Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
nAd now watching these videos of pagers exploding reminds me of the videos I've seen of Islamic terrorism: Life going on as normal in a marketplace or something, then an explosion with women and children around.
One is an explosion coming from a suicide belt or backpack which is designed to harm and kill everyone in the immediate vicinity, particularly those women and children.
The other is sabotaging a pager handed out by a terrorist organization to its members with a small enough amount of explosives that even the person wearing the pager or keeping it in their pocket isn't reliably killed.
These are not the same.
I just don't understand the point of an operation like this except to provoke fear and a regional conflict. It's not going to cause Hezbollah to surrender or significantly disrupt their wartime capabilities at the northern front.
Are you sure? Knocking out a major communication system sure seems disruptive to me, to say nothing of putting a couple thousand officers, cell leaders, logistics people, etc. in the hospital all at the same time.
It's just a terrorist attack.
I know words are just vibes now, man, but come on. This is an attack on the participating personnel of a combatant organization during ongoing hostilities. That's not terrorism.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Why wouldn't this work?
Because there is still no no willingness in the U.S. to take the steps necessary to prevent smugglers from bringing millions of people either outright illegally or on various asylum claims of various (though mostly extremely dubious) merit.
And because one party has realized that pumping the number of immigrants of all stripes made citizens is beneficial for their electoral outlook.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
I'm amazed at just how banal "factchecking" has become. I wouldn't object to this particular piece framed as an argument that Trump is VeryBadActually, but this smug tone intended to reward their readers with the sense that they're hearing serious truths, and that they have precisely calculated 162 lies is incredibly annoying. That figure then gets repeated by figures like Pete Buttigieg as though it's actually a serious empirical measure of dishonesty, furthering the sense that they're the party of facts. Perhaps things have always been this way and I'm just sick of it, but it sure feels like it's getting worse as party apparatchiks try to create an impression of the official truth.
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."
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo 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
2yr ago
But why are the "basement dwelling gamur incels" among the most reviled subgroups in the culture war?
Because "revilement" doesn't necessarily scale with danger - it can also scale with ickiness. Incels are one of the lowest-status identities in WEIRD countries, particularly among women (natch!) and gays - groups which wield disproportionate soft/cultural power, particularly on the cultural left. So of course the Incels are going to be treated like lepers by those groups, and the left more generally, and beating up on social outcasts in every way possible is an old, old political strategy.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
What does "serious about governing" mean? Does it mean "doing everything possible to ensure that law enforcement is not interfering in politics?" Because that's what some of the holdouts are demanding with regard to the FBI and J-6 committees. Does it mean "do everything possible to ensure that major policy choices are publicy debated and openly voted on, as opposed to smuggled out the back door as riders on unrelated bills, as just happened with the water bill and omnibus?" Becuase the holdouts are demanding that too.
It really seems to me that many calls for "seriousness" or being "the adult in the room," unless tied to specifics, are just about aesthetics, and displeasure with anything unruly or that breaks with current practice in a way that displeases anyone with a megaphone.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
My best attempt is that "woman" is being used in two different senses here.
"Woman" in the context of "wlw" (i.e. "woman-loving women") refers to the objects of a certain type of sexual attraction. Thus, its definition is pretty simple and hard to alter - the things and traits that get a wlw aroused, usually ones that the wlw herself also has.
"Woman" in the context of "transwomen are women" at least nominally refers to a particular kind of social presentation, often associated with verbal and interpersonal focus vice objects and processes, physical weakness/vulnerability, and certain aesthetics including but not limited to the use of particular kinds of cosmetics and the wearing of certain types of hairsyles, cosmetics, and clothes.
This causes problems because: (1) no-one can be secure in the knowledge that they are successfully performing "womanhood" without external validation from society (that's the point of something being a "social performance," after all), and (2) for obvious reasons, many central properties of womanhood-as-social-performance are also arousing to men and wlw. Thus, a lack of sexual interest in transwomen from men and/or wlw - or worse, a claim that transwomen can never be arousing to men or wlw under one or more conditions (i.e. if the transwoman still has a penis and/or testes, or doesn't have female-typical breasts) - is a permanent black mark against the transwoman's ability to fully perform "womanhood."
Insofar as the transwoman's identity and self-worth is bound up in the idea that they are, or are meant to be a woman, being confronted with a permanent shortfall must be quite distressing, which in large part explains the vehemence around the issue. The other part, naturally, is explained by the fact that people in general want to have sex, and being categorically-excluded from desirability as a sexual partner would be also distressing in general (e.g. Incels).
This, of course, rings hollow to the wlw who are in effect being told "shut up and fuck someone you don't want to, bigot!" But the people implementing rules like this are on a righteous crusade for an oppressed group's justice. What they think is likely to happen here is beyond me, though some obvious candidates include:
(1) they legitimately think social pressure can effectively gaslight and/or mold people into changed sexual preferences, and that ultimately people can lose specific physical attractions and/or be convinced to deprioritize them in preference to other, trans-inclusive traits. (This would be an ... interesting stance to take in light of other positions common to this group about homosexuality and/or transgenderism, but pace the Caliph here we all know that arguments are very much soldiers in this discourse)
(2) they're in the metaphorical position of Friedman's "distributor of welfare funds" - allocating burdens to other people, to solve yet another group of other people's problems. Under these conditions, there's little incentive to look too closely at the downsides (after all, there's no burden being imposed on the distributor), but every incentive to be generous to the recipient (isn't charity a virtue?).
(3) they personally do not feel their own sexual attraction to be constrained by qualities that transwomen are incapable of having, and are engaging in that most common of failure modes - typical mind fallacy.
(4) they are acting in bad faith.
(5) ???
I am not going to speculate about particular motives, but it's a sad problem - as, I find, are many of the problems associated with the modern space of gender discourse/confusion.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
This (as I understood it) was actually part of a policy dispute about what the HSR project even was for. Was it supposed to be primarily a replacement for LAX-SFO flights? If so, travel time is one of, if not the major consideration, which would be negatively impacted by significant stops in, or meandering routes around, the Central Valley. Or, is it a commuter tool to facilitate Central Valley exurban travel into the major coastal metropoli? That would require, yes, building stops and stations where people actually live in the Central Valley, but do we really need a bullet train for that? And what would the ridership really actually be? And why would it need to run from LA-SF in that case, rather than just building out from existing metro centers in a hub-and-spokes model? Lord knows we don't actually have this in LA yet...
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
Galadriel is the feminine archetype, or at least one of the feminine archetypes. She is the embodiment of ethereal beauty, not just in the sense of physical attractiveness, but also in the philosophical sense. She represents purity.
Not really. Galadriel, in Tolkein's telling, is a failure as an elf, full of mortal fires and furies and ambitions. Instead of retreating to the west and eternal communion with Eru and the Maiar, she clung on to dominion in Middle Earth, willingly accepting the corrupting power of her ring (which, remember, draws its power from Sauron and The Ring just the same as the Nazgul's rings did) in order to keep Loth Lorien in a state of protected stasis. Her journey in the LotR is the story of finally learning to let go of earthly loves and trust in the underlying goodness of powerlessness and subsumption into communion with God.
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
The overt, propaganda use of a text can be significantly distinct from its artistic merits (eg: Triumph of the Will, which is both noisome NSDAP propaganda and beautifully shot)
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
As much as I love your comment, please consider that the vast majority of current legislators, as well as a disproportionate amount of political commentators have law degrees or legal backgrounds - often elite ones - and all it's got us is ever-more sophisticated rounds of "obnoxious bad-faith argumentative games."
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
One thing the EO does which has nothing to do with the military at all is instantly make anyone who gives a cartel or cartel-affiliated person or entity money in exchange for services (such as, maybe, facilitating their transport through Mexican territory to and across the US border) becomes guilty of some federal crime - possibly, though not definitely, 18 USC 2339B; my practice doesn't deal with immigration or federal criminal law - which provides a boost to deportation proceedings. Similarly, any migration-facilitating NGO or charity which works with or around the cartel coyotes (which I am told are fairly ubiquitous in the illegal immigration scene on the southern border) suddenly has to worry that they may be debanked or that their assets may be frozen or subject to seizure.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
Contrast this with Obama who was willing to make ideological or party based cabinet nominations like Hillary Clinton, even though she was absolutely not an ally of his
Obama picked Hillary as Secretary of State explicitly because she wasn't on his team - it was a deal to get the Clinton machine on his side for the general election. Plus, Barack had read "Team of Rivals" recently and was enamored of trying to have a Lincolnian presidency. They certainly didn't agree on policy - it wasn't an ideological pick.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
This all seems to hinge on whether you believe Trump genuinely thought there was outcome-determinative fraud or not.
So you're telling me all of the outrage over "democracy being under threat" is caused by people not being able to believe that Trump could genuinely believe things he says? This whole thing is just the biggest case of typical mind fallacy and projection?!?
I swear to god this country is going to give me an aneurysm.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
asylum-seekers are expected to appear in court
The current backlog is, iirc, somewhere between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 cases. There are approximately 700 immigration ALJs ("Administrative Law Judges") working on these cases. A year ago, when the backlog was only half as large, the wait-time for a hearing was nearly four years. This translates to effectively open immigration so long as you know to mouth the right platitudes, because what is the point of deporting someone after a decade?
asylum-seekers are expected to . . . have a place to stay and in some cases are given ankle monitors to track their location.
Monitoring like this isn't all that common - as of March of this year, only 185,000 of the over 6,000,000 asylees were in this program, and possibly as few as 19,000 were given ankle monitors. And of course, being assigned to the program is no guarantee of compliance; people just cut the ankle monitors off, and the government cares more about retrieving the tech than it does tracking down the fugitive:
Many men with monitors “cut them loose and take off,” Maria said. “Better if I stay here and follow instructions to the end.”
Two former case workers with a GEO subsidiary, who spoke on condition that they not be named because they wanted to safeguard their chances for future government employment, said it was common for ankle monitors to be removed prematurely, and people who do so are rarely pursued. That’s consistent with the 2015 DHS inspector general’s report, which found that ICE lacked the resources to chase many who abscond.
“ICE has other priorities and most likely will not look for them,” said one of the former case workers, who worked in Louisiana, Florida and Mississippi. He said that if someone did flee, the priority was recovering their ankle monitor — not tracking down the person who abandoned it. “We would visit their house and knock on their door,” the former case worker said, “and at most try to look for the GPS unit.”
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Well, usually a politician would have quit in disgrace before getting to this point. So kind of.
Except that what's happening here isn't actually unusual. Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC got fined $100k by the FEC for the exact same thing (i.e., misreporting campaign expenses - in this case, the "Russia-gate" dossier - as "legal expenses"). The unusual thing is that state legal systems got involved (in cooperation with the White House and under the direction of former White House lawyers, for admittedly-political reasons.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr 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).
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
That is an underlying assumption on both sides that if only all the existing social barriers/contracts could be knocked down, utopia would be achievable. This is a fundamentally Rousseauean viewpoint where in violence, inequity, and injustice are all products of living in a society. Meanwhile I find myself barrowing pages from Hobbes and Burke, grand ideas are nice and all, but social barriers/contracts are what ensure that the trash gets picked up, and that supermarket shelves get stocked and that I would argue what makes a civilization.
I don't mean to nitpick, but wouldn't Hobbes agree that other people really are the source of quite a lot of the violence, inequity, and injustice that humans have to deal with?
So that in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death. And the cause of this, is not alwayes that a man hopes for a more intensive delight, than he has already attained to; or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more. And from hence it is, that Kings, whose power is greatest, turn their endeavours to the assuring it a home by Lawes, or abroad by Wars: and when that is done, there succeedeth a new desire; in some, of Fame from new Conquest; in others, of ease and sensuall pleasure; in others, of admiration, or being flattered for excellence in some art, or other ability of the mind.
(Leviathan, Ch. XI)
Which is why, the only thing for it is precisely to have some omnipotent force come in and enforce order through threat of overwhelming, insuperable force:
Againe, men have no pleasure, (but on the contrary a great deale of griefe) in keeping company, where there is no power able to over-awe them all.
(Id., Ch. XIII), and
Justice And Propriety Begin With The Constitution of Common-wealth But because Covenants of mutuall trust, where there is a feare of not performance on either part, (as hath been said in the former Chapter,) are invalid; though the Originall of Justice be the making of Covenants; yet Injustice actually there can be none, till the cause of such feare be taken away; which while men are in the naturall condition of Warre, cannot be done. Therefore before the names of Just, and Unjust can have place, there must be some coercive Power, to compell men equally to the performance of their Covenants, by the terrour of some punishment, greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their Covenant; and to make good that Propriety, which by mutuall Contract men acquire, in recompence of the universall Right they abandon. . .
(Id., Ch. XV)
Even for Hobbes, a society is only actually civil if it accords with certain precepts of justice; if it does not, then no matter the fripperies and trapping of life, the base warring nature of man takes over again:
[N]o man giveth, but with intention of Good to himselfe; because Gift is Voluntary; and of all Voluntary Acts, the Object is to every man his own Good; of which if men see they shall be frustrated, there will be no beginning of benevolence, or trust; nor consequently of mutuall help; nor of reconciliation of one man to another; and therefore they are to remain still in the condition of War; which is contrary to the first and Fundamentall Law of Nature, which commandeth men to Seek Peace. The breach of this Law, is called Ingratitude
(Id., Ch. XV)
I think that's perfectly compatible with many alt-right claims; particularly the claims that current society has broken down (or is in the process of breaking down) and no longer follows the basic precepts of justice. Under those circumstances, it no longer makes sense in Hobbesian terms to "be modest, and tractable, and performe all he promises," because doing so "where no man els should do so, should but make himselfe a prey to others, and procure his own certain ruine, contrary to the ground of all Lawes of Nature, which tend to Natures preservation."
Once someone realizes they're being defected against in the game of civilization, they've been thrown back into the Hobbesian state of War, and are justified in looking out for the Big Idea - the "coercive Power, to compell men equally to the performance of their Covenants, by the terrour of some punishment, greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their Covenant..."
Of course the big idea isn't actually perfectly realizable, any more than Hobbesian man is capable of "assur[ing] for ever, the way of his future desire." But the point is that in pursuing it, one attempts to reassert sovereignty over warring passions and defections - the prerequisite for the formation of a just society in the first place.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
"African-American Studies" (hereinafter "AAS" because I'm lazy) is not "African-American History." In fact, properly understood, a student isn't really able to engage fruitfully with AAS until they already have a reasonable familiarity with the relevant history, sociology, anthropology, music/cultural studies, etc. The whole point of the various "X Studies" programs is to be interdisciplinary - to take extant bodies of information, place them in dialogue with each other, and attempt to figure out what insights they may have to offer each other, and identify blind spots in prior, monodisciplinary analysis.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
I have two (anecdotal, sadly) examples - 1. Medicare disputes, and 2. Alcohol license administrative hearings.
(1) When I was in law school, I briefly worked an externship as the equivalent of a judicial clerk in the Department of Health and Human Services' Medicare Appeals Division. My primary job was to work up the administrative appeal case files for the Administrative Appeals Judges to look over and make a decision on. MAD got tens of thousands of appeals every year (despite being the third appellate layer of administrative bureaucracy concerning Medicare coverage decisions), but only had nine or ten AAJs at the time, so naturally we had to triage the cases. The ones without legal representation got priority, so every casefile I saw was an "unrepresented beneficiary."
Their appeals came in on everything from unevenly-scribbled letters, to perfumed stationary, to erratic, bullet-point-ridden emails. The exact same thing happened to them as one might expect - they got steamrolled. They didn't know the guidebooks that were used to make the determinations, weren't familiar with the procedural regulations, and even in a nominally non-adversarial process where everyone involved was bending over backwards to be charitable and understanding of these factors (or at least was making convincing mouth-noises to that effect), they lost, and lost, and lost. I finally checked out when I saw a case involving sticking an unrepped-bennie with tens of thousands of dollars of medical transportation costs because his doctors and durable power of attorney didn't know that a smaller local hospital had just started performing a complex heart procedure the guy needed (in fact they hadn't even mentioned it on their webpage as an offered service yet), and so referred him to a major city teaching hospital which was known to perform the procedure - while the bennie himself was completely unconscious and in such bad health that hospice care had been considered. Too demoralizing.
(2) In my current practice, I work a lot with state alcohol licenses. My state, like most, has a separate law enforcement agency that deals exclusively with alcohol licenses and alcohol-related crime, and within their sphere they are nearly omnipotent. I represent a lot of clients in administrative hearings before the Department where there's some accusation that my client has done something wrong, and so deserves to have their license suspended or revoked. I don't win much (as I said, nearly omnipotent), but the poor licensees I see try to handle the disciplinary process without an attorney? Again, steamrolled. And administrative proceedings, like arbitrations, are supposed to be stripped down, less-legalistic processes accessible to the layman. The problem is that the agency does keep a stack of lawyers around to represent themselves at these hearings (before their own judges, natch), and the laws and processes are written so broadly (in an attempt to be approachable and easy to understand for the laity, mind), that the agency can do whatever it wants. The successes I have are precisely because my legal training puts my clients on something resembling the same informational plane as the enforcement agency.
Now, I'm not a great attorney - Yassine is almost certainly better than me from pure experience if nothing else, and he probably is baseline smarter than me too - but I'm not a moron, and my experience tells me that no modern legal process, no matter how "informal" or "accessible" it is supposed to be, should be touched by a layperson without at least getting some advice or contextual information from an attorney..
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
I suppose about 8 years ago I can remember people saying 'Faux News.' I can remember some measured comments from Obama bemoaning conservative media and echo chambers, but it really pales in comparison, doesn't it?
Fox News is apparently "uniquely damaging." Activists trying to block Fox from getting any ad revenues get sympathetic write-ups in nationally-funded media. "Civil Rights" groups try to get the hosts of popular programs taken off the air.
And that was just the first page of one google search.
Supah_Schmendrick
2yr ago
Historically all societies have been obsessed with their ancestors. It’s basic evolutionary biology. We are programmed to not be the end of our line. The only close to political similiarity is Julius Caeser adopting Octavian (not sure if he was nephew in law or shared some blood).
Kinda, but like all human things the instinct gets molded and hijacked and adapted in weird ways. For example, I am given to understand by people who have spent time studying the subject that medieval japanese society was absolutely obsessed about family, yes, but that the name was, in fact, in many cases just as important as the blood. Adoption of proteges for the sake of continuation of a childless house and partition of family estates was described as quite common even among middling peasant/free-hold farmer equivalents.
Supah_Schmendrick
19d ago
Blackbagging by ICE seems to be an extrajudicial process by design
You need to clarify what you are talking about. Are you talking about arrests of individuals who already have a final order of removal or order revoking a lawful visa against them? Are you talking about arrests of individuals based on probable cause that they are in the country illegally? A secret third thing? Immigration law is very complex and, yes, mostly delegated by act of Congress to the administrative branch through administrative adjudication, and discussing it based on vague generalities actively obscures more than it enlightens.
Without getting into the weeds here, I think you've slightly misjudged the call of the question. The issue isn't "who started the mudslinging," or even "was the anti-Romney campaign particularly egregious" - instead what is being asked here is "what were the inflection points which activated the Trumpian base sufficiently for him to arise in 2016?" The anti-Romney campaign is one possible answer, regardless of whether the Dem's rhetoric was in part accurate, or if the heat wasn't a substantial change from what came before.
Personally I think the Romney campaign was a lost opportunity, not a Trumpian precursor. Proto-Trumpian folks did not get all that excited about Romney; they were the ones boosting Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain and Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum in the primaries. A Romney win, if followed by competent government (a huge if in the modern-day) was probably the last serious chance the GOP's "respectability" faction had to wrest the party's momentum away from the insurgent TEA-party/populist wing which ultimately coalesced under Trump.
No, it means that they are "made up" out of the distortions and idiosyncracies of a horribly-kludged procedure on its 44th revision from an original 1987 typewritten spiral-bound handbook, which has been subject to a constant distortionary tug-of-war to drag it closer to the political expediency of the day, or the latest appointee's personal policy judgment.
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