Because if there was one, I missed it.
First up was Jeff Bridges, who joined the stream from a computer chair locked to a deep recline. (“I’m white, I’m the Dude, and I’m for Harris,” he said. “A woman president. How exciting!”)
"You white guys should vote for Harris because she isn't one of you, and thus deserves honors and offices. And besides, we all know that your actual policy wants and needs are never going to be addressed, so why not vote for novelty?"
Then into the rotation went the perpetually nerdy Pete Buttigieg, who did a decent job eschewing his typical didactic, policy-only instincts to match the giddy energy of the moment. (“Men are more free when the leader of the free world supports access to birth control,” said Buttigieg, a sentiment I read as extending the olive branch toward Barstool listeners.)
"You white guys have to vote for Harris because if you don't, other, more important interest groups will screech at you about not getting their way."
Josh Groban followed, helming a contingency of pleasantly washed-up entertainment industry veterans: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mark Hamill, Josh Gad, and Sean Astin, the latter of whom shared a charming story about the power of nontoxic men’s groups.
"You white guys are completely outmoded and obsolete, but there's a modern program to make you less like your icky selves, and part of that is voting for Harris."
Threaded between them were the likes of J.B. Pritzker and Tim Walz—two progressive, vanilla-pale Midwestern governors—who saluted men who look exactly like them. “When I’m invited to an event called White Dudes for Harris … it doesn’t sound like something I’d usually join, but this is a great cause,” said Pritzker, in one of the more honest moments of the evening.
"I wouldn't normally be caught dead with the likes of you asshats; I actually have to hold on to power and influence. But if you're willing to support me and my causes I guess I won't actively turn you away!"
One of the more interesting aspects about the White Dudes for Harris stream was how all the speakers resisted the desire to scold or lecture the assembled Caucasians about the many, many world-historic crimes they have unleashed upon the face of the earth. The tone was positive and empathetic, confident that white men are capable of goodness—a departure, I think, from the hectoring morality that would go on to doom the momentum of Clinton’s 2016 campaign. The opportunity to extinguish MAGAdom is so enticing that it has purged one of the most self-sabotaging inclinations in the American liberal’s coalition: the fractious adjudication of identity that can too often become a priority over winning elections. The White Dudes for Harris cause grows stronger every day. We are cringe, but we are free.
"You white guys are the forever accursed and attainted children of Cain, a plague of locusts upon all you see! However, if you repent of your heinous sin, abase yourself before the holy Other, and give the proper obeisance and indulgences, then for the moment we will refrain from actively condemning you!"
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Step 1.5 really ought to be "enforce existing law against conspiracy to violate federal law on NGOs and funders of illegal migration," as well as cutting the economic benefits of migration via taxes or limitations on remissions. But that's just my position.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Expelling migrants dumps them back over the border they were just caught crossing, leaving them free to try again tomorrow, next week, or next month. Thus, the high expulsion numbers in the Biden administration are artificially increased by repeated encounters with the same people over and over again. According to the American Immigration Council:
"[N]early half of [the 1.8 million] expulsions [at the southern border during the first two years of the Biden administration] were of the same people being apprehended and expelled back to Mexico multiple times . . . Half of all single adults from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador who have been expelled to Mexico under Title 42 have been apprehended crossing the border again. As a result, Title 42 has significantly increased overall border crossings. In fact, 1 in 3 apprehensions since Title 42 expulsions began have been of a person on at least their second attempt to cross the border."
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Yes. The neocons are a notable exception to that trend, but as I said a small faction.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
You are correct, she did not title the Proposition; that title is in the Proposition's text. However, the information booklet's text is not necessarily the same as the text on the actual ballot.
Kamala set up a bail fund for rioters.
It's worse than that. When she was California AG, her office was responsible for writing the titles and summaries of ballot initiatives. She decided to title one of them - Proposition 47 - the "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" with an innocuous summary. What Prop 47 actually did was downgrade a whole host of significant offenses, including forgery, fraud, and theft or receiving of stolen items valued at less than $950, from felonies to misdemeanors. [EDIT: I was corrected by /u/sarker on this below] Her office also refused to seek the death penalty for a man who shot a cop in cold blood, and didn't bother to contact the man's widow at all.
She also has a track record, both as AG and as San Francisco DA, of things we would normally associate with hard-ass overzealous prosecutors; failing to disclose significant potentially-exculpatory evidence to opposing counsel in violations of rules requiring her to do so. Her office covered up a lying forensic technician in over 600 drug cases, letting a corrupt fire investigator create an illegal slush-fund and falsify records to pin a major wildfire on private landowners, and fighting to defend several blatantly false convictions.
The combination makes sense to me; I recognize her type from my time working in the guts of the administrative state. She's the worst kind of anarcho-tyrant. Someone who will use every trick in the book (and a few that aren't in it) to keep their budgets full, perquisites in place, authority unquestioned, and metrics good, while studiously avoiding anything that smacks of hard work even at the cost of significant injustice or community harm. Goodhart's law made flesh. "Progressive" when the incentives tell her to be progressive, pro-cop when the incentives line up that way instead. But almost always in the worst, most counterproductive way possible.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Seriously though why do Rs love this guy so much?
There is a small faction of largely jewish neoconservatives who really, really, really hate Iran. Bibi has been very focused on the Iranians, and so is very much simpatico with this neoconservative faction. I couldn't tell you who got the idea first, but the current state of play is clear; everyone is in lockstep and the neocons (think people like John Podhoretz and the Commentary Magazine crew, or Noah Rothman at the National Review, etc.) adore Bibi.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
We're public citizens, not defense lawyers.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
If the Right is smart, they’ll publicly agree that it was a bad shot regardless of their inner feelings, as that is probably the easiest way to defuse the situation. No controversy, no news; no news, no BLM reboot; no BLM reboot, no electoral benefits to the Democrats.
"Yes, we need to hold bad cops accountable. But you know who else we need to hold accountable? Killer criminals preying on the weakest among us insert long list of sympathetic victims of crime They deserved to live, but the Democrats don't care about them, otherwise they'd close the border and stop raising money to bail killers out of jail to kill again. There's only one party that's going to keep you safe from the real threats out there; vote Republican."
Or something like that. I don't know, I'm not a campaign strategist or a PR guy.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
The police are almost always justified in these cases.
In such cases, the bodycam footage is usually the most dispositive evidence. Here we have the bodycam, and it looks pretty damning. Bad shoots happen. Asshole cops happen.
Mark Halperin, a high-priced political analyst, just said "The media now has, it's a single mission: [to] stop Donald Trump from winning." I think that's probably right, with "media" defined as "everything to the left of FOX."
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