We'll see what happens after people sleep on it. There've been rumblings before and, over time, people accepted the fait accompli. Happened with Trump too after the Access Hollywood tape and other issues.
Tanista
1yr ago
He missed multiple chances to really hammer Biden on specific lies (e.g. he could have used Snopes' debunking of the "very fine people" thing better here - just ask people to Google it!).
He's a bit lost in space too, he just has a functioning tether.
Tanista
1yr ago
My bet is that Biden and team knew it would be bad and wanted the debates to be lost in memory by the time the election rolled around.
Tanista
1yr ago
You're right. It's incoherent.
But the very fact you cite - that so much ground has been ceded without working out the central issue - is what implies that it isn't pointless.
Once half a generation has been indoctrinated and enough people have essentially circumcised themselves or their children and must stick with the tribe or be stuck in some liminal zone cursing their illness or credulity it becomes harder to roll back.
If society is giving concessions now to this stuff, it won't be less likely to do so when people finally throw up their hands and admit theres no there there. Or rather, it'll never get to that point.
They're running out the clock. Every moment where some unflattering thing can be hidden is another moment to lock in gains.
I go back and forth on how much of it was caused by Elon acquiring Twitter, but that was certainly the signal of some kind of turning point.
As someone raised on the Left it's just hard to believe that history turns on whether some rich asshole makes the wrong tweet and then doubles down.
And yet...
It is now 'safe' to resist the Cathedral, and its becoming fun to do so as well.
Before Elon there was an attempt at mocking the Ts on TikTok around the hashtag "SuperStraight". It died when, you guessed it, TikTok just banned it.
It's hard to know. On the surface it looks like you just can't keep the discontent down forever. It clearly flared up even in the real world over big enough issues without Elon.
But what I think control of all of the media outlets does is allow you to stall until it's entrenched as a fait accompli. How many people went along with pronouns just to not get banned, for example? Nobody wants to admit they're a coward, so then it just becomes "oh, I just want to be polite". And now the rules of etiquette have changed.
I remember us having discussions about this on a sub I modded. We decided to let people do as they willed because it was relatively new to us. But if the admins had beat on us, we'd have folded and beat on the users and they'd have likely folded too. This happened later to supposedly skeptical subs like /r/stupidpol so all of their criticisms are constrained.
I've seen this happen with many inconvenient claims. Sometimes you just get silenced outright, post removed with no reason. Sometimes you get banned for "relevance" or not dotting some i (allegedly). Sometimes you get banned not because of your point (allegedly) but because of how you put it out there. Sometimes, on reddit, mods let you have your post and then post a stickied counter or warning, chilling the whole thing. Your enemies face no such impediments. By the time you figure out enough message discipline to get the point across you at best make a neutered argument if not an outdated one. Or you simply get banned for "inciting harassment" before then.
It's hard to build up a head of steam, a movement of normies willing to side with you if you have to be worrying about all of this. And the message to any normie is "this is not a big deal" or, even worse, "this is low status".
Tanista
1yr ago
so by this reasoning we should be in the middle of a massive backlash among the youth against any sort of anti-racism movements
Black Trumpists/Republicans seem to skew younger but not enough resolution to say it's "the yutes" specifically.
Tanista
1yr ago
Just started A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity by Michael A. Cook. Liked his Ancient Religions, Modern Politics (an attempt to compare Islam and its impact on politics to other Third World religions) so figured I'd give it a spin. At least, the sections about the emergence of Islam. I care much less about the six hundred pages after that.
Still in the early pre-Islamic period, and nothing is much of a surprise/deviation from the general story of the period as I know it. Interested to see how revisionist he gets, given his association with Crone and that whole school.
Tanista
1yr ago
It was incredibly noticeable in Season 3. I think we've just acclimated since we've had the same face for two years now.
In another season people will also stop asking if Mother's Milk has been recast and I'll stop doing a double take when I see him.
Tanista
1yr ago
And there as well he had a massive problem with dragging things out by ending every season by putting everyone back to starting positions.
Did he? I think SPN had its problems - the plot was the same loop over and over: find Biblical Macguffin in pieces across the season, build magical thing, vanquish enemy - and by the end of his run the show was really showing its budgetary constraints (the show simply couldn't do the apocalyptic premise justice, which is why the characters went around collecting items like a Ubisoft game) but I think Kripke's actual time as showrunner (S1-S5) actually did have a plot that built to a conclusive end instead of cyclical resets.
He left after that and basically every single plotline from those early days was recycled over and over.
Starlight is supposedly one of the more effective do-gooders but she can't even make a dent in Homelander's popularity, can't do any material damage to Vought, and can't even shift political outcomes in her side's favor.
Not just that. Starlight thinks she's in a war for America's soul, but is also so concerned about her purity that she refuses to go out and motivate people because she hates the Starlight brand....while also using it for her bullshit ramshackle charity org? It's past incompetence to even consider this.
As someone who grew up watching Supernatural, Kripke going "woke" seemed like a blackpill but are we sure this whole thing isn't some not-so-veiled critique of left-wing activism?
Tanista
1yr ago
Really? I've heard the exact opposite, that Wildbow went out of his way to basically piss off the surprisingly large Worm fan community in terms of how he handled common topics of discussion like Panacea and Gray Boy loops (some accuse him of actively retconning characterization in the case of the former).
I've never cared enough to read enough Ward to find out, personally.
Tanista
1yr ago
Anyone watching the new season of The Boys. Cause it feels...worse?
Like, the show was never really subtle. But it seems over the top now. I don't care about things like the Frenchie subplots already. But the show doesn't even seem to be able to keep a coherent continuity.
- Victoria Ocasio-Cortez is supposed to be deadset against Vought and Homelander. How can she be seen having even vaguely positive conversations with Homelander after what happened last season? Why is she at any Vought event at all?
- For that matter, how does she justify her opposition to muzzling supes giving her political positions? Are we just going to pretend they don't exist?
- "Schools that teach Critical Supe Theory"? When was this supposed to happen? The theme of the show has been Vought being in control of the super narrative for decades up until recently. Also: "Critical Supe Theory"? Fuck off.
- What's with this continuity breaking idea that all heroics are fake (raised by A-Train's brother)? Manipulated, yes. Used for Vought's gain? Sure. Not worth the cost in collateral? Probably not. But almost every supe thing we've seen mentioned involves choreography or lying.
However, I 100% agree that Marvel movies are stupidly written and don't make sense. The superheroes are weak in relative terms. A couple of Stryker brigades could demolish Thanos's army. Iron Man is worth maybe five to ten jet fighters. None of them could handle tactical nukes. All superhero movies seem to adore Bronze age tactics: mass charges and 1v1 duels.
The superheroes are weak, which is actually a double penalty because the armies/countries have to be weak for them to matter. So Asgard's army has to be useless outside of flashbacks, and let's not even get started on any battle in Wakanda. And the bad guys basically have to be incompetent hordes literal children can fight.
Say what you want about Snyder but you actually get why people with modern armies would actually keep his superheroes around.
But evidently most people don't care about this. So maybe the writers simply are illiterate when it comes to politics and geopolitics, but more likely seems to be that they aren't incentivized to try very hard given the paying audience doesn't appear to mind. The third, slightly tin-foil-hat possibility is that it's a very intentional propaganda--to all the teenagers watching superhero movies, it's better if 117 countries vote for a UN panel to be in charge of real power.
Yes, the audience doesn't care because the audience is no longer just American teenagers, it's people across the world .
There's a reason most of these movies don't even have a pretense of real politics like Civil War . Everyone can sympathize with people fighting nondescript aliens or scifi Nazis. Arabs, Germans, Chinese people all get it with minimal fuss.
Civil War has to be more political, but I hardly doubt it'd play well across the world to have the mostly American protagonists laugh off the UN like they're Dick Cheney. Marvel wants their money too and some people still feel sore about that sort of thing. Might as well let them feel like they participated via the UN. Let's not even get into "complex issues". Just having gay people in Eternals caused a minor controversy.
but then you can't also ask me to emotionally buy into the idea that in such a world, I should genuinely fear the secretive Nazi organizations and ultracorrupt politicians and amoral killer CEOs. I mean, is this a utopia or not?!
There's actually a reading that Nazis are why the world is so centralized, and not for any good reason. In Avengers the "World Council" could somehow order a nuclear strike on New York (they warned you early about the bad geopolitics). In Winter Soldier we found out that the Nazis/Hydra have been actively making the world more chaotic to centralize power in a few powerful organizations like SHIELD they could use to take over the world. In Agents of SHIELD the very person who ordered SHIELD to perform the nuclear strike is...a member of Hydra.
Tanista
1yr ago
Assimilating elites and the masses are different things and changes in politics and technology matter here.
I don't think most Britons are worried about Asians who went to Harrow, which I suppose would be the equivalent to Greek and Gallic nobles fully buying into Rome.
I thought you were gonna go with the prospect of dealing with the French lol. Or more liberal states being added.
A ton of the migrants came in the recent COVID influx and don't have citizenship and can likely be deported or have visas and PR cancelled before unification.
What gives, I believe, is twofold. First, Fryer and Macdonald are obviously correct: what do you expect to happen when you implement the infernal woke idea of defunding and demoralizing the police -- and who do you expect it to happen to? Second, I submit that their silence on this issue demonstrates that woke progressives do not actually care about the health and safety of black people -- any more than Lenin cared about the health and safety of Russian proletariat. What they care about is the power-gathering narrative that white supremacy is the root of all evil. Black-on-black crime doesn't do much to advance that narrative, and so it is not of much interest to them, no matter how many black lives it takes, or how rapidly the problem grows.
Two thoughts/questions:
First, how much of this is just venality at play? You're not going to disarm the US population by taking action on a municipal level in blue states. However, you can break apart an institution and redistribute the goods it claims for itself. Taking money from cops - who the progressive laptop class have reasons to disdain, especially in an environment where their value is taken for granted - and giving it to some "security ambassador" scheme. Who gets the money? Not some entrenched police union, who are probably very good at extracting their toll at this point, but someone of your own choosing. Anything you save is a bonus. This is, if I recall correctly, explicitly the point of #Defund, just put in less flattering terms: give it to the social workers (how do they vote?).
Also, how many woke people are just utterly detached from the lives of black people who need police? I certainly was/am. Just as many people are baffled by the white working class (and their abandonment of Democrats) and mainly interact with it through articles and JD Vance books, many see blacks through a lens of ideology and/or allow some black intellectual to tell them how it is. They simply have no skin in the game and, in their spaces, it's dangerous to go the wrong way on this.
You mentioned Roland Fryer. Well, it's been noted many times that Roland Fryer actually grew up in a situation related to his research, which was one motivation for doing and publishing it despite being warned it would hurt him professionally. And who was it that allegedly tried to take him down? Claudine Gay, a child of well-off Haitian migrants who jumped straight into the US black intellectual elite. The exact sort of person for whom "black on black crime" is an embarrassing little inconvenience for her position and goals that would be best ignored. Or, allegedly, put aside to focus on the real roots of Black problems: white supremacy.
And what maybe considered the most important part by people here is the law enforcement that while far from perfect for example both in Poland and in Russia(still much worse in the latter) does work at keeping streets safe, public transit clean and gangs non-existent(apart from the ones that get in with the government but that's a different story). I think democratic politicians can achieve this kind of integration and they have reason to do it, YIMBY i.e. urbanist faction becomes more powerful by the day in the local elections
Of course Democrats could do this. But they won't. In Poland and Russia, if some minorities are caught up more in these sorts of QOL policing policies, c'est la vie.
The entire reason Democrats have experimented with ruinous crime "reform" that has ruined some cities (against the very self-interest you appeal to) is that they consider this fundamentally delegitimizing. Their natural response to seeing some people fall below standards is to try to destroy the standard
So, yes. The urbanists could have their good transit and clean and safe downtowns and it could be a mocha paradise where all of the prosocial people of all races gather, but this would require simply slicing off the bits of each demographic that can't hack it. And they have gone down a radicalization rabbit hole that renders them ideologically (and maybe even legally) incapable of doing it when it appears those slices won' be equal. The people admiring Netherlands' bikes and trains and Tokyo's policies are the same sorts of people that cannot abide what that would cost, even if we posit that it'd only have to be short term
So segregation will persist, as people with wherewithal flee this chaos.
Tanista
1yr ago
Yes, despite deep skepticism of the trans worldview I've always modeled it as more confused than evil or anything.
I think, for many people, once you reach a certain threshold of harm to others, it doesn't really matter that much. Especially if you're supposed to be held to a higher standard.
I don't believe that people's beliefs are not within their control. Looking at the response to the Cass Report, it seems there are a lot of people who have chosen to inure themselves against the opposing viewpoint almost before it even dropped (in some cases literally immediately, to the point where they linked to the wrong document).
Professionals and activists are responsible for the ideological castles they build in their head. A person who was willfully ignorant about say...prescribing opiates is not treated kindly by most. Others have recognized and pulled themselves out of these echo chambers.
I can give a random confused mother a pass for picking any particular intervention that the alleged truth-seeking organizations drive towards. Those same organizations must surely be treated differently, or why do they have any authority or prestige?
Tanista
1yr ago
On the other level, does this take away some steam from Republicans seeking re-election?
Anyone who is following along knows that Biden caused a lot of these problems and tried to mislead people about his ability to affect the outcome until it was clear it'd cost him.
Anyone who isn't probably still knows about the increase in migrants and, if they're inclined in an anti-asylum direction, Trump will always be more credible.
Once upon a time, I'm sure faraway and more isolationist America seemed vastly less threatening to Europeans than the near enemies. In fact, this is exactly what American hegemony in Europe still depends on.
Once upon a time, America had never jumped into the sorts of ill-fated intervention to reshape the Middle East one might expect of other powers.
Once upon a time, Japan was isolationist.
I don't understand why people act like China's historical inability to harm Europe or best it at the colonial game is some immutable part of its character.
Michael Bispings a one and done thing.
Honestly, that comparison is still flattering to Poirier. Rockhold had a deadly top game but he was never one to shoot much. He trained with DC and Khabib but he never really a wrestler of that sort. IIRC him bashing Weidman's face in happened after many striking exchanges and driving Weidman into a desperation move he took advantage of. In other cases, it's reversals and sprawling.
So Bisping's "puncher's chance" was much higher because it was at least going to be standup fight for a bit.
One of my favorite things about LW: it's so stacked that I don't really mind who wins. It will probably suck for Poirier but so be it.
EDIT: That went far longer and a better defensive performance from Poirier than I expected tbh.
I think people like the NYT have been pretty explicit about what happened: Biden's age was a known issue to voters, the media was happy to simply...give him the benefit of the doubt in a variety of ways with the expectation that he'd clean it up at some point. Enough to get over the finish line.
He utterly failed to do that. So the issue blew up beyond anyone's control.
The media can't actually suppress something like this, it's been consistent in the polling. They can delay. They can trim. They can buy the guy time to study and perform so they don't have to deal with it (which is what happened with the State of the Union). But they can't kill the topic.
Biden shitting the bed not only made it impossible for them to do their jobs, it likely triggered a "we were all rooting for you!" frustration. They did their parts, after all.
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