People have really summed up the issue with the guy; he really does sound like he's playing Paradox grand strategy games with actual grand strategy.
With Nixon and Monroe firmly in hand, we can now move into application. Let us start with our great power rival, China, and the jewel of their near-abroad, Taiwan. We have operated in strategic ambiguity with regard to Taiwan for far too long. I will move to strategic clarity, by which I mean that China must understand that I will defend American interests in Taiwan. If Taiwan wants any partnership in their defense, then they will need to raise their defense spending and military readiness to acceptable levels. Meanwhile, I will commit to making sure Taiwan has the weapons they need for that defense, both from a sea-borne invasion, and in future, for a long-term insurgency against any occupying foreign force, if needed.
Vivek has publicly said that he's going to tell China "we'll defend Taiwan until we get semiconductor independence". Which...I guess everyone is supposed to take well?
Can we consider one potential consequence of telling Taiwan that the US will defend them right now (against an enemy that continually states it'll declare war if Taiwan ever tries for independence) while also promising to throw them under the bus as soon as the US is sufficiently diversified?
In Paradox-land, only the player has agency so it isn't that big a deal. People are less cooperative.
And that IMO is the biggest problem with the manosphere - it doesn't offer you solutions to your problems, but makes you feel good for having problems.
This is one of those statements that sounds accurate, but it's probably just due to outgroup homogeneity bias.
While what you're saying is true of say...incels. I would argue that TRP is vastly more helpful than say...Men's Lib or any feminist coded version. And it's really cause it captures a few banal insights:
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No one cares about any ideological justification you can come up with for failing*. That's for feminists. Just try not to fail
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Lift weights
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Approach - a lot of the "marginal" men really just need to be more outgoing. All of the TRP evopsych just gives them the confidence to do it.
That's all it takes to be better than a lot of the more "progressive" versions. Simply because it emphasizes an internal locus of control rather than commiseration.
* A very common thing on /r/MensLib and other such progressive spaces is to note problems, tut tut piously about how this or that problem all caused by patriarchy (even if women are the ones driving it) and will be solved...eventually when we dismantle it. In the meantime...they have nothing for you.
I Accidentally Got SBF To Admit to Fraud
So...SBF is simply a moron. I've been trying to resist that conclusion, but now I'm asking myself why I bothered.
In the link above Youtuber Coffeezilla drops into a call with SBF (a second time! Why is he still taking calls??) and proceeds to basically get him to admit that funds were comingled.
Coffeezilla noted that SBF always deflects the issue by arguing that some accounts were trading on margin and so were deliberately open to being used by Alameda, unlike regular accounts. So literally all he does - and all any journalist needed to do - was just keep drilling down on whether the FTX only customers who weren't doing that could still get their funds. SBF obviously has no answer. Even worse, he basically screws himself by admitting that they had one withdrawal process which was him admitting to comingling funds.
So...the guy is just a moron. He doesn't have some grand legal plan to plead negligence or ignorance. He has a half-baked plan based on the idea that everyone is dumber than him (despite multiple counterexamples) and he falls apart the minute anyone puts any thought into his answers.
The entire video is actually a good look at how a journalist should view someone like SBF and his word games and deflections and how they should strategize to defeat them (and the end has the sort of pure joy at skewering the target that I bet all journalists feel but are too dignified to admit when picking up their Pulitzer). And this is coming from someone who thought the idea of people like Coffeezilla being "journalists" laughable.
But he has legitimately done the best job of questioning SBF out of everyone (Stefanopoulos was the close second)
Sure but why does that impact you?
A society accepting what you see as a bad set of memes affects everyone. No man is an island.
The activists know this - that's why they went from "we just want to be left alone!" to "we need X, Y and Z to feel comfortable, fulfilled and validated".
"'You do you and I do mine" is at best an ideal that the temptations of actual power erodes or just an outright tactical lie to wear down opposing norms before instituting your own.
Celebs, boundaries and emotional abuse
So two stories have popped up around the same topic recently: how much men have the right to complain about or police their women's public behavior.
First off: recent mother Keke Palmer finally got to go out and enjoy herself, and her outing involved being serenaded by R&B star and notorious hound Usher Raymond. Her "baby daddy" decided to come out and complain that: "A man of the family doesn’t want the wife & mother to his kids to showcase booty cheeks to please others".
Well, that didn't go well. The feminist-aligned internet tore into him and he appeared to have been promptly dumped and, insult to injury, merch clowning him is now being sold
At the same time, "toxic masculinity" has a white representative to balance it out: Jonah Hill is now being attacked for being a misogynistic narcissist. Soon after the birth of his child, his ex decided to post texts showing his demand that she stops sexy photo shoots or overly close relationships with men or hanging out with women from her "wild past"
Hill is also facing a backlash from the DM women for "emotionally abusing" his ex via his boundaries and non-negotiables and his exploiting of "therapyspeak" to sanctify controlling behavior.
In both stories both men are excoriated for hypocrisy because these women behaved this way when they met, and expecting them to change (including after childbirth) is inconsistency.
So, what culture war implications to take from this?
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Keke Palmer's boyfriend had a very standard male reaction, regardless of charges of hypocrisy. Making it public that way was unwise, especially since he was the comparative minnow in the status competition. Times have changed. Maybe men like that should reconcile themselves to playing the role of the honorable wife who conveniently never sees any of these shenanigans, for everyone's sake. Of course, that would suggest some more restraint on Palmer's part...
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The situation is reversed with Hill. He has the status. Which I suspect is a significant part of the motive to release it now and draw in Deuxmoi-reading women to help win a battle that she couldn't have won in the relationship. As many people asked: why did she put up with his absurd demands (asking her to not post risque surfing photos when he met her through them) for any time whatsoever? Well, because he was Jonah Hill, presumably.
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No pretense to even wrestle with why men don't want the mother of their kids publicly on display. Just near-total lack of care.
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Obviously the concept creep on abuse continues.
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Is the celebrity (and wannabe celebrity) class just going to litigate every relationship online now for fans and political affinity group points...forever? The Hill thing happened a while ago and now it's supposed to be a thing? I suspect part of the push to call some of this "abuse" is precisely that there's a realization that no one should care about messy personal business. I assume the word game is retarding us coming to the conclusion one should in a panopticon: to stop caring. I wonder how long it'll hold.
I think they were harmed by the Marketing VP's comments which have a "woke' flavor:
She added further that she had a “super clear” mandate that “to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand.” She said that what she “brought” to the brand was a “belief” that to evolve and elevate means to incorporate “inclusivity, it means shifting the tone, it means having a campaign that’s truly inclusive, and feels lighter and brighter and different, and appeals to women and to men.”
...
“We had this hangover, I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach,” she said.
The focus on "inclusivity", the criticism of the old (successful) brand as "fratty" and "out of touch", the claim that anything that caters to the old crowd is out of date and moribund...all of it pattern matches to "woke" (and yes, that includes her being a woman). If you're a conservative you've seen this play out more than a few times so, when they tell you they want to take away what you feel is yours, you believe them
IMO the choice of Mulvaney also screams "woke". Mulvaney is running around claiming to be not just a girl but the most obviously misogynist and appropriative vision of "girlhood" around. If anyone wrote him as a female character it'd rightly be seen as sexist.
It takes a lot of in-group loyalty imo to not see the issue with this guy and to choose to use them , even a bit, as a mascot for your brand aimed at a totally different market, instead of any other conceivable trans figure.
Does Progressive Ideology Make People Unhealthy?
Or: The internet wrestles with the finding that progressives (especially liberal women) are more likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness.
John Haidt seems to have kicked it off with good piece that goes over his usual points: cellphones cause problems by encouraging comparison and closing off real independent play that builds resilience , but liberal kids specifically are being taught "anti-CBT" - instead of learning resilience and an internal locus of control liberal kids are taught catastrophizing and believing things are outside of their control. I'm sure we've all seen adult liberals emphasizing how "traumatized" and "tired" they are made by events.
Noah Smith thinks it can be reduced to phones, and many problems - e.g. competition on Instagram depressing girls, a doomer media narrative making people sad - just come down to phones too.
(The one I found most interesting) Musa al-Gharbi has a great piece that does seem to come down to "conservatives are just generally more psychologically resilient in polling, for various reasons" - there are obvious ones like them being more religious or emphasizing an internal locus of control, but also more interesting ones I didn't consider like conservatives allegedly having less homogeneous groups and progressivism seemingly attracting more neurotic types in general.
The summary:
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There are likely some genetic and biological factors that simultaneously predispose people towards both mental illness/ wellness and liberalism/ conservatism, respectively.
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Net of these predispositions, conservatism probably helps adherents make sense of, and respond constructively to, adverse states of affairs. These effects are independent of, but enhanced by, religiosity and patriotism (which tend to be ideological fellow-travelers with conservatism).
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Some strains of liberal ideology, on the other hand, likely exacerbate (and even incentivize) anxiety, depression, and other forms of unhealthy thinking. The increased power and prevalence of these ideological frameworks post-2011 may have contributed to the dramatic and asymmetrical rise in mental distress among liberals over the past decade.
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People who are unwell may be especially attracted to liberal politics over conservatism for a variety of reasons, and this may exacerbate observed ideological gaps net of other factors.
As well as an interesting prediction:
On this model, liberals would move first, with the conservative increase in negative emotionality emerging as a reaction to shifts in liberal discourse and behaviors. However, there should be a disjuncture over time because the prevailing liberal ideologies would continue to exert a powerful influence over the mental state of liberals but would come to exercise diminishing influence over conservatives. These patterns are, in fact, reflected in the data.
I'll have to dig into this to confirm but this is something to watch: can conservatives "win" the cultural contest by providing a less neurotic example or will they all be assimilated into the same therapy mindset? Clearly the phenomenon of trad-larping seems to show some dissatisfaction with what liberalism has to offer but i'm not sure how p
From what I recall of Haidt, there does seem to be some "contagion" effect in terms of liberal tactics where, if liberals complain and use school services e.g. to resolve speech disputes, cons eventually try to do the same (I've seen similar things with female/feminist style complaints spreading to the other side).
TBH I also think there's a "capitalist realism" thing going on where no one can see outside liberal ideas even if they seem manifestly inert or outright unhelpful. They're just considered "the right thing". And it's repeated over and over. In fact: failure just leads to more calls to "promote mental health" and more demands, not less.
Reading Crazy Like Us after it came up here really reinforced this: As one user commented on Scott's review: "I found the trauma section of the book very compelling, in part because it squares with my impression of the United States as a society that is convinced it understands trauma better than any previous society but seems to achieve uniquely poor outcomes. It would be like a land that was convinced it had the best vaccine for polio but you look around and every fourth person is in an iron lung."
Even if conservatism offers a better outcome psychologically it doesn't matter, cause liberals won't listen to conservatives anymore than the well-meaning "trauma" counselors in Crazy Like Us cared to listen to the locals' own view of things.
Funny, I was just reading this article that I think conclusively challenged this stuff
For instance, the Times piece claims that incels accounted for half of the total referrals to Prevent in the year ending March 2021. There is no evidence to back up this claim.
According to public data from the Home Office, Prevent received 2,522 referrals about individuals with a ‘mixed, unstable or unclear ideology’ (MMU) – a catch-all category for anything other than Islamist or right-wing extremism, which accounted for the remaining 22 per cent and 25 per cent of referrals respectively. It also includes individuals with no ideological orientation who are nonetheless deemed ‘at risk’ of committing an attack, such as a school massacre. A more detailed breakdown of the MMU category is not yet publicly available, but the suggestion that it is mostly made up of incels is unfounded and highly unlikely.
I think there are a couple of things going on:
#1 is just a general post-ISIS butchering of "radicalization" as a concept because it serves as a way of elevating what is a political disagreement to something that demands the tools of state and the corporate moderators- the Hillary playbook: I didn't lose because I was unpopular, it was This Thing That Requires We Censor People [That article is from a man that actually studies incels btw]
The problem is that this sensibility becomes self-sustaining and actually a "grift" for some people:
So prevalent is the radicalization charge that you would think people are incentivized to hurl it around. You wouldn't be wrong: There is a whole industry that is parasitic on naming and classifying people as radicalized. It includes the mass media, which engorges itself on stories of radicalization. It includes academics like me who do research on radicalization. And it includes a whole edifice of counter-extremist entrepreneurs whose business model is to hype up existing threats and find news ones. Nobody in this game, if we're honest, has an interest in seeing radicalization go away. It's bad for business. We need radicalized people, and if we can't find them, we'll invent them.
Interestingly, there's a point that might especially apply to incels:
If everyone is radicalized, it becomes impossible to distinguish between those who are merely odious and hateful from those who, if they had the chance, skills and support, would like to slaughter you and me in our thousands.
And we urgently need to know the difference between the two.
In America, right now, the chief obstacle to this happening is the apocalyptic disgust that has overtaken and unhinged progressives and even some Republicans. It is not that the far-right isn't a threat to civil order and security in the US. It undoubtedly is. Rather, it is that the visceral revulsion that many progressives feel toward the far-right has led them to drastically over-inflate the actual threat it poses by suggesting it now eclipses the threat from global jihadists.
And who is more disgusting than the bitter,sexless loser? They have no constituency; feminism doesn't engender sympathy for "privileged" men already and men themselves as a class aren't particularly sympathetic to those considered "bitches". Hell, some make a point to be less so (perhaps because they can handle any resulting aggression).
#2 is Female Sensitivity
Women may just be more sensitive to guys that give the "ick" or appear dangerously entitled.
To me, overly online men aren't really threatening. But then...I've always been bigger and I've never had a reason to fear in the presence of other men. I'm not worried some of them will be opportunistic.
#3 is Feminist Ideology & Rape Culture.
I remember, in the early days of the culture war for me, that feminists would insist "yes, all men" (the red pill had "all women are like that", another point for horseshoe theory)
Now, this has problems in that it ignores that a disproportionate amount of sexual offenses are committed by so-called "Dark Triad" men. After all; the best predator is the one who can at least appear not-dangerous for a while.
If you take this logic seriously - that all men are potential rapists - who's more suspect than the incels? They're creepy, some are outright saying it and, if you buy into this rape culture narrative, this is something more than just losers online babbling. You'd think they'd be the people assaulting you (and some are).
EDIT: The other risk that incels pose is that sympathy for them will lead to pressure on women to lower their standards (or "enforced monogamy" - which caused a riot when Peterson said it). Obviously, no one wants to have their options constrained, but I think this is an oversold problem in practice.
#4 is Feminism needs a villain.
Despite - or because - they've dismantled most legal barriers, basically gained a hand in guiding the mores of corporate America via their 70% hold on the HR departments, having laws designed to protect them....feminists need an enemy or some sort of harm to justify even more and more demands. Incels shooting people - despite being rare - served that role and it takes a while for progressives to let go of martyrs (that gay nightclub shooting and Matthew Shepherd are probably still seen as a targets of homophobia by most, despite debunkings)
Incels, because they are male, fill this niche for feminists and progressives - which is why they ignore (despite all evidence) the fact that that incels aren't a white male monolith and, if anything, groups like Indians are likely to be overrepresented: to remove even the potential for the usual "woke" argument for sympathy.
and possibly yet another political dynasty scalp Donald Trump may claim.
He didn't really do much. Trudeau is dead for the same reason a lot of centrist-but-for-migration parties are dead: people don't like the economy or the rise in migration. While we can argue about Biden, I don't think the UK Tories or Canada Liberals were acting out of TDS and the unpopularity was baked in before Trump won.
The self interest of the Liberals and NDP is the only reason he lasted to see Trump
But we may never get another world leader on camera in blackface.
Besides it being very funny how he couldn't even answer how many times he did it, it was a good chance to see how many people actually give a fuck about this shit when it comes time to vote.
Tanista
2yr ago
then I think Scott was a bit hasty to take their disagreement with it as a rejection of the literal meaning of the statement
This depends on you actually taking them at their word.
It seems highly self-serving to me to just append "actually it's this Mystical Greater Context that makes this anodyne statement bad", especially when it's very unlikely they will cede that argument if the right-wing were to make it about "love is love" or whatever.
The fact that elements of the Left deliberately refuse to use less inflammatory language (e.g. "minority disadvantage" as opposed to "white privilege", anything other than "mediocre white man" and "gammon"*) OR avoid or condemn race-based insults that cut the other way gives people reason to believe imo that at least part of the appeal is venting ressentiment and taking revenge on specific groups.
Their justifications for this may resolve their concerns about hypocrisy, but it is not inherently a mistake to distrust them.
* I remember the more than hypocritical attempts to justify this on /r/ukpolitics.
Nicola Sturgeon says time is right to resign as Scotland's first minister
Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed that she is resigning as Scotland's first minister after more than eight years in the role.
Ms Sturgeon said her decision was not a reaction to short-term pressures, but came from "a deeper and longer-term assessment".
According to her, this was a decision long in the making and not a response to current events.
Personally, I think they had something to do with it (even if just in a "straw that broke the camel's back). She suffered twin defeats of having the UK government strike down her self-ID bill on the grounds that it'd violate equal rights protections and somehow ending up looking reasonable (usually "nationalists" will oppose such a thing on principle, at least that is my experience with Quebec*), in part due to the possibility of the other disaster: a male rapist suddenly identifying as a woman and trying to get into a female prison.
AKA that thing we were told would never happen.
For many, this was a bridge too far and the backlash was intense. While she and her team did try to mitigate the damage by pointing out that he was still being assessed, it didn't seem to comfort (for me: even the need for a risk assessment is silly) Sturgeon herself was grilled and tied herself in knots trying to tread some middle ground between her ideological commitments and mollifying people who thought the whole thing was a bridge too far (attempts by SNP boosters to dodge the question by saying "this person is a rapist" apparently didn't work)
To me this highlights two things: the hollowness of a nationalism based on "we're more progressive than you" as opposed to the good old blood and soil stuff that is apparently verboten now that everyone wants to plug themselves into some larger cosmopolitan, neoliberal bloc or to ingratiate themselves to American companies and culture (e.g. Ireland).
Everyone can understand "we're a distinct nation with a particular history that converged with but is not identical to the greater state's". Basing nationalism on progressive policy is silly because it's both incoherent (said policy is inimical to nationalism) and is liable to overreach because being progressive is an ever shifting target.
Second point: the fact that trans activists were right. Their greatest successes come when they can roll the elites into believing their cause is just an inevitable extension of existing rights and they can bypass the public. As Joyce put it:
All this explains the speed. When you want new laws, you can focus on lobbying, rather than the painstaking business of building broad-based coalitions. And when those laws will take away other people’s rights, it is not only unnecessary to build public awareness – it is imperative to keep the public in the dark. This stealthy approach has been central to transactivism for quite some time.
In a speech in 2013, Masen Davis, then the executive director of the American Transgender Law Center, told supporters that ‘we have largely achieved our successes by flying under the radar . . . We do a lot really quietly. We have made some of our biggest gains that nobody has noticed. We are very quiet and thoughtful about what we do, because we want to make sure we have the win more than we want to have the publicity.’
The result is predictable. Even as one country after another introduces gender self-ID, very few voters know this is happening, let alone support it.
A poll in Scotland in 2020 suggests that even young women, the demographic keenest on gender self-ID, become cooler when reminded of the practical implications.
Joyce, Helen. Trans: Gender Identity and the New Battle for Women's Rights (p. 227).
Well, the public is like an elephant. They'll mostly follow the rider's instructions. Until you alarm them. Took a while but it eventually happened. Sturgeon had the easiest job in politics: just keep running and blame the UK. That's all she had to do. And she somehow bungled that. This topic is toxic for everyone.
* There is an argument that Sturgeon's real sin here was not triggering overt action from the UK - in fact, that might have been seen as helpful for raising nationalist sentiment- but picking a case so absurd that it made it palatable. That is the real failure of a nationalist politician here, and perhaps why she's gone.
Canada turned racist because their newcomers were subcontinental...If Canada had opened their borders to Mexico and Vietnam instead of India, Trudeau would still have a job.
Canada already had a bunch of "subcontinentals". Sure, the proportion got worse but terms like "Bramladesh" predated the recent wave of temporary foreign workers. There is a general sense that immigrants have gotten worse, but this is true within the same group.
Canada's biggest problem in terms of generating populist backlash is that it has the worst housing crisis in the G7 and everyone wants to/has to live in the same few places. You can't drop those amounts of people into such a market without massive backlash.
People hated it when it was the Chinese middle and upper classes competing with them for housing and their hate grew proportionally the more people they had to compete with. They'd hate Mexicans too.
That's probably why the preference cascade has been so total: talk about culture and you get suppressed as a racist. Housing? Everyone gets it. No amount of gaslighting or talking will change reality.
I really don't like how commentators act like this was a choice when there was no political reality where he could conceivably not run for reelection. The only way this could conceivably make sense is if there was some obvious candidate who wouldn't draw any opposition and who would be running as a continuation of the present administration. In other words, they would have had to name Kamala Harris as heir apparent and hope nobody credible wanted to challenge her. They weren't going to get that. The administration's shortcomings were manifest enough and Kamala's popularity weak enough that at least one squeaky wheel would emerge who would seriously threaten to derail the whole thing. At that point you're just guaranteeing a repeat of 2016 or any incumbent who faced a serious primary challenge.
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.
A Biden candidacy wasn't ideal, but he had already beaten Trump once and there weren't any candidates who could step in and make an obvious improvement. If Biden has a normal, boring performance at the first debate then he doesn't drop out and, who knows, maybe he wins.
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.
Which is where this is going to end up, sooner or later. People fed up with being victimized will take it upon themselves to administer justice, and no matter what the laws actually say, people will be armed.
People have been prosecuted for defending themselves in a tense situation in a non-premeditated way. If you're caught being in an armed vigilante gang in places like NY...
Normal, prosocial people have shit to lose. By definition, they're much easier to cow than nihilistic criminal sociopaths and high impulsivity druggies and morons.
Right above it the report gives examples of staged or PR photos as a separate, but also bad, categories. If that's what they meant it was already covered.
Also,in my experience with Canadian ads, mixed race couples (especially with black people, who should be of much less relevance here) are very over-represented. I don't really see how it can be a coincidence at this point and not a result of the exact sentiment I'm seeing here, even if it isn't as badly or explicitly put. I think they just said the quiet part out loud this time.
Tanista
2yr ago
At this point I take claims about danger to be implicit calls to cancellation.
Nothing in the current kerfuffle contradicts this model, so I'm not updating on this.
I can throw in another data point.
Which is that the...flirting with antisemitism and antisemitic figures that is well-known in the rap world and, arguably, beyond just that part of African-American culture.
Ice Cube used to hang out with antisemitic Nation of Islam types. Nick Cannon had a kerfuffle not too long ago where -notably- his anti-white racism was given a pass but he got in trouble for his statements about Jews*. IIRC black Women's March leaders had trouble with Jewish women and supported Farrakhan of the NOI. Other prominent figures like Kendrick also had links to black Hebrew Israelites in their music despite Hebrew Israelites being antisemitic appropriators.
Kanye himself has associated himself with Farrakhan, who pops up throughout hip hop and these stories like a bad penny.. Seriously, he seems to have links to everyone and gets defended by huge rappers more than any comparable white figure.
So we probably still should err a bit on the side of "Kanye is kind of unstable and has a track record of stirring shit up so who knows?" but I'm also more inclined to believe that Kanye actually believes this shit and is also unstable and surrounded by enough sycophants to not understand that this is the one rail you don't touch.
* A lot of these situations seem to be shocking only insofar as liberal Jews expect to not be treated like other white people in anti-white rhetoric. Another reason to not believe that it's just impossible for Kanye to believe: they already believe it about most other white folk, why not Jews?
Tanista
2yr ago
A second article I saw on the same topic has another "what movie are you watching?" sort of thing
These staff, write Low, “came to be so disillusioned that they began to suspect that even her most heartfelt pleas for help were part of a deliberate strategy that had one end in sight: her departure from the royal family. They believe she wanted to be able to say ‘Look how they failed to support me.’”
Cohen particularly said it was vital that staff recorded the “duty of care” they had offered Meghan. When the duchess reported her concerns to HR, the staff were clueless as to why—HR was for staff matters, not members of the family. Meghan going to HR was seen as her “laying a trail of evidence.”
Once again: reasonable behavior from an American girlboss who thinks this is how you resolve issues in the workplace? Or deliberate, malicious planning from an abusive and savvy operator?
This is particularly striking when we consider the dog that didn't bark when it comes to BLM riots and dishonest news coverage with the opposite valence. At this point, it's pretty hard to not get the message with regard to which way the hammer of "justice" will swing.
The issue is not dishonest coverage - nobody can sue due to the media "defaming" them by being too favorable to the cause of BLM or claiming protests were "mostly peaceful"
In a more similar case - i.e. the Covington Kid- iirc the media was sued and did settle.
As cynical as it sounds, I'm beginning to hear the term "algorithmic bias" as nothing more than a form of projection - algorithm systems frequently detect something real about the world, people with racially motivated politics don't like that outcome, and they seek to shift the algorithm towards a bias in favor of their preferred group.
I suppose "always was" is a glib response so I'll say:
This tendency is widespread and isn't even specific to algorithms: leftists always first insist that society did a wrong via its social engineering to then demand social engineering to ostensibly "correct" this.
You see this all the time with nebulous complaints about how "the media" brainwashed people into not liking everything from fat people to Africa to the WNBA and therefore have a responsibility to fix it despite very little evidence being adduced for this (and people ignoring more obvious explanations for why these things are low status)
It's just part of a fundamental, distorted Rousseauianism that has swallowed the Left: any inconvenient situation must be blamed on some sort of malignant social programming and, not just that, on the usual villains: white supremacy, Western sexism,etc. (as if minorities can't "program" themselves with awful beliefs).
Plenty of Americans describe themselves as "Irish" or "German" or whatever without trying to imply they are less American.
It should go without saying but: She didn't call herself Somali. She gave a speech advocating for Somali interests and called herself Somali.
Fair to say that's a different thing from half-Indian Jay highlighting his heritage at the icebreaker.
despite obviously having a female lead.
Nobody has a problem with "a female lead". Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley were anchoring movies before I was born. Nobody had a problem with Black Widow. Nobody was annoyed by the original Charlie's Angels movies, even if they hated the recent woke abomination
I would say the problem of "wokeness" is beyond that now. Things like Rachel Zegler's comments on Snow White or the replacing of the dwarves had nothing to do with the mere presence of women in a fairy tale about a woman. It often just feels hostile to the existing IPs, general beloved tropes and stories and even the legacy audience (which matters since they drive hype)
That sort of wokeness applies in two ways here: Brie Larson is seen in a similar light as Zegler by the sorts of males who love this shit and (more importantly) the original movie was "woke" in the sense that Larson's character was so bland (most of her struggle being essentially against social forces telling her she's not good, fitting wokeness) that there's nothing to be loyal to. Middle class people will go watch that movie when they're told it's The First , and it's right before Endgame. But they don't love the character the way people love Stark or even Black Widow and so they have no reason to stick with her when the MCU's brand is collapsing.
Besides that, the problems are:
- This "phase" is dead so there's nothing to be excited for. Between Ant-Man fumbling Kang and Johnathan Majors allegedly beating women right around the time two movies of him being an intimidating boxer were in theaters it's clearly going to have to be rejiggered. So what's there to be excited about?
- Too much Disney+ material fatigues people.
- Audiences know they can get mediocre Marvel movies on Disney+ eventually, especially since they're no longer event movies due to the first two points.
- Feige clearly seems stretched thin by all that extra material he needs to produce, and Marvel's ad hoc style (decide after we film) apparently doesn't work if someone doesn't have their hands around everything.
Has Christianity (or any religion, for that matter) ever prevented serial monogamy or cheating? Or guaranteed a fulfilling marriage?
Why would the standard be a guarantee? What other social institution is held to this standard?
Does feminism guarantee a fulfilling life for women?
Does welfare guarantee a better life?
Do traffic lights guarantee no car accidents?
Do police guarantee an absence of crime?
Tanista
2yr ago
Maybe, but it seems to me like this is an entirely predictable result.
If you've been online for a while you've probably seen this story before.
I remember the split of Atheism+ - basically atheism + an even more strident version of the progressive politics that most liberal atheists already shared - from the general New Atheist/Skeptic camps after Elevatorgate and how its forums spiraled so fast into policing every single element of speech and turning into a circular firing squad.
If anything the more shocking thing is how this mindset - which was mocked as fringe at the time- slowly became so pervasive on the Left, even amongst the alleged grownup orgs and people.
Using your own examples: in 2020 it would have just been HBD. Now it's "HBD...and a global pandemic". Am I supposed to be relieved that they can still be rational about stellar mechanics and calculus but not an actual global health emergency? If I had told you ahead of time that we can't trust the experts on an upcoming pandemic, would you see me as going too far?
And I bet, a decade ago, there would be no controversy over the sex binary. Now I'm seeing publications like SciAm flirt with nonsense on this topic.
Who said this is a fixed situation? Polarization is driving this behavior and polarization begets polarization. If you see that as the underlying issue there's little to be sanguine about.
Also, what about the second-order consequences of irrationality? Let's grant HBD is true for the sake of argument. If you cannot be rational about this it'll cascade into everything: your views on schooling, diversity, the causes of poverty, how to handle the Third World, how to handle crime, interpreting history, immigration...All of these are then suspect.
I don't think this is hypothetical, I think a lot of the derangement and ludicrous (like, actually dangerous to lives and entire localities) policy and absurd expert advice we're seeing across a huge number of fronts is due to exactly this sort of cascade of irrationality.
I'm not smart enough to tell when something is just a harmless little carveout from rationality. I'm not smart enough to know some of the consequences of these beliefs in the moment (many of the current irrationalities du jour like gender ideology were uncritically supported by my past self). I imagine many people aren't. Which is probably what alarms them when they can tell someone with authority is being irrational (especially in a partisan way). What about when they can't tell?
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