Supah_Schmendrick
No bio...
User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
Any attempts to use more police enforcement and harsher punishments and whatever will just make the problems worse, for you as well as for the people you're talking about. We've seen that through decades of 'tough on crime' policies.
Do we know this? I thought the general consensus was that "tough on crime" policies like NYC's vaunted "broken windows" efforts, while expensive and not as world-shaking as initially billed, did drastically cut down on street crime and enable the revitalization of the city. I thought that the general consensus was that the harsh policies adopted in the 80's and 90's were a major factor in the plunging murder rate in the U.S., which only started upticking again after the recent racial brouhahas (Ferguson, Minneapolis, etc.) put the kibosh on aggressive policing of the poor and disproportionately black communities where most serious crime crawls up out of.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Most sharecroppers were white.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Many thanks!
Supah_Schmendrick
6mo ago
This is not a new phenomenon. The Black September massacre of the 1972 Israeli Olympic delegation in Munich was supported and facilitated by German anti-fascist radical leftist groups, and the airplane hijacking that resulted in the Entebbe raid a decade later was also a joint effort between the PFLP and German leftists.
Literally the kids of Nazis, who were so obsessed with being anti-Nazi and repudiating the sins of their parents that...they wound up separating Jews from non-Jews to figure out who to shoot. The contemporary far left has a pattern of these kinds of contradictions.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
The course of political, social, and technological change is very hard to predict
And yet for much of human history it was very easy to predict - functionally zero for the vast majority of people. A Roman from 100 AD might be surprised that the brightest minds of 1600 were in misty Brittania or burned-over Germania, but he wouldn't be surprised at the way the vast majority of European people ate, lived, and farmed up 'til the Columbian exchange. The Mongols would have been instantly cognizable to anyone who saw the Hunnic incursions (or the Scythians, Pechenegs, Avars, Bolghars, Magyars or any other number of mounted steppe confederacies crashing into Europe from the east). Medieval black death? Meet the plague of Justinian. Most of the major political developments in pre-modern Europe had classical counterparts (if they weren't directly aping classical models - the Catholic church's parish system is a carryover from Roman secular organization), and the technology levels waffled around, with changes here and there but few true revolutions in material conditions.
Things have only really started going crazy in the last few hundred years, and yet even then people keep being eerily prescient about major technological and social developments (or maybe there was just something in the Star Trek writers' room's water).
vastly poorer, shittier, more corrupt, more violent countries don't have the problems that the above article notes exist in the Los Angeles metro.
Because they're not rich enough to (1) afford ubiquitous personal car transportation, (2) isolate themselves from the effects of luxury beliefs like "we should prioritize the feelings and welfare of criminals over having orderly public places"
Los Angeles is the second city of the richest country on earth. The median income in Los Angeles is $70,000 a year.
Right, rich enough to afford personal cars for most people, and luxury beliefs allying the guilty-feeling, effeminized elites and the underclasses.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
The problem appears to be wider than that - from the same article:
Race, color, or national origin discrimination claims made up 3,329 of all complaints received in FY 2022, according to the civil rights office’s annual report, which was released last week. That’s up from 2,399 the year prior. Disability-related complaints comprised 6,467 of the total compared to 4,870 in FY 2021.
At the same time, age discrimination claims, which made up 666 complaints in the most recent report, were down from 1,149 the prior year. The office notes the majority of these claims were also filed by a single person in both years.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
If they wanted to say "this is a tragic but inevitable consequence of our society's failures with respect to public safety and mental health" they could do that without also adding "Neely was human garbage, I'm glad he's dead, and we should do this more often." The fact that they did add that is evidence that yes, 'kill the undesirables' is within their range of acceptable policy.
Most homeless people aren't violent, and don't have law-enforcement records as long as your arm. Most homeless people - even the drug-addicted ones - don't get in your face and scream at you about how they're not afraid to die today, and not afraid to go to jail (insinuating that they're willing to commit acts which would either result in their death or long-term imprisonment - i.e. violent ones). Most homeless people are not schizophrenic street criminals with 40+ arrests, including multiple serious batteries and at least one attempted kidnapping. Most homeless people are just trying to get back on their feet and avoid the shame of being seen in a destitute condition. I have no problem with them, nor do I think that most Mottizens have any problem with them. So no, there's no connecting this to "homeless people" or "undesirables" writ large.
What proportion of the Motte's posters does this sentiment encompass? Couldn't say - I expect most motte posters are smart enough to figure out that if you are directly asked "Do you support exterminating the homeless" the correct answer is "no" even if they privately feel different. But it's clearly a sentiment that they are happy to express in adjacent conversations and which garners largely positive internet points on this forum.
It is a goddamn travesty that in American big cities, public spaces - including sensitive ones like public transit - have been abandoned to people who think it's their birthright to scream at, threaten, assault, batter, or otherwise harass ordinary people. Sometimes these people are obviously suffering from some species of mental defect; sometimes they are just cruel, entitled, and aggressive. Securing the public peace is literally the first responsibility of an organized state, and any state that can't or won't even do that is really no state at all. Moreover, if the state can- or will not do anything, people are justified in attempting to reclaim public areas, including by force if necessary. There is no affirmative obligation to suffer otherwise criminal harassment by others.
People who abuse public spaces in aggressive ways should be punished - not because they're inherently evil or "undesirable" (though they may also harbor genetic tendencies towards, e.g. psychosis that we would not affirmatively select for if we had the option) but because of their actions. Their punishment should not necessarily be death (i.e. no, don't just shoot annoying people on the subway), but I'm not going to categorically say that someone screaming threats shouldn't get cold-cocked (let alone someone who's assaulted or battered a stranger unprovoked), and when people get into physical fights, sometimes death results.
In such cases the death may be sad to the deceased's family and loved-ones, but it was not honorable. It was largely the result of their own bad actions, and (absent serious extenuating circumstances) was inflicted in defense of the public peace and welfare. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It shouldn't be that hard to not scream in random strangers' faces and threaten them day after day after goddamn day. It's generally sad that their life was wasted on such shitty, harmful behavior, but on the whole society is improved for their absence.
Who is building beautiful things these days in the public realm? Beautiful schools, libraries, railroad stations, hospitals, parks, museums, even apartment buildings?
Many fewer people than otherwise, because:
(1) ownership of land and the ability to build beautiful things in places where the internet will notice is stupendously expensive (if the construction is private), or locked behind layers of bureaucracy, procedure, and stultifying local politics that few people have the stomach for (if the construction is public).
(2) Many of these things (e.g. libraries, museums) have been rendered culturally obsolete as sites of mass access by the internet.
(3) Most of these other things (railroad stations, parks, apartment buildings) are not worth building beautifully because public administration is unwilling and/or unable to patrol and enforce order in public spaces, and the populace does not recognize public order as a goal worth pursuing and personally-enacting. If everything is just going to be defaced and graffiti'ed and have drug addicts sleeping and shitting on it, what's the point?
(4) Substitution of mass industrial production for individual skills has rendered the construction methods and skills necessary for classical ornamentation styles either extremely expensive or generally unknown.
[edits for format and readability]
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
You've misjudged the politics. Trump was already the leftward turn on policy for the Republican party. He's against cutting Medicare/Medicaid, wanted to tax the rich heavily to pay for infrastructure projects, was by far the most pro-gay GOP candidate ever, and made a big deal of signing major reductions in criminal justice efforts. He also was exceptionally dovish by GOP standards.
There is no outflanking that on the left, and Trump wasn't getting criticism because he was too far right on policy - he got attacked as the boorish tribune of declasse plebs; all those rural white men ... YUCK! Can't be any less cool than that. Didn't anyone tell them the Future is Female? And takes a train in a big city to an email job? Deviating significantly from a Trump-ish attitude signifies that the candidate isn't with the base, and that's no way to win a primary.
No, the way DeSantis attacks Trump is on details. DeSantis can sell himself as the type of executive who actually can do things. This means culture war stuff about defunding woke educational bureaucracies, sure. But it also means basic good-governance stuff like public order, disaster recovery, COVID management, firing rogue prosecutors, etc. (Whether or not DeSantis can make good on this is another question - he's benefitted mightily from having good connections with the friendly legislature in FL while governor; he's significantly less well-connected or -liked in Congress, and there's no guarantee that a Pres. DeSantis would have majorities in both houses).
The RCID thing is not as big as you make it out to be. I'm not even sure people remember why they were mad at Disney in the first place over this.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
On some of these, we disagree on the object level (trans, immigration). On some, we agree (I don't think state level abortion bans are likely to achieve much, even though I think abortion itself is immoral and distasteful). On the others I think there's a two-screens thing going on.
But great, now we have a clarified list of the two sides. That seems to answer your upthread question ("What do you people actually want to change?"), no?
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
I think you'd have to be basically Buddha to stop doing that. Every snap emotional impression - every "eww" or "woah!" - is a miniature moral judgment; deeming something good/beautiful/impressive or bad/repulsive/piddling.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
I believe that speech is powerful. Words are a means we use to convince other minds of beliefs about the world. Minds act upon those beliefs.
Especially nowadays, words are in massive superabundance. Unless you are someone with a public following - and even then - the idea that any one statement, out of millions, is dispositive of an individual's actions, strains credulity.
At present, there is a powerful right wing-meme that many people, some LGBT and some not, mostly democrats, are attempting to sexually confuse children for nefarious purposes. This is often described as "grooming" in order to equivocate with sexual abuse children.
It is also described as "grooming" because it is seen, in its own terms, as a dangerous hijacking and corruption of children's development towards au courant notions and sexed identities. There is evidence for this claim.
Insofar as the reasonable man's reaction to a co-ordinated effort to sexually abuse children is not "I should vote about this and if I get outvoted, I should allow my children to be sexually abused", the actions of the shooter are completely predictable.
No, you have not drawn a nexus between this particular bar and efforts aimed at children; or between the shooter and the "groomer" meme.
All you have on that point is that the shooter is the grandson of a Republican politician. This, in itself, tells us very little, because it is not uncommon for the descendants of major GOP figures to vocally repudiate, or distance themselves from their politically-active kin. In fact, it's a meme that every brooklyn hipster has to deal with "conservative family" on Thanksgiving.
Nor does there appear any evidence (at this time) that the shooter himself was politically radicalized (though that could change). What information we do have suggests the shooter was, in fact, generally violent (e.g. the threats against parents with home-made bombs and guns, with sufficient severity that the parents had the dude arrested). Of course this could change, and if and when new information comes out I will update my assessment accordingly. But right now, there is no link other than supposition and weak inference-drawing.
You should take care to think about the consequences of the speech you use. If someone were to be persuaded by your argument, what would that cause them to do?
This proves too much. No speech could survive a standard requiring that not even a mentally-deranged individual threatening their own parents with bombings could interpret any particular statement so as to encourage violence.
Even if this standard were workable, which it is not, I would reject it because it is only ever applied unidirectionally. Only traditionalist or conservative speech is ever to be muzzled; the entire industries built on the left about pathologizing and demonizing conservatives, whites, and men are to be left alone. For example: no-one suppresses the speech of Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nahesi Coates, or thinks about reining in the legion of diversocrats who make a profession out of demonizing "whiteness," when radicalized black racialists kill white people, or torture white people, or assault random white people because they are white.
I would gladly stand with you if you said "we should all condemn these unprovoked murders." I would even be on your side if you had referenced the Idaho pastor cited in OP's link who apparently called for drag queens to be put to death. I would still be with you if you were proselytizing this sub's decorum rules, which would foreclose most use of the 3-edgy-5-me "day of the rope," "free helicopter ride," and other memes which do play around with and cheapen actual lethal political violence. But that's not where you're standing, which seems a bit telling to me.
You aren't reponsible for every nutcase or moron on your team. But you are responsible for the logical consequence of your ideas. I know of no society that believes they should be having free and open debates and votes about whether teachers should be permitted to sexually abuse children.
The French did, and within living memory. And it may not be specifically teachers doing it, but, well, uh, the sexual use of children does happen in some cultures today. The question of when "childhood" ends, and what special privileges are to be accorded children is not inviolate throughout time and space, and has been answered many different ways, changing over time in response to material circumstances and cultural shifts. It evokes especially high emotions for many contemporary Americans, but that's not a cross-cultural universal.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
"when professors speak and write as citizens of the campus community and officers of an educational institution."
Hoist them on their own petards. Pass laws banning advocating for race-segregated graduations, student groups, "affinity" groups, or programs. When faculty complain, whoops, that's intramural speech seeking to racially-discriminate in violation of the Civil Rights Act and 14th Amendment; no "free speech" protection there.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
Theres corroborating testimony grom one of his business partners, plus other statements by Hunter from the laptop complaining that Joe took half of what other family members made, including Hunter.
Additionally, we know from Hunter's Chateau Marmont prostitute binge that he and Joe shared a joint bank account - Hunter overpaid the prostitute and then started getting frantic calls from the Secret Service about why VPOTUS's bank accounts were transferring tens of thousands of dollars to shady escort services.
Further, we also know that Joe didn't disclose $5.2 million in income that cant be explained by known income sources (salaries, etc.).
Its all very suggestive.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
I mean, there's a difference between saying "legislating from the bench sucks and shouldn't happen" and unilateral disarmament in kulturkampf lawfare. I don't think it's hypocritical to say "in an ideal world there would be no need for weapons" but still own and train with a gun if you live in a high-crime area, and this is similar.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Prostitution was certainly a much more common career path during the Middle Ages
...for the small minority of women who lived in London and/or other major cities. By far the most common occupation for both men and women would have been "small-scale subsistence farmer"
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
Here's Biden's 2023 follow-on 'whole of government' "Equity" EO: https://www.whitehouse.gov/equity/
It's chock-a-block with the government's plans to:
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stuff every agency full of DEI commissars ("requir[ing] agencies to designate senior leaders accountable for implementing the equity mandate")
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giving those commissars increased control and oversight over the agency's policymaking and enforcement decisions ("instruct[ing] agencies to consider bolstering the capacity of their civil rights offices");
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directing the agencies to slant everything they do through DEI analysis ("direct[ing] agencies to produce Equity Action Plans annually and report to the public on their progress");
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ensuring that resources will be allocated to the DEI commissars to carry out this new institutionalized and systemic racism/sexism/heterophobia ("direct[ing] the White House Office of Management and Budget to support agencies’ Equity Action Plans");
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increasing the amount of racial, sexual, and gendered discrimination and graft in federal contracting ("formaliz[ing] the President’s goal of increasing the share of federal contracting dollars awarded to small disadvantaged business by 50 percent by 2025"); and
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carefully pruning the collection and dissemination of federally-collected data and statistics so that these progressive DEI shibboleths can't be challenged ("focusing [agency OCR] efforts on emerging threats like algorithmic discrimination in automated technology" and "further promot[ing] data equity and transparency").
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Those terms are meta-exclusionary. They only exclude people who try to exclude others.
No they don't. Someone can be a "racist" for having the wrong skin tone and singing along to the wrong song, or refusing to give up a rented CityBike. Moreover, as is increasingly popular on the left, there's a categorical denial that anyone who isn't white can be "racist" at all - thus "racist" itself is a term being used to exclude others.
Similarly with "sexist" and "homophobe." The most common use-case is attacking someone who holds disfavored object-level beliefs regarding, e.g., sexual morality or family formation.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
De facto, it was.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Given our emerging consensus that politics is replacing religion as the dividing line of society, and taking on many of the same functions, perhaps we should try to formalize it and create an Ecumenical Political Church, espousing a very vague and general set of principles to bound the acceptable limits of politics, that recognizes the fundamental tension of politics and is maximally inclusive. . . . Being a politically sophisticated person means being able to articulate fully the fundamental forces behind these human tensions that form our society. It means understanding that there is no "right side of history", no perfect past to retVrn to. It means accepting that progress and change are both inevitable and not inevitably positive.
I think you've misinterpreted the way in which "religion" is being used. Insofar as politics is being described as "religious," it is so precisely because people are increasingly siting claims to fundamental, un-questionable, axiomatic truth in their political affiliation/tribal identity. A "religion" in the modern, western understanding of the term is not just an interpretive framework - it is identity, morality, anthropology, and teleology all rolled up into one. It's something that answers the big questions: "who am I," "why am I this way," "what is the right way to live" and "what should I do in my life?" You can't meaningfully answer that with cynicism. It's been tried repeatedly, and failed repeatedly.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
Mexicans staying in Mexico are obviously not the ones immigrating, are they?
No, but their brothers, sons, cousins, fathers, or uncles are, and they are benefitting from the nearly $60 billion in remittances sent home annually by those expats - roughly 4% of Mexico's entire GDP.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
W/R/T Germany it did mean the expulsion and resettlement (with significant casualties from hunger, exposure, disease, and criminal predation) of over 10 million ethnic Germans living throughout eastern and central Europe. See, e.g. R. M. Douglas' Orderly and Humane (2013) - just a couple years before a similar, though smaller-scale and less thorough version of the same policy was enacted upon arab residents of the nascent state of Israel in what Palestinians call the nakba, or "catastrophe."
I think OP's argument is that the Israeli fault lies in being less thorough in expelling arabs from a defensible perimeter than the allies and communists were with Germans in eastern europe. I am sympathetic to this argument, though it makes me uncomfortable to admit that, and understand that there are significant differences in the two situations - the arab/palestinian refugees would not have had major military occupations or "Marshall Plan"-style aid as the Germans did, and the strategic situation of Germany (divided in half between the west and the commies, stuck in a geographically-vulnerable middle position) does not describe the strategic geography of the Middle East at all.
I don't think "Italian satellites changed the voting tally" is actually the bailey - it's not terrain that everyone wants to occupy; it's not the goal in and of itself. From the stolen-election perspective, the end goal (thus the bailey) is "the election results do not represent a fair vote or a small-d democratic mandate."
The "Italian satellites" and "unfair rules/elite lies" are the various types of argument-soldiers sent out to secure the bailey. If the "Italian satellites" thing were true, it would be extremely good evidence for the bailey position - actually fiddling with vote totals is a very good reason to declare an election void. Unfortunately, the audacity and putative strength of the claim is betrayed by its falsity.
The "unfair rules/elite lites" arguments are much weaker evidence for the bailey position, precisely because they can be pattern-matched to other dirty tricks in American political history that we've just learned to shrug and accept. However, they have much stronger basis, and are harder to dismiss as groundless.
The reason I make this distinction is because the way you phrased it suggests to me that you think anyone who has a negative opinion of the 2020 election would like to or perhaps wants to accept the "Italian satellites"-style arguments, but falls back on the true "election fortification/information suppression/media manipulation/weaponized intelligence community" arguments when they're forced to. This is not true. There are people who believe in the wild conspiracy theories, and there are people who have digested true reportage. That both may arrive at similar conclusions about the election, the media, the Democratic party, or politics more generally, is beside the point.
This is literally the plot of Shakespeare's Coriolanus - "discriminated-against military leader defects to erstwhile-enemies" is so common as to be a trope throughout history.
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