Tanista
1yr ago
"Men" and "white people" are not cabals. They are not coordinated, possibly clandestine (relatively) small groups with a shared goal. They're just...populations.
When progressives talk about, for example, "white flight" they do not generally frame it as behavior driven by some small set of elites. It's driven by a mix of inherited inequities and certain biases and attitudes towards black people across the white population as a whole. That is what they blame.
Otherwise the career of someone like Robin DiAngelo makes no sense and is in fact, an act of sadism. They target normal people for retraining on the grounds that normal people - who know nothing about any coordinated racist plan - and their biases matter.
Tanista
1yr ago
Silly poster, he should have known that the only acceptable way to speak of shadowy cabals is to give them a name like "the patriarchy" or "systemic racism"
Leftists will immediately say that they don't think of those as cabals.
They claim a set of structures and incentives that cause people to act in certain ways. Which structures? Which incentives? Well, varies depending on the phenomenon. Or maybe all of them
They're closer to constructs like aether trying to fill in a hole in a mechanical understanding of the world than claims about Jews or elites in a smoky room.
Tanista
1yr ago
On the other hand, if they want to keep appealing to their white nationalist faction while still appearing respectable, they're going to have to come up with some new justification for being opposed to immigration other than racial animus or the still-unacceptable euphemism of "cultural homogeneity"
How much of the GOP is actually white nationalist and how much of it is just illegal immigration radicalizing people? A lot of people didn't accept Roe or max abortion rights. Now that they get to vote on it again they almost certainly won't vote for the max pro-life position. But it's hard to tell how it'll shake out when Roe is a unifying enemy.
Status and deniability matter. It theoretically makes no difference but "supermodel" reads differently than "Onlyfans model".
Did Miranda Kerr get into something tawdry with a fat Malaysian scammer for what could only be the financial benefits? Maybe. But it's not on tape, she denies it and the guy was apparently a weird introvert who apparently really did do things like pay for women to flaunt and then wouldn't even talk to them. Harry...I think is legitimately dumb enough to not believe anything but video until it was too late.
I think a man like Kerr's is not in this woman's future but she probably will get married to a fairly normal guy (assuming she has some creepsense and filters out people who like this stuff). She made it as hard as possible for that guy though.
I can understand people having a brief dalliance with extreme behavior and learning a sharp lesson. But...when you get to the point where you're competing with Aella in how terms of how many people came in the fluffer you must have had multiple hints that you aren't built like that?
And if you want to do the crying wojak thing instead of pulling back I have little sympathy.
Do religious people actually genuinely believe that those who willingly perform such stunts are capable of having all their sins washed away?
My reading of my society's trad Muslim faith* is that we formally leave room for the notion that this person is redeemable. Allah only knows who's in heaven and all.
But the sort of credulity shown by online simps who immediately welcome any convert who even touches Christianity would not be acceptable. No one sane would assume that they could just reach her with one verse, nor trust her if she just said she converted. She would simply have to suffer a bit of a social death. Being visibly observant (easier to tell than with other faiths) while suffering social opprobrium seems like a minimal requirement to signal true commitment.
* I guess we can say "conservative". I don't want to imagine the really trad sharia punishment.
Edited for meme accuracy.
Tanista
1yr ago
That seems to be the general right wing take, that he's singing for his pardon.
Adams had some critiques of the Democratic establishment on migration before but he seems utterly unburdened by any sense of loyalty since the election.
Interesting to see.
Tanista
1yr ago
they don’t have the wonderful american civic tradition
But when they do have this tradition, they can be blamed because their tradition is more aggressive and assimilationist than the US, so maybe that's causing the backlash
Martin is a Romantic and places a primal role on Romantic love (which involves sex) as a human motivation. This does not just mean sex but also protecting your family and community of love (which all too abstract in Tolkien’s Gondor, although not as much in the shire).
This comes out a lot in his book Dying of the Light, where both romantic and fraternal love come up against a very rigid and misogynistic honor culture.
Characters drive themselves to ruin because love demands things of them that their social rules simply cannot accommodate.
It's been a while since I read it but seeing a main character risk death because he cannot bring himself to accept the socially mandated restitution for an injury done to his lover because it would enshrine her lower status, because it would limit the outrage to a mere insult to his own honor, makes it hard to conclude that all Martin cares about is sex.
Tanista
1yr ago
and that blasphemy not only denies the three most powerful goddesses in the Western pantheon at the same time (safety, equality, and consent)
Its not the blasphemy that was the problem. It was the inadvertent support for the blood libel. Milo was the victim. Ordinarily you get some leeway. No perfect victims and all that. If anything could be excused as rationalization...
Homosexuality and pederasty is something LGBT activists fought very hard to decouple in the public mind.
Having a gay guy not only say it happens but talking about it in plural, as a good (ish) thing?
Everyone said fuck that. The gays said a hearty fuck that. Conservatives that were opening up to a flamboyant provocateur immediately turned around upon seeing him validate the worst stereotypes. I'm sure gay conservatives were doubly incensed.
Thanks. That range seems high, higher than I assumed, but not high enough for many of the theories about the problems caused by their absence (e.g. monasteries as release valve/containment zone for autists and other types)
Tanista
1yr ago
lots of young fertile people entered monasteries and convents
How many is "lots" here? We talk about this every so often here and I've never gotten a good idea.
Tanista
1yr ago
All media becomes incestuous when it becomes self obsessed
That might explain the weird vibes on the Wicked press tour...
Milo Yiannopoulos had a seemingly meteoric rise and fall in a fairly short period, he's probably the most obvious of the grifters.
The funny thing is: Milo seems to have been destroyed the one time he seemed to be totally sincere.
There was no reason for a gay guy trying to redpill millennials and conservatives to talk positively about pederasty. No reason to do it more than once. He dropped the glib act for a few minutes and picked about the worst thing to be honest about/rationalize.
Illegal immigration is not a choice. It's imposed by law-breakers and political enemies via ad hoc processes, based on their own desires.
Like, if you really cared about "white genocide" or whatever, that alone makes a Canada-style migration system the lesser of two evils
Tanista
1yr ago
It's not a Destiny scandal because Destiny's whole brand is being a degenerate (in the eyes of anyone who would care about Nick Fuentes' good name).
Like, the guy has already been memed for being a literal cuck and his audience doesn't give a damn. There's no juice in that orange anymore.
The question is how many months. Remember, we're not talking about whether or not Biden should have dropped out earlier, but whether he should have run in the first place. He announced he was seeking a second term on April 25, at which point there were only two groups of people arguing that any kind of age or cognitive issues should keep him from running. The first was Republicans, but they had been arguing that Biden had dementia since at least 2019 and thus had no credibility on the issue. The second was people like Dean Phillips and James Carville, along with a bunch of rank and file Democrats, but their arguments were just that he was too old generally and not that he was experiencing any kind of specific decline.
So the Republicans said he'd drop out (which was a "conspiracy theory") then he did but they just got lucky? Okay. Maybe. Maybe they simply have a clearer view into their opponents, unclouded by sympathy, but it's possible.
As for Philips and Carville...even if they said it that way, so what? Ezra Klein, in his little push for Biden to drop out, also said he thought Biden could do the job but couldn't campaign for the job/convince people. This seems like bullshit to me. Campaigning for a second term while juggling other balls has always been the job. People gave Obama a bit of a pass on the first debate due to the "rigors of the Presidency", but after he proved he could win on the next one.
Why frame it this way? Because, if Biden is incompetent-incompetent, the Democrats are guilty of malpractice beyond the electoral kind and that's a discussion no Democrat wants to have because it indicts some of their fellows, people they're on a first name basis with. Questions would need to be asked about how the administration runs. Better to - absurdly - pretend that Biden's condition is a merely electorally damaging one.
Long story short: I think it's absurd to believe that Dean Philips burned his rep taking the extraordinary step of primarying his President with just a generalized fear of age. It's that he's of a particular age and is showing decline enough that the voters are noticing.
I don't know what the big deal is about this.
Because it was a bad choice. Grownup, remember?
Biden trapped himself looking for a unicorn: a connected, nationally palatable black female because he kept stacking identity classes of who he would pander to. First it was a woman, then it was a black woman. He didn't need to lock in a woman, or then insist on a black woman afterwards.
You can pick a base-pleaser. The problem here is that it's a) unclear that Kamala was even a base pleaser. It may be what Jim Clyburn wanted but how much did it shape the general? And b) if you're old you should maybe factor in that this person may have to take your seat.
For all the talk I've heard about about having some kind of contested primary, I don't see any scenario in which it wouldn't have made the situation worse. Suppose Biden drops out immediately after that debate; what then? The convention is in less than two months and the election in just over four.
I don't think it should have come to that. He should have never run for a second term, and he should have announced that earlier. It should never have come to the debate.
Even dropping out on the day he announced (and he should have dropped out earlier) would have been better in terms of letting people dip their toe into a primary.
Remember: I think Biden was clearly declining before he admitted it/the debate utterly discredited any argument against it. He would have had good days and bad days. But he would have seen it creeping up on him. The principled thing to do would have been to drop out before.
Even if they were to dispense with actual elections and simply have a contested primary where candidates would lobby delegates, I doubt the party's best and brightest would be the ones signing up. Do you really think that an up and comer like Josh Sapiro or Gretchen Whitmer is going to waste political capital to take over the presidential bid of an unpopular incumbent?
The incumbency damage cannot be known given that they actually would be a fresh candidate, unlike Kamala. I'm inclined to think a lot more Democrats and Democrat-leaners give them some slack compared to Kamala.
They would also have an independent staff - which Kamala didn't seem to have - which would allow them more leeway in shaping their own image.
I'm picturing a longer time period than you since Biden, in my view, should have dropped out earlier. Even in the shorter view, there is an argument for putting candidates under pressure. Bernie Sanders wasn't seen as any sort of national politician before he resonated with voters. Kamala likely would have been filtered out.
Trump has high unfavorables. It's not outside of the realm of possibility that even on a narrow window ambitious Democrats get involved. It's much more likely if Biden drops out early: as much as he hates the guy, he could coordinate with party grandees like Obama to feel things out.
In many ways the last minute scramble to see someone willing to burn their turn is just another result of Biden's malpractice. Imagine if he came out early and stated he wasn't running. Imagine if he put out signals even before that. You think no one would bite? Everyone was run off because 2028 was there anyway and no one wanted the perception of having kneecapped a stubborn President. He pulls out early and it's a different ball game.
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.
Tanista
1yr ago
I would be surprised if anyone cynical enough to regularly post here will be surprised by the pardon
Tanista
1yr ago
So it's not so much that there isn't a solution and more that some people ruined the perfectly fine solution and are now pretending that this is an intractable problem?
Lacks the same rhetorical force I fear.
Trans women are already, typically, fairly loud and visible influences.
Why? There are no loud, visible anti-wokes? Why don't they win, if a minority can seize all the spoils? Surely the presumption should be on their side since until comparatively recently unwoke things like "objectification" of female characters and jokes that punched down were common.
The "trans priestly caste" explanation simply doesn't work because someone is going to say "no". Someone is going to find trans people changing their plans offputting (or the trans themselves tbh -- they were a punchline in living memory). Why is it that small percentages of people are able to swing entire organizations across the entire industry? No one wants to pick up the $20 bill?
And what about industries that don't attract people with programmer socks? Why did they go woke?
they'll help drive direction in a game studio's writing
I'm actually not sold that random devs, even good ones, can do this. There's plenty of work that doesn't involve the story.
especially if the corporate overlords are looking closely at leadership position diversity.
And there we go.
There's always some other element that explains the "and then the entire organization bent the knee". Seems to me that, as with woke more generally, whatever that is explains why the vidya game industry is where it is more than the trans priestly caste.
As a result of this rotten bargain, the men who choose this field will tend to be young, not have families, and be fixated on video games. Frankly, this is going to select for autists. To the extent that autism and MtF trans are correlated, I would expect that video game developers are trans at a rate at least far above the norm. This might explain a lot of the soy-type politics espoused by major game studios...
Does this explanation make sense?
Not really. It runs into similar problems as most attempts to explain wokeness, especially the first one:
- "Overrepresented" is not enough. The claim is that woke politics is overwhelmingly dominant to the point where there're no antiwoke studios. Trans devs would have to be overwhelmingly dominant to match that claim or something else is going on to give even an overrepresented minority this outsized say.
- The idea that young gamers who want to be devs will naturally be woke doesn't pass muster to me. Gamers tend(ed?) to be irreverent shitbags and were a target of woke whining from feminists for a reason. Even if they were woke today, they'd eventually find some way to piss off the keepers of the revolution because the ideology doesn't stand still (the same way progressive, "science, bitch!" atheists pissed off their feminist fellows). They'd end up on the same trajectory as Elon Musk basically. There have to be some disagreeable autists that go the other way.
Something else has to be happening.
Can't overestimate the body blow of losing Latinos to a guy they've been trying to protect Latinos from since he came off the
elevatorescalator. Total narrative collapse.Only thing worse would be losing black people. That'd be existential.
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