Supah_Schmendrick
No bio...
User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
Social Media is free; NYT is trying to get people to pay money to subscribe, and precisely by picking ideology - i.e., reinforcing their reader's pre-existing biases and telling them that they are correct about the world but moreso, and in fact have they considered being even MORE worried about their particular boogeymen?!? - has racked up millions of subscribers.
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
"whatever it takes" notably didn't involve breaking the story that the President was mentally incompetent, and before that it didn't involve breaking the story that the president's son was selling access to his father to foreign interests.
Correct, because those stories would have pissed off their current readers, without necessarily gaining them eyeballs among other, new customers.
Nowadays media makes money by feeding people's epistemic bubbles, not puncturing them.
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
The republican establishment needs the threat of the base going against them in order to keep the establishment delivering.
Traditionally this is done in primaries, not in general elections.
How many "squad" members have you seen supporting Trump because Kamala/Joe Biden was an unacceptable neoliberal shill collaborating with fascists yadda yadda...? I expect the answer will be "none."
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
I take the opposite analysis of a lot of this board, I think most of Israel’s flagging support is the result of the American cousins and not Israel itself. Were it not for them, Israel would just be one of many, many foreign countries with a somewhat questionable human rights record.
Very clever argument, and for a certain species of American conservative, I think it's true. However this doesn't explain European anti-Zionism, which historically has been much more pervasive both on the left and the right than in America (at least until recently).
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
Finance has busily furthered DEI, deindustrialization of the West, financialization of the economy, toxic housing bubbles and rapid development of China.
Peanut butter enthusiasts lobby for more people to eat peanut butter! Man with hammer thinks most problems can be solved by smacking them! News at Eleven!
...More seriously, I think I generally share your feelings about the finance industry. But this was funny.
The media whips up racial hysteria, worsens relations between the sexes and spreads grossly misleading racial narratives about policing.
True, but media has also been undergoing a major structural disruption due to the internet for the past twenty years; they're desperately trying to do whatever it takes to keep eyeballs. What's getting pushed out (e.g. in the NYT) is what sells - entities that don't keep up, like Newsweek, Time, many mid-major and local papers, etc. - die.
Also also, the idea that newsmedia are amoral gossipmongers lying and ginning up hysteria to goose sales isn't exactly new
I would much rather have my financial sector run by some honest, hardworking midwit who tries to advance national interests and develop our industries, than a 160 IQ financial genius who uses his vast talents for private profit, asset-stripping, offshoring and demanding share buybacks over investment.
I would rather have patriotic journalists with tedious prose and limited abilities than charismatic, excellent writers who hate me and attack me and my ancestors, systematically pursuing my disempowerment in society.
Perhaps there is a third option between "people foresaw and intended these results because they are evil" and "people would achieve alternate results because they are good", which is "people intended well, but were wrong."
I'm not going full mistake theory - people tie their egos to their opinions, rationalize and dig in, and usually aren't amenable to being convinced by dispassionate arguments. But that doesn't get rid of the fact that people tend not to think like cartoon supervillains.
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
Two months ago, Richard Hanania predicted that Nick Fuentes and the groypers would become a major force in mainstream Republican politics.
I have few instincts or thoughts on the broader question of how "prominent" Fuentes is with various political factions. However it's kinda crazy to me that someone who openly supported Kamala Harris is still being considered a Republican or conservative.
Supah_Schmendrick
3d ago
Even given the collapse in journalism, wouldn't you expect someone pushing that thesis to collect the most persuasive cases, not the most ambiguous?
No. I would expect someone pushing the thesis to collect the most lurid and sensational cases whose details can be plausibly characterized or molded to support their view. There's no screen for ambiguity when the writer is strategically minimizing or ignoring countervailing details.
Supah_Schmendrick
9d ago
Admittedly those certainly didn't help; the Bush administration was fairly disastrous.
Supah_Schmendrick
9d ago
There are very serious violent crimes that ruin lives that don’t get that amount of time. There are some murders that don’t get that amount of time.
That's a problem with the level of punishment given to the murders.
Supah_Schmendrick
9d ago
The same could have been said for the Algerians who then took their land back.
The Pieds-Noirs had a country to go back to. Israelis don't. Maybe some would flee to the US, but I don't think the Algerian strategy is going to work; it certainly hasn't worked yet. If anything, the Palestinians are losing ground.
Supah_Schmendrick
11d ago
The Democrats will return to power eventually, this will be remembered, and yes, it will be tit-for-tat and we spiral into ever-worse decay.
Honest question - what do you believe the Democrats will do as a consequence of particular Trump actions that they would not do otherwise? In short, what concrete effect on Democratic legislative or activist actions or priorities do you think a less-crass Trump administration would have?
Supah_Schmendrick
11d ago
Frankly, I keep thinking I can't be surprised anymore by the depths which Trump (or more realistically, his social media team0 will stoop too, and yet here we are...
"Men of Virginia! Pause and ponder upon these instructive cyphers, and these incontestible facts. Ye will then judge for yourself as to policy. Ye will judge without regard to the prattle of a president; the prattle of that strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, deceit and weakness; without regard to that hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. ... Take your choice between Adams - war and beggary - and Jefferson - peace and competency!"
- James Callender, "The Prospect Before Us" (1800), referring to the presidential election of that year.
"[Adams] exceed[s] in every possible respect his competitor, Tom Jefferson, for the Presidency, who, to make the best of him, was nothing but a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow; son of a half-breed Indian squaw and sired by a Virginia mulatto, as was well known in the neighborhood where he was raised, wholly on hoe-cake, bacon, and hominy, with an occasional change of fricaseed bullfrog, for which abominable reptiles he acquired a taste during his residence among the French in Paris, to whom there could be no question he would sell his entire country at the first offer of cash made to him."
- An anonymous federalist orator, responding.
Supah_Schmendrick
14d ago
Of course, when you put it like that, it's basically symmetrical with the way academia and significant chunks of lefty popular culture have treated the Soviets and other murderous communist regimes for decades. So all in all, not super outside the overton window, right?
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
It was used fairly frequently here a few years ago, before falling out of favor.
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
The problem is that people are social animals; you can't separate the individual from the group. At best, you can try to prune and restrict membership such that solidarity and assabiyah inside the group is so strong as to allow for greater space for individualism within its bounds. But, paradoxically, you can't do that by strengthening individual liberties; you have to do so by attending to the group.
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
Good god; this is the shit that makes me embarrassed to be half jewish. It's like...have some self-respect and stop being a pants-wetting ninny.
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
He seems like a thoughtful guy. I hope he's stayed that way and hasn't succumbed to one of the various flavors of brainrot circulating these days. We need sane artists.
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
A line, of course, which largely has been historically understood to be the justification for muscular jewish/israeli military capacity and an unapologetically hair-trigger attitude towards percieved slights.
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
The only remarkable thing about this post is the political valency; what is this place if not nut-picking to wage the culture war?
I can't speak for anyone else, but I certainly try not to nutpick. I thought the ethos of the place aspired to something a little grander as well.
Broad swathes of 'antisemitism' on the left can differentiate between opposing Jews and opposing Israel.
Yes; most people, if you can get them one-on-one in a relaxed social setting, will be fairly chill and generous on most political issues. However, those same people, in a march or mob, or when agitated against the outgroup (i.e., in a politically-activated state) will take much harder stances out of pure oppositional aesthetics or attitude.
Also, the "soft and reasonable" left position on Jews, whether or not in Israel, appears to be something along the line of "anything other than deracinated individualism and blank slatism rhymes with nazi and is verboten." This, I should hope understandably, comes off to many Jews and particularly Israelis as the equivalent of Ghandi's advice to the Jews of eastern europe.
The largest protests against the Israeli war in Gaza in my region were led by Jewish men in kippahs with megaphones blocking traffic.
Progressive leftism these days is as much a jewish heresy as it is a christian one - not for nothing is reform Judaism called "the Democratic Party at prayer." Truly, the monkey's paw has curled and given the right a true "judeo-christian" civilization in the form of the GAE, with its mainline protestant State Department, jewish DOJ, and mormon security service state. (said firmly with tongue in cheek).
On the other hand none of those (with the exception of the mormons) do a great job of reproducing themselves; mainline protestant churches are famously elderly, and another famous joke teaches that the way you can tell the difference between a reform and orthodox jew is that the orthodox one will have jewish grandchildren. So how "jewish" really, are these barren branches?
Antisemitism on the right rarely bothers to make the Israel/Jew distinction, particularly when it arrives at it's antisemitism via the protocols of the elders of Zion and the Great Replacement Theory and Holocaust denialism.
A much more degenerate route than the traditional "judeo-bolshevism" line, though that still has its supporters out there.
One of these flavors of antisemitism, were it to gain power, would likely cut foreign aid to Israel and boost aid to Palestine. The other would likely pogrom the US government and elites, or worse.
Honestly, I'm unclear which one is which, because a disproportionate amount of the actual anti-jewish violence in the US comes from the black nationalist and muslim side of things, which are broadly (though not exclusively) within the left/antizionist tent.
See, when this is done by people you dislike you break out the Narcissist's prayer:
That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
Also known as the Trial Lawyer's catechism.
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
I'm perfectly happy to believe Myron Gaines and the creator of an explicitly witch-friendly social media space are at least as friendly to Hitler as your average sociology professor and "community organizer" are towards Mao...but come on, using an unedited Michael Jackson track is "antisemitism" now? That's an extremely bad example.
Supah_Schmendrick
18d ago
It's never been entirely clear to me how much of that was actual "feminist interpretive dancer-turned-defense contractor exec" and how much was "well we'll put General So-and-So's son's wife down as the President of the LLC for compliance purposes, but everyone knows the General still calls the shots"
Supah_Schmendrick
18d ago
Does that mean woke activism is just a far right extension of Nazi legal theory adapted to modern times?
Clearly not an extension in the sense of merely being an appendage of. However, it would be fair to say that there is some degree of cross-pollination (though the influence can certainly be overstated; significantly less than Freud and the psychoanalysts, for example).
Supah_Schmendrick
19d ago
I think even some of the people who developed it studied directly under the major figures of the Frabkfurt School.
Correct.
Supah_Schmendrick
19d ago
...I submit that Marxism is best understood as a bundle of critiques of society emerging from a particular worldview. Beyond those worldview-clustered critiques, Marxism contains no actual, gears-level insight or plan for fixing society beyond "amass absolute power and use it tear down this society and build a much better one in its place".
A friendly amendment - Marxism isn't just the critiques of society; it's also (1) critiques of the critiques, usually trying to explain why their prior predictions didn't pan out [e.g. Frankfurt school], and (2) tactical theorizing about the proper way in which to actualize the vague, high-level, utopian promises of the original critiques [e.g. the Trotskyite "Permanent Revolution", Leninist "Vanguardist", Stalinist "Socialism in One Country", etc.].
Yes, but to return to the premise of the original post, I don't think many of them are all that welcome back in the modern Democratic party, let alone "major forces" in Democratic politics.
Just look at what's happened to public figures who've made that kind of transition - Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Taibbi, Joe Rogan, Jimmy Dore, even RFK himself - none of them are welcome in left spaces anymore.
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