Supah_Schmendrick
No bio...
User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
As if Judaism today is somehow different from the Judaism in 1900 or 900.
But it is. No way in heck would any Jewish community in either 1900 or 900 have outmarriage rates nearing 50%, for one.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Be careful with historical documents - those were political documents written for public consumption. You're not entirely wrong - the seceding states clearly thought slavery was a central pillar of their unique civilization (though they were not unconflicted about it). However, they also had every incentive to try and bring the northern abolitionists, who were a small minority widely-viewed as radical, humorless, and radical (not in the good sense), front and center. When you're reading those, take the same attitude you'd take towards Lindsey Graham talking about the invasion of Iraq in 2003, or AOC talking about the Floyd riots - it's basically the same thing.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
Okay, so now you've just displaced the object level arguments one meta-level higher; now it's a battle over whatever historical evidence you can turn up or torture to support your position. Originalist arguments can be made on both sides of most constitutional questions if you work hard enough at it, and there are may very smart, well-paid, and/or motivated people who work full-time at doing just that.
But this whole debate is pointless; you can't make people conform to an interpretational theory. There's just no processing or proceduring your way over serious substantive conflicts in society, or stopping the inevitable drift in culture, language, economic relations, technological circumstances, morality, and language that occurs across the generations.
Supah_Schmendrick
21d ago
Meanwhile college students do hours of boring, grinding work and studying in the hope that in 4 years they can get a solid entry level job
Do they, though? What with AI and grade inflation, they increasingly can't really read or do basic math. I don't think this stereotype is as universally applicable as it was before.
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
It's easier to undermine a policy when the whole point of the policy is to favor some companies/sectors more than others, vs. just setting-and-forgetting a tariff rate. I admit that tariffs are also vulnerable to manipulation, but subsidies are in another universe.
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
The US until recently occupied Afghanistan flooding Russia with heroin
China does this with fentanyl and precursor chemicals in Mexico. Does this give us a casus belli against the Chinese?
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
And yet that was at the height of print culture, when every town and village worthy of the name had at least one circular paper and most cities had four. I notice that your explanation isn't accurately predicting the historical results.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Ashkenazi Jews - the stereotypically neurotic ones - are also white. Especially so in the Larry David/Woody Allen-esque liberal NYC progressive-assimilated jew type. Those sorts of jews overwhelmingly are in or the product of mixed marriages.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
There are no gangs . . . associated with drugs.
I thought the Yakuza were pretty involved in the drugs trade.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
The US has a policy of ensuring that Israel has a qualitative military advantage over any plausible combination of Middle East powers.
Since 2008. Extremely GWoT-pilled. What harm, exactly, is this doing to our policy in the region other than generating more $120,000/yr. paperwork compliance jobs for folks living in Falls Church? Were we on the cusp of selling F-35s to the Iranians? Is Egypt making a better case to advance our interests in the region?
This includes billions annually in military aid to Israel and refusing to export advanced weapons to other regional powers.
The sum-total of all U.S. aid to Israel since its founding 75 years ago is about 0.5% [Edit: /u/Randomranger is correct, this should be 5%; I make sloppy math mistakes] of the 2023 US budget spend. Also, that includes money for highly-productive joint research and development projects, and billions upon billions in laundered subsidies for U.S. military-industrial conglomerates (i.e. grants which can only be used to purchase equipment/services from U.S. firms), both of which we would want done anyway even if Israel wasn't the one doing it.
The US even gives aid to Israel's neighbours for maintaining good relations with Israel.
You're right, there couldn't possibly be any other rationale for paying regimes on top of major trade and international supply routes to not blow each other's major infrastructure up. Has to be the nefarious influence of da Joos.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Funny how the ADL and AIPAC have been pushing hard for the polar opposite of nationalism for us. Mass migration and open borders to Europe, an ethnostate for Israel.
Why, it's almost like diaspora populations have strange relationships with the host nation and the metropole. Of course, if you actually look at the people who are doing the on-the-ground work of the mass-migration you get a lot of Catholic groups, not Jews.
Yes, we need to get rid of the AIPAC and ADL influence
Ah yes, the gentiles who actually hold office are just helpless little mice before the terrifying might of...completely ordinary lobbying groups. And it just so happens to aaaaaaallllll be the Jews...couldn't be the Turkish lobby, or the UAE, or the Saudis, or the Iranians.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Furry fandom is benign.
As a former employee of a convention center adjacent hotel which hosted an annual furry event, I can attest that imo the furries are better-than-average tippers.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
fat
Hey, some of us fatties have reasonable opinions about things and a civilized demeanor!
(said with tongue firmly in cheek)
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
There is no killing an idea for "the rest of human existence"
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr 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
2yr 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
2yr ago
In real life, among people with decent social skills, moderate effort put into their appearance, some charisma and an openness to others
Hell, even the "moderate effort into appearance" thing isn't all that important. I'm a disgusting landwhale and I do OK because, frankly, I know what I look like and don't expect to be pulling Insta-thots.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
Why would western intelligence services decide, in 2022, to ignite the exact sort of protests they spent much of 2020, 2021 and 2022 trying to stop?
Because they have more than one priority at once? Western rivalry with, and distrust of, the Chinese Party-State is longstanding public knowledge. And when you have a big objective like that, any tool to hand looks attractive.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
I personally would hate to live with the idea that all altruism and kindness in the world is fake and done for selfish reasons.
What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.
And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.
And by importing, you mean advocating fewer restrictions
I can't speak for OP, but this is only kinda true. Yes, the nice white Unitarian types and Matt Yglesias do advocate for fewer restrictions, and feel bad when they see ICE hustling some poor dude in a hoodie onto a deportation flight because they figure the guy just wanted to make more money than he could in [$othercountry].
However, there are also well-organized NGOs, as well as less-formal ideological networks that exist explicitly to facilitate migration up and down Latin America, with the terminus being in the United States.
probably for another time, but I'd just ask on what specific issues wholly within the President's power Trump was stymied on.
Most frustratingly, withdrawing from Afghanistan and otherwise fighting the foreign policy blob.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
What makes you think Florida isn't? It took me all of a couple seconds of googling to find recent press releases trumpeting partnerships between florida state law enforcement agencies and ICE. Do you think that ICE isn't doing workplace raids in Florida? Do you think that Florida cops aren't referring individuals without immigration status to ICE? On what basis?
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
There's nothing inherently "activist" about critical theory, but the activism its theories enable are particularly destructive and quasi-nihilistic, so it gets a particularly bum rap.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
He was widely seen as being responsible for the rise of Ron DeSantis in Florida, which counts for something. Moreover, Trump was a brick through the Overton window.
The following winter (this was the year in which Cn. Pompey and M. Crassus were consuls [55 B.C.]), those Germans [called] the Usipetes, and likewise the Tenchtheri, with a great number of men, crossed the Rhine , not far from the place at which that river discharges itself into the sea. The motive for crossing [that river] was, that having been for several years harassed by the Suevi, they were constantly engaged in war, and hindered from the pursuits of agriculture. The nation of the Suevi is by far the largest and the most warlike nation of all the Germans. They are said to possess a hundred cantons, from each of which they yearly send from their territories for the purpose of war a thousand armed men: the others who remain at home, maintain [both] themselves and those-engaged in the expedition. The latter again, in their turn, are in arms the year after: the former remain at home. Thus neither husbandry, nor the art and practice of war are neglected. But among them there exists no private and separate land; nor are they permitted to remain more than one year in one place for the purpose of residence. They do not live much on corn, but subsist for the most part on milk and flesh, and are much [engaged] in hunting; which circumstance must, by the nature of their food, and by their daily exercise and the freedom of their life (for having from boyhood been accustomed to no employment, or discipline, they do nothing at all contrary to their inclination), both promote their strength and render them men of vast stature of body. And to such a habit have they brought themselves, that even in the coldest parts they wear no clothing whatever except skins, by reason of the scantiness of which, a great portion of their body is bare, and besides they bathe in open rivers.
Merchants have access to them rather that they may have persons to whom they may sell those things which they have taken in war, than because they need any commodity to be imported to them. Moreover, even as to laboring cattle, in which the Gauls take the greatest pleasure, and which they procure at a great price, the Germans do not employ such as are imported, but those poor and ill-shaped animals, which belong to their country; these, however, they render capable of the greatest labor by daily exercise. In cavalry actions they frequently leap from their horses and fight on foot; and train their horses to stand still in the very spot on which they leave them, to which they retreat with great activity when there is occasion; nor, according to their practice, is any thing regarded as more unseemly, or more unmanly, than to use housings. Accordingly, they have the courage, though they be themselves but few, to advance against any number whatever of horse mounted with housings. They on no account permit wine to be imported to them, because they consider that men degenerate in their powers of enduring fatigue, and are rendered effeminate by that commodity.
C. Julius Caesar. Caesar's Gallic War. Translator. W. A. McDevitte. Translator. W. S. Bohn. 1st Edition. New York. Harper & Brothers. 1869. Harper's New Classical Library. Hirt-Gal 4.1-2.
The Gauls are exceedingly addicted to the use of wine and fill themselves with the wine which is brought into their country by merchants, drinking it unmixed, and since they partake of this drink without moderation by reason of their craving for it, when they are drunken they fall into a stupor or a state of madness. Consequently many of the Italian traders, induced by the love of money which characterizes them, believe that the love of wine of these Gauls is their own godsend. For these transport the wine on the navigable rivers by means of boats and through the level plain on wagons, and receive for it an incredible price; for in exchange for a jar of wine they receive a slave, getting a servant in return for the drink.
Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History. Book V, Part 25.
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