Tollund_Man4
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User ID: 501
Tollund_Man4
9mo ago
Meanwhile, the west is busy deconstructing the same "racist, patriarchal, oppressive social structures" that we are bewildered that the migrants don't adopt.
This doesn't look right to me. The people deconstructing "racist, patriarchal, oppressive social structures" aren't bewildered at the fact that migrants aren't becoming devoted Christians, but the fact that they aren't becoming secular feminist progressives.
Tollund_Man4
4mo ago
Western online feminists love to loudly complain about as a nightmarish dystopia to be avoided, namely a society plagued by enormous numbers of single, sexless and, one can imagine, bitter and traumatized, violent young men
Bitter, traumatised and violent, yes they treat that as a huge problem, but single and sexless? I’m not sure feminism explicitly worries about this, single and sexless men are to be dealt with on an individual level as inconvenient complainers who are to be ignored or shamed - feminism only deals with these men insofar as their situation (whether self-inflicted or not) causes them to step out of line. I don’t think women in general have this attitude but it’s the sense I’ve gotten from any explicitly feminist space I’ve seen.
Tollund_Man4
11mo ago
I cannot believe I, an Englishman, am looking with envious eyes and a hopeful heart at Ireland.
Regarding the street fights, with the rise of Antifa it didn't take long for right wingers to get violent too. A couple of hundred members of the National Party were attacked at a hotel last year during a conference with an acquaintance of mine being one of 5 hospitalised. Since then everyone knows a confrontation between the far left and right will probably get violent so they come prepared.
Arson has been going on for much longer. I can think of quite a few incidents in relation to this issue in the past few years. If a building has been earmarked for becoming an asylum centre, simply getting rid of the building works pretty well (especially in small towns where that might be the only suitable building for miles around).
A few examples: Kildare, 3 times in Donegal, Leitrim, Dublin.
Although I do remember it being widely unpopular?
Yes, 70% of people responded negatively in a public consultation on the law. When questioned, our Taoiseach (prime minister) said that the public consultation was likely swayed by organised groups of dissenters and dismissed it as unrepresentative, when asked why they did the public consultation in the first place if it was so flawed he answered "because this is a democracy" and that public consultations aren't the way things are decided.
Perhaps a bit of a divergent, but the entire dilemma has led me to a larger question of how much of life success (in dating, in work, in school) amounts to hard work.
There are traps involved in the hard work ethic, you can justify a lot of pain for very little gain. I'm not bitter about it because I did learn some useful skills and it was good for my character, but a friend of mine who milked the welfare system for years while picking up multiple marketable skills has at last catapulted far beyond me in earning power (his work ethic was impressive in its own sense of course). It really does seem like 'learn a marketable skill by whatever means' is the path to success, hard work doesn't really pay off in shitty jobs where there are very few rungs on the ladder for a hard worker to climb (basically worker < supervisor <<< owner).
Dating on the other hand, I think the big trap lies in overanalysis. Simply meet more women and talk to more women and.. you get it. There are terminally awkward guys who hit a wall and never seem to improve (pattern seems to be that they have an ego problem and lash out in frustration burning all their social credibility), but I've seen some really awkward guys get over this hump with persistence.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
In a severely misguided attempt since the end of WWII (and continuing until the present day!) successive governments tinkered with this system and slowly removed the things that made the system work
I want to post a rather long quote that suggests this happened earlier, going back at least as far as WW1:
Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman.
He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 percent of the national income.
The state intervened to prevent the citizen from earing adulterated food or contracting infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.
All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The mass of the people became, for the first time, active citizens. Their lives were shaped by orders from above; they were required to serve the state instead of pursuing exclusively their own affairs. Five million men entered the armed forces, many of them (though a minority) under compulsion. The Englishman’s food was limited, and its quality changed, by government order. His freedom of movement was restricted; his conditions of work prescribed. Some industries were reduced or closed, others artificially fostered. The publication of news was fettered. Street lights were dimmed. The sacred freedom of drinking was tampered with: licensed hours were cut down, and the beer watered by order. The very time on the clocks was changed. From 1916 onwards, every Englishman got up an hour earlier in summer than he would otherwise have done, thanks to an act of parliament. The state established a hold over it citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the second World war was again to increase.
- A.J.P Taylor, English History 1914-1945
I'm having trouble understanding the idea that "the onus is on the person making the positive claim to provide sufficient evidence to prove their case". It looks obvious why this is a good idea, but it seems completely open to the rhetorical trick of putting the onus on the other party to prove you wrong even if your own case is unproven (perhaps because the question is a hard one and whoever is tasked with proving anything will have a hard time).
What got me thinking about this was an internet argument on immigration and crime. Half a century ago the status quo was restricted immigration and the onus would be on the person advocating for more to prove that it was a good thing, nowadays the status quo is liberal immigration and the onus is on the person advocating restrictions to prove that it is a bad thing. No scientifically relevant change has taken place, only a change in government policy, but one side can now quote a basic principle of science to bolster their case in an argument even if they know nothing more than the other party.
The due diligence question is obviously is this actually a fundamental aspect of science as stated or is it misrepresenting a more nuanced principle?
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
The peaceful stupidity - It is said that some of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind come during times of war. Where the nation is put at risk and all resources are put into maximizing upgrades to ones technology or any capacity to beat the enemy. It was war that boosted the process of splitting the atom. It was the pressure of war that sent satellites into space. It was war that sent men to the moon long before they had any right to be there.
Yes there are some very visible technological achievements during war, but what's the counterfactual? More capital to invest in research, fewer short term economic decisions, fewer collapsed states, fewer dead scientists...
It's hard to believe that a Europe which didn't spend a decent portion of the last century blowing itself to bits isn't far ahead of where we are now. Where's our Austro-Hungarian space program?
What I found really conspicious was that in virtually all the articles there was absolutely no description of the perpetrator of the stabbing other than 'man' or at best ' older man', which was the spark that cause the protest/riot (depending on your political persuasion).
The most I saw was national broadcaster, RTé, mentioning that he was an Irish citizen who “came to this country 20 years ago”. The exception is GRIPT, a small but quickly growing media company that mentioned that he was Algerian in the headline.
I really think the Aisling Murphy case is worth looking into, the media is making the exact same mistake as before by obfuscating the nature of the attack (it will be a true repeat if they’re brave enough to scold Irish men for toxic attitudes that lead to random attacks against teachers).
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
All that excess energy needs to be directed somewhere
My impression is that it is directed towards the wealth of distractions that exist in the modern day. Video games, porn.. actually I don't need to list more, that's already enough to remain docile through your 20s.
One of the most interesting things about de Tocqueville, for instance, is that he does not mention immigrants or immigration at all in Democracy in America, written in 1830. The word immigrant or immigration does not appear even once.
That's not true (emphasis mine):
In the North, as I have already remarked, a twofold migration ensues upon the abolition of slavery, or even precedes that event when circumstances have rendered it probable: the slaves quit the country to be transported southwards; and the whites of the Northern states, as well as the immigrants from Europe, hasten to fill their place. But these two causes cannot operate in the same manner in the Southern states. On the one hand, the mass of slaves is too great to allow any expectation of their being removed from the country; and on the other hand, the Europeans and Anglo-Americans of the North are afraid to come and inhabit a country in which labour has not been reinstated in its rightful honours."
(Volume 1, Chapter XVIII)
About fifty years ago Ireland began to pour a Catholic population into the United States; on the other hand, the Catholics of America made proselytes, and at the present moment more than a million of Christians professing the truths of the Church of Rome are to be met with in the Union. The Catholics are faithful to the observances of their religion; they are fervent and zealous in the support and belief of their doctrines. Nevertheless they constitute the most republican and the most democratic class of citizens which exists in the United States; and although this fact may surprise the observer at first, the causes by which it is occasioned may easily be discovered upon reflection. I think that the Catholic religion has erroneously been looked upon as the natural enemy of democracy. Amongst the various sects of Christians, Catholicism seems to me, on the contrary, to be one of those which are most favorable to the equality of conditions. . .
(Volume 1, Chapter XVII)
These are just two instances I remembered and knew to look for, I'm sure I could find more with a proper search.
There is a sense in which this supports your point, the Anglo-Americans are distinguished from the European immigrants and a parallel can be made with the settlers.
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
I don't think it's comparable, because the British weren't signing a treaty with the IRA.
They were, Sinn Féin were a party to the treaty and it couldn't have worked without their participation. Britain signing a deal with Ireland alone wouldn't have changed anything as the Irish state didn't represent nationalists in Northern Ireland nor exert any control over the paramilitaries.
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
and today the Aryan people most closely resemble genetically Northern European peoples.
population groups with greater Indo-European ancestry trend as nations with higher technological innovation, economic status, empire-building, and global colonization, all of which follow the modus operandi of the Indo-Europeans
The Greeks and Spanish seem to have a very low amount of Indo-European ancestry according to your graph despite being some of the great civilisations of Europe, am I misreading you somewhere?
Tollund_Man4
5mo ago
except from the most conspiratorially-minded places like /pol/
/pol/ really enjoys bringing it up but it's not that obscure. Looking it up on Youtube I see a BBC documentary from 2002, an Al Jazeera documentary, a Jocko Willink Podcast discussion and some small high production value channels giving an animated breakdown.
Tollund_Man4
11mo ago
Even the language war was lost ages ago.
The language was lost even before Ireland gained independence, Irish nationalism is based more on a hope of reviving it rather than asserting it as a fact that already distinguishes us.
So we may be at the start of a new "melting pot" in Ireland, where various white ethnicities meld into one larger white identity, the way it happened in America during the early 20th century. I suspect this process has just begun and will need time to play itself out.
That may happen but the Poles especially are very patriotic and a lot of them either have plans to go back one day or have already done so as Poland catches up economically. They're also surprisingly disinterested in Irish politics, unlike white immigrants in the US who changed the political landscape the Eastern Europeans have mostly kept to themselves (not in daily life, but politically). Having the rights of citizens of an EU member state a lot of them don't even see the point in applying for citizenship.
Tollund_Man4
11mo ago
as evidenced by e.g. people in the U.K. and (especially) Ireland participating in bizarre "Black Lives Matter" protests
While I agree that 'Black Lives Matter' makes little sense in a domestic context, protesting about American racial politics something the Irish left were doing decades ago, and it's no further from home than tagging along with the 'Free Palestine' (still a staple of Irish protests), 'Free Tibet' or 'End Apartheid' movements.
What's new is that while Israel, South Africa and Tibet are clearly foreign countries, Black Lives Matter has developed a cottage industry of finding racial injustic within Ireland. Their high points have been getting statues of Egyptian princesses removed a hotel because they mistakenly thought they were slave girls (the council later returned these statues to their plinths), protesting the shooting of a knife-wielding black man by police as if it were evidence of pervasive racism (given how scarce police shootings are this might be the first black man ever shot dead by police here), and calling for an end to the 'Direct Provision' system of processing refugees as the movement's Achilles heel is there not being many black people here in the first place.
It's a strange thing to look at. All of the infrastructure for making race an issue is ready to fire, the NGOs, the university professors and the street protesters, but with Ireland's immigrant population mostly consisting of Slavs (who don't really care about Irish politics and dream of going home) and well-paid Western Europeans whose only complaints are rent and petty crime, there is a severe shortage of discontented minorities. Give it a few years I guess.
Tollund_Man4
11mo ago
Yeah I mean it's a principle of representative democracy that politicians aren't just delegates carrying out their constituents wishes, but representatives with the right to go against the crowd and hopefully be vindicated by the time of the next election.
Still, it's an honest politician that says 'I know you don't like it but here's why we must do it', it's more worrying when they deny the fact that people oppose these policies in the first place, or paint everyone who does as far right (he didn't do that here but they've been using that one more and more).
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
that recognizes the fundamental tension of politics and is maximally inclusive.
Aren't churches only ecumenical these days as a result of a fall in tensions, perhaps as a result in the fall in importance of religion in society in general? The ecumenical church of politics will happen only when something else becomes important enough to serve as the dividing line.
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
So then you just take the next logical step and demand that the Australian government disband and then... what's their next response? How are they supposed to resist that conclusion?
Disband the old racist constitution and give them a chance to write their own? Why would they ever resist!
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
Now, this will always be an estimate, but so are many taxes
That reads more like a mark against those taxes than a mark in favour of this one.
Your proposed tax is so ambitious that I think it would be fair to cite the socialist calculation problem and say that the government can't possibly know the tradeoffs involved.
Let me propose another tax: the social good tax. Where we calculate exactly how much is needed to achieve some social good, say health, and let the burden fall in such a manner that it is not completely counterproductive. Once we have achieved this we might look into expanding it to other social goods, say fertility, no more ambitious a good than health. In fact if we can achieve most social goods this way we can just do away with the market economy altogether.
If you can tax in exactly the right place, and spend in exactly the right place, why complicate things?
Tollund_Man4
1yr ago
I'd imagine the reverse would be true too. They'd be fascinated about things that seemed relatively minor in your day but which either presaged truly massive events or were just the current hot topic of the 22nd century.
"How did people at the time feel about president Biden's views on the Congo? He set things up masterfully for the 2050 pivot to Africa didn't he? Got well ahead of the poor Germans".
If you take it back to the French Revolution, you saw some of the best political philosophy ever created such as with Rousseau
Rousseau influenced the French revolution but he died a decade before it happened and his best known books predate it by 30 years.
Even Monty Python is more subversive than anything we see today
Sam Hyde's World Peace was pretty funny, definitely subversive, and might have had a great run if it wasn't cancelled.
Ireland
A riot has broken out in Dublin after a man stabbed two 5 year olds, a 6 year old and a woman in her 30s earlier today. The woman and a 5 year old girl are currently undergoing surgery for serious injuries. The man is also being treated for serious injuries after bystanders intervened (I've seen photos and the guy is barely conscious and bleeding from the mouth). The rioters don't have a spokesperson or anything but I think it's fair to say that this is an anti-migrant riot, politicians and police are certainly blaming the far-right for it.
This is all happening right now so this isn't a complete list, but at least one hotel housing migrants, a Luas tram, and multiple police cars have been set on fire. O'Connell Bridge leading on to the city's main street has been blocked a burning bus and there are videos of shops being looted.
Worth mentioning because of the timing - this comes a week after a man was convicted for the apparently random murder of schoolteacher Aisling Murphy in Dublin last year. The man who was found guilty was a Slovakian convicted rapist, but the media went from scolding Irish men for their toxic attitudes to near complete silence once it came out that the perpertator wasn't Irish.
Tollund_Man4
6mo ago
How were they oppressed by Poles? Not disagreeing, I'm just not very familiar with this area of history.
Tollund_Man4
9mo ago
(who are a lot poorer than Americans, yes, if one actually participates in American online forums it would seem impossible to not learn this fact)
I think the scale of the gap is still missed on many, and if you do bring it up people just assume ruinous healthcare and tuition costs level the playing field.
Culture War in Ireland
The Enoch Burke saga is coming to a close, with the courts deciding not to prosecute him for trespass for repeatedly showing up at the school he was fired from over a dispute about gender pronouns (he aggressively questioned the principal on the matter and she claimed it was assault, it's not clear what really happened), though his fines have reached 74,000 euro and he has already spent time in jail for contempt of court. The Burke family are conservative activists so this wasn't just about him trying to get his job back, he was trying to draw attention to the issue and he succeeded massively given that this is the first big news item I can think of regarding this issue in Ireland. The principal has apparently quit in the meantime so I guess he can count that as a personal victory.
There was some violence around a refugee encampment this week as right-wing protestors clashed with socialists. A Turkish man came out and shouted 'this is my country' as the right-wingers were tearing down 'No War But Class War' signs and swung at them with a metal pole before getting beaten up. Apparently the Turk is deemed a terrorist by the Turkish government and he spent some time in Poland before coming to Ireland. It looks like the encampment has since been destroyed as the right-wingers burned it down in the night. Not the first time people have burned down asylum seeker accomodation but the other instances were in small towns rather than in the middle of Dublin. The police weren't present for any of this but I'm guessing we'll see some arrests down the line, though a lot of the people involved look like minors so I doubt there'll be real jailtime.
Sinn Féin have dropped their pledge to withdraw from NATO and EU defence agreements if they ever get into power. As far as I am aware all big parties are now pro-NATO and Ireland might end up joining at some point. Neutrality was once something we took pride in, and something that the Irish left valued especially, but the malleability in response to current trends that was exemplified by the lockdowns seems to only be accelerating. One consequence of joining NATO might be British troops training in Ireland, maybe we'll even see the Parachute Regiment show their face under a Sinn Féin government. I see this scenario as being much more inflammatory than the Brexit border issue but that risk isn't discussed in the media. The paramilitaries are basically incompetent nowadays but having obvious and hated targets appear can only help them.
A senator has spoken out against the new hate speech bill. Senators don't really have any power in Ireland (we had a referendum a few years back on abolishing the Seanad altogether) so it probably won't come to anything, but it's certainly another tributary in what could become an organised opposition to the way things are going.
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