Tanista
7mo ago
Where it gets complicated is that at least some of these things could theoretically be achieved by other Republicans like DeSantis who wouldn't have Trump's ability to make unforced errors (with an idiot-savant ability to tell how much his party is willing to tolerate).
And yet, Trump blew them all out in the primary.
I said it was simple, not that you would find it credible. But that's the argument.
You start giving counter-examples and you'll hear about Haiti's reparations, slaves building America, coups in LatAm, how India had X% of the world's GDP before Britain looted it, bad borders in Africa and the ME, sanctions against Zimbabwe meanwhile honorary white Japan (which was spared colonialism - somehow) was needed as a bulwark against the Soviets and so was treated relatively well. They have explanations, it's just a matter of how much you think they're cope (I've swung over to the "cope" side but I change most of my opinions an average of every eight years and I'm in the "converted zealot" stage and it's really not helpful for digging out nuance.)
It may not hold up but it's the closest thing to a coherent justification for the asymmetry I've seen.
You asked for some theory that would allow one and not the other, not just an explanation of nakedly self-serving behavior. I doubt anyone needs to hear "my opponents want me to believe things that help them and to avoid things that don't" from me.
Tanista
9mo ago
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. It's just a terrorist attack
I see this attitude - you can't beat Muslim terrorists and militias and will only make it worse so don't even try- a lot amongst Americans (usually left leaning ones) and I don't get it.
What's the alternative? Full scale war? Some peace deal?
As for gays, they've adopted a strict "no compromise" policy that I don't think is popular IRL
It's getting more popular amongst Republicans but I think that's wholly because the gays have either abandoned their movement or refused to Sistah Soulja the trans side.
If they totally surrendered today and treated trans like NAMBLA...maybe Republicans would give up and rebound. But that's impossible (the best they can manage is just silence) so who knows when the backlash will bottom out?
This is a particularly bad war. Neither side is able to win. Israel can't defeat all its enemies because whenever enemy deaths get too high, Israel loses the support of Europe and the US.
This situation will only get worse due to demographics. Makes it hard to see postponing the war as a good thing.
Weaponizing what is actually a very useful soft power tool against your new allies after one online disagreement is right up there with other "Elite Human Capital" moves like offering a solution to save some trapped kids, then calling someone closer to the situation a pedophile because he disagreed.
Can't believe Hanania has successfully sold "being an asshole on Twitter" as a sign of EHC.
Elon is a thin-skinned narcissist. Which is fine. But his new political project relies on maintaining an alliance with an even bigger one. Going around de-verifying Trump acolytes over some bullshit is not probably not a good play.
Tanista
9mo ago
Maybe not just in the Arab world at this point.
If I was the sort of person inclined to try to convince people that "They" didn't get Epstein, shit like this would certainly make my job harder.
a right wing media ecosystem catastrophizing Ring Of Fire disasters out of very real but currently statistically ineffective culture war pain points,
Yeah, the campaign feels very online. The Haitian thing is incredibly specific and the sort of thing you think lands when you follow too many DR accounts.
It feels like in 2016 Trump was saying things that people felt but couldn't hear on cable news or the debate stage. Now it feels like he's digging up things a lot of the people who wanted that would see as the theories of online weirdos.
Tanista
10mo ago
Speaking of hotfixes:
The interesting and under-discussed thing is that male roles got liquidated by modernity way before female roles did.
I used to take this for granted too but then you look at something like student loans where women hold more debt and take longer to pay it off and student loan forgiveness is argued for specifically as a salve for women and I wonder.
Although women make up more than half of the college educated labor force, per the Pew Research Center, women still face barriers to paying off their loans due to the gender wage gap, a lack of generational wealth and gender norms placed on women.
If all of these jobs better fit a woman's temperament why can't they just pay their loans?
Male roles may have been liquidated by modernity but not necessarily just because the inevitable march of technology making lifting things and whacking people less useful. The modern liberal state may have given us a little push.
As someone who has become deeply radicalized (and the truscum types lost anyway so who cares?) I'm not sure that their position is attractive either.
Gender dysphoria existing doesn't necessarily justify turning everyone into, essentially, a care provider to people with that condition by affirming their identity. Or being forced to deal with the inevitable externalities that come with allowing such changes to their perceived sex. They simply aren't women, even if they have a condition that makes them want to be and acknowledging it is dangerous.
Arguably the attractiveness of the "truscum" position is partly because it coincided of both low visibility of transpeople and also just a lower level of ability in legally enforcing their claims. One of these is intrinsic, the other contingent.
And, of course, there's the argument that the sort of society that wants to Be Kind^(tm) in this way simply will not/cannot maintain that sort of sharp distinction.
We only have a couple of examples but...
Tanista
11mo ago
There's been a marked shift to the right for young men in the past couple of years, while women have gone in the other direction. It can't all just be the industrial revolution.
Where does the ADL stand with Elon? They seem to jump on everything, usually
It could be a vibe shift or just them backing an antiwoke ally.
Tanista
5mo ago
These are corrupt, evil people who don't want to get their crotch blown off by a cell phone.
If this was the case the October 6th status quo was perfect for Hamas. And yet...
I don't think anyone is thinking about it that deeply - it's just a denial of difference born of the fear that women will be discriminated against if differences like this are acknowledged* (which you are right would hurt women inclined to full competition with men).
If progressives wanted to avoid the perception that femininity could be dangerous they wouldn't have imposed toxic femininity - e.g. totally unchecked forms of feminine-coded social combat like gossip and cancelling- on everyone, enforced by female HR reps and public figures.
* This is what also leads to the attempts to make big game hunting gender egalitarian. I guess going to hunt == work while doing all of the essential work around the community == 1950s suburban nightmare. So it can't be divided by gender.
Tanista
8mo ago
Michèle Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men, also found resentment of professionals — but not of the rich. “[I] can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told her. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.
Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.
Tanista
11mo ago
But it is not clear that this should impact his ability to compete in a sport he's actually very good at if he's maintained good behavior since.
It has no impact on him competing - he can go compete at his local community gym - it impacts him representing his country on the largest stage possible.
What moxie does Kamala have?
She has the media, Dobbs, the most partisan American voting base in my lifetime and an 80-something opponent who may as well be Satan to her base. And the election is going to be before the honeymoon phase is over. And she can talk in complete sentences
If the goal is to shithouse a win, or just shithouse a lower impact on downballot races, it's a foundation.
But whatever, apparently we have quotas. If you have, say eight out of 20 board appointments thanks to your quota, and then you bitch that one of them is a trans-woman when that seat is clearly the birth-right of a biological woman, that seems incredibly petty.
Quotas can be good or bad. But, if a society has already accepted the need for a quota system, trying to police who is allowed in is the least petty thing in the world.
It would be absolutely horrible for a feminist quota system if everyone could just say that men counted for their purposes and the underrepresentation problem was declared solved as a result.
Tanista
3mo ago
In the Floyd push ABC canceled their top-rated show because the actress offended their sensibilities
Which show was this?
Going after the woke =/= going after them for being anti-Israel .
I see the appeal from a Trump/anti-woke perspective, all the enemies lined up behind an unpopular position they probably can beat universities into punishing relatively easily. I'm wondering where this goes afterwards.
A big part of it, I think, is that SocJus mentality, of all of reality being dominated by power differentials, and as such, each individual of [demographic] is necessarily disadvantaged compared to each individual of [some other demographic]. This means that if that individual of [demographic] fails or just doesn't succeed as much as they imagine an individual of [some other demographic] would have, then their failure is due to the bigoted society that created these power dynamics that made them disadvantaged, rather than due to that individual's own flaws. This, of course, is how millionaire stars can claim to be lacking in "privilege" - the claim isn't that they're not wildly successful, but rather that they aren't as wildly successful as an equivalent person of [some other demographic] would have been. Also of course, this is completely unfalsifiable.
It's not actually clear that "the oppressed" succeed less in the industry. They succeed at different things because groups are different. Barbie dragged up Oppenheimer's numbers, not vice versa. It's just a naive form of blank slateism at play.
AFAIK Marvel movies usually skew at least 60% male* . Is it a shock that it takes them longer to have a female lead? Is that oppression?
The blank slateism is what convinces them that a boy brand like Star Wars is just as equally marketable and valuable if turned into a space princess brand. Hell, moreso. Since boys and girls both want to watch the exact same things you can just keep all of the legacy male fans from when the fandom skewed male and gain new fans who have the same autistic fixation on just how the hell Han did the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs when that is a unit of distance not time. You can swap in a five foot woman for a scarred John Connor and who but a bigot could feel their suspension of disbelief straining?
This might even be viable; these brands skew in one direction but have plenty of fans of both genders. But they can't sell it because they're in an echo chamber that validates their contempt for the audience. Claiming oppression is not just a way to try to create jobs for themselves, it allows objectively privileged people to "punch down" without that term ever being applied.
EDIT: apparently this is worse in the opening weekends, might even out more later as some sources claim. The Marvels was apparently 65% male, funnily enough
Can the genie of idpol be put back into the bottle? It seems not as it preys on the base instincts of the masses of prefering preferential accomodations
Here's the problem: Jews are a very small minority. Anti-semitism being of central concern in the Western mind is not like preferences for the Indian lower castes or black Americans, it's a product of ideology and/or elite power.
One doesn't have to do this for democratic reasons and one could argue it's not even good for Jews to do this.
We have not moved past this. WEIRD Americans speak of Karma, of what comes around goes around, of 'garbage people getting what's coming'. It's been noted that the SJW brigade seems not to forgive; transgressions contaminate you, your works, your associates... forever. I don't know any SJWs so I have to take the motte's word for it.
Counter-point: Dan Harmon committed sexual harassment, a real no-no sin, and gave a fairly heartfelt apology and was apparently forgiven and is now back to work. So it's not impossible.
I think part of the problem is more that SJW ethics are almost tailor-made for exploitation by narcissists and other bitter/status-seeking people disinclined towards forgiveness in the first place (and cancellation disproportionately affects people with enough status to become visible and thus provide an incentive to continually pick at), so it's hard to come up with a simple principle that accounts for all cases because someone can always defect and there are reasons to deny status even if one personally forgives.
And I suppose we see it more controversially with the post-religious right, hanging a sword of damocles over the heads of converts from all sorts of degenerate behavior.
A lot of this is likely because this is very online: converts are essentially acting as influencers, which gives good reason to gatekeep the usual positive reinforcement that comes with forgiveness.
If I see an aging instathot in a burqa I'm willing to accept she's a Muslim now (it's frowned upon to question that sort of thing without good reason), but there are good reasons to deny her prestige for wearing it. She clawed her way back to neutral, she's not a moral exemplar.
Granting all this is true: it's still Biden's fault and he should have stepped down.
I'm sorry, I thought he was the adult in the room? Part of being an adult is being blamed for your decisions, not acting like they're sudden currents that swept you away for no reason.
He, the grownup, chose not only an unqualified but deeply unpopular and incompetent candidate. And he did so for explicitly racial reasons. Whose fault is it? The VP's only essential duties are to break ties in the Senate and to stand as a second for the President.
I also reject the self-serving notion that Bernie is what did in Hillary. She's always been unpopular and Bernie being relevant at all was the public desperately begging Democrats to take their money. Democrats didn't lose in 2008 because someone actually challenged at a primary instead of letting the party grandee be anointed. The party could also have leaned on Kamala to allow an open primary.
So if Biden wasn't Biden it'd be okay?
Like, this is part of what drove me crazy about the media spin on this. They made it seem as if Biden's mental decline was nothing more than a campaigning issue . So I suppose, in that light, it can look as a bad roll of the dice, bad tactics, a very good but rare counter that knocked Biden out. Some sort of July Surprise? Shit happens, move on.
No, Biden was unfit, physically and mentally. The reason the debate settled the matter is that it was undeniable proof of what people were told wasn't happening (and they had to keep being told because they didn't believe it). Biden hid the extent of this for months upon months not only from the public but from some of his colleagues and the media. This likely affected not just the campaign but his administration (given all of the reporting of stage-managing) Biden then couldn't hold it together under the stress of a full campaigning season, like Democrats like Dean Phillips warned ahead of time. By the time it finally came out, it was too late.
That is still Joseph Biden's fault. Why are we talking about this stuff like it just happened to him? Even if he could have white-knuckled it, he shouldn't have. Because the office of the President is too important to be left to a convalescent. And Biden, as the adult, should know that.
All of this happened against a backdrop of voters making it absolutely clear his age was an issue. Biden pushed through, thinking some combination of his policies (both the ones he claimed and the ones he tried to row back from), Trump's legal cases and general unfavourability would all win him the day - essentially holding the voters hostage, as Silver puts it. He gambled, and lost.
It was not at all practically impossible for an old President to step down and let the party battle it out. I understand that it felt that way psychologically for Biden. But Biden's political judgment doesn't seem to be so self-evidently sound that we can take it as Gospel.
We're hearing now from Democratic insiders like PSA that his polling showed a 400 Electoral College loss and even then he had to be dragged out. What about this implies some sort of judicious weighing of the options? It's just ego. He's way more like Trump than the media hagiography has implied. Worse: Trump actually does seem to be irreplaceable to his base.
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