Totalitarianit
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User ID: 3448
Totalitarianit
14hr ago
It's coherent but you are invoking a moral truth, whereas I am discussing realpolitik. Can you enforce what you believe in? I think not. Will Israel's "morally bankrupt" actions have consequences down the road? Potentially, yes.
Will you convince an entity who believes that their existence is under threat that they are morally wrong if they feel they are protecting themselves? Maybe later, but not in the moment. What can that moral correctness without leverage really accomplish in the moment?
Totalitarianit
15hr ago
Do those human rights exist if neither side chooses to enforce them?
Hamas has relied on the concept of human rights to win the ideological part of this war. They don't believe in it, but they know we do, so they weaponize it. Western liberals demand Israel enforce this idea of human rights because they are the more capable and, supposedly, moral side. Liberals invoke human rights when it comes to Israel, all while Hamas intentionally holds their own people hostage in order to create a moral dilemma and pit Western countries against Israel. The Stockholm syndrome cannot be denied.
Imagine for a moment if Hamas and Palestinians knew these human rights would no longer be upheld by other countries. Would the majority of Palestinians continue to support Hamas? Maybe they would, and maybe they would rather starve to death or get blown up than cede ground to Israelis. My instincts tell me that a majority wouldn't continue to support them, but then again I'm a Westerner and can't really put myself in that situation. What seems obvious to me though is that the cost-benefit analysis for Hamas continuing their strategy appears much more feasible when you have 3rd parties supplying aid and moral support.
I acknowledge that what is happening to Palestinians is horrible. I don't wish it on any human. However, third party empathy is Hamas' greatest weapon. Israel knows this but Westerners don't, and I do not expect Israel to cave to outside pressure. What this means (and what it has resulted in thus far) is an even more prolonged ordeal, where more Palestinians die and Hamas gains more support from other countries. Maybe this will result in Israel's demise at some point. It's a brilliant strategy by Hamas, but it will come at a great cost because Israel will not succumb to the empathy games directed at the world's liberals. They believe that might equals right and nobody has been able to prove otherwise.
Totalitarianit
1d ago
The south Asian presence, The art show, the price jumps, and the juxtaposition of a closed Canary Wharf hotel hosting asylum seekers jumped out at me. That said, it didn't read like the culture war was central, but rather the backdrop for a humorous post about someone's trip to London.
The olfactory input was overwhelming.
I laughed at this. It reminds me of when people used to comment "Imagine the smell." when looking a certain images, and then others would get creative and say the same thing but use different sentences like, "Contemplate the aroma."
Totalitarianit
1d ago
I don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying, but I don't see a real or workable idea that results in the dissolution of Israel for those reasons.
A significant portion of Israel's population, along with its ruling class, seem to me to fully embrace tribalism to an extent that the Western mind can barely comprehend anymore, let alone embrace. What's fair or beneficial in the grand scheme of things is secondary to their survival. Israel clearly demonstrates this over and over, and so many Westerners (having had their tribalistic instincts redirected to focus on things like social, gender, or racial power dynamics and "fairness") are just completely baffled by it.
From what I can see, it's not about them being the most safe place, or the most fair, or making the rest of the world as prosperous as it can be. It's about Israelis' survival instincts being far more easily triggered than most Westerners can begin to imagine, and thus anything that can even be perceived as being a threat to that survival is dealt with, harshly.
I'm not saying I agree or disagree with it. Israel has clearly engaged in disgusting tactics, acts of violence, manipulation, etc. I guess what I'm saying, or rather asking is "What is your realistic alternative?"
Totalitarianit
8d ago
I see. He benefits from liberal policy, champions it, but only insofar as it benefits his own kind.
Totalitarianit
8d ago
People can either read this as another unimpressive attempt by a left-leaning individual to fixate on a single tree despite there being an entire forest, or they can look at it as unintentional satire, which is what it really is. Lecturing Americans about immigration policy as if the last decade(s) of UK immigration disasters simply didn't exist is actually funny.
Your legal framework and its habit of prioritizing everyone but its natural citizens has landed the UK exactly where it is now. You brag about these laws that, while intended to protect individual rights, have led to a system where every single removal attempt is open to countless appeals and human rights claims. The UK and whatever it once was is basically done for. It's so bad that to say that it has an identity crisis is to assume that the is still has any identity left at all. This has been the UK's "infinite wisdom" which, ironically, will prove to be not-so-infinite.
So while people like you brag about the process, people like me look at the results, and the results of the process you're defending are undeniable.
Totalitarianit
11d ago
The medical accuracy and fast-paced intensity of the show are really good. After watching a good portion of this season, I ended up going back to the old ER from the 1990s and 2000s and watched several seasons. There's a lot of nostalgia and good accuracy with series as well, which I enjoyed, but I noticed the same sort of progressive lecturing in the 1990s ER episodes as I did in the The Pitt. I've come to realize over recent years that social lecturing is heavily baked into a lot of these mainstream shows. It's incredibly powerful and influential.
The side effect of this realization it is that I am quick to dismiss any new series or movies wherein I catch a whiff of this sort of presentist lecturing. Even though I recognize the moral framework and lecturing of older 1980s and 90s shows and movies, it aligns more with how I view the world so I can tolerate a certain amount of it. I find the current progressive ideological force-feeding in entertainment to be insufferable though. I understand that society moves on and changes, and that some of my frustration is just a natural reaction to entertainment no longer appealing to my age group, but I also think this era of film entertainment is objectively terrible when it comes to the hit:miss ratio.
Big budget film companies adhere to certain formulas that will turn a profit, while the only real social risks taken in big films is the left-leaning. The latter isn't new but the type of leftwing ideology being pushed is. To add insult to injury, these large production companies churn out something like 6 superhero/comic book films per year at about $200m per film, along with a biopic or two that are well done, but not really worthy of the praise they typically get. Smaller studios like A24 are promising, but they too are unfortunately captured by the same progressive ideology that has consumed every Western institution on the planet. There are still some diamonds in the rough (Top Gun: Maverick), but it is mind-numbing how widespread and pervasive this sort of progressive lecturing has become.
Totalitarianit
11d ago
What would you like to know?
Totalitarianit
13d ago
We had fertility problems and went the foster to adoption route. The foster training gives you a pretty good idea beforehand of what you're likely getting into, so I felt pretty mentally prepared. Our first foster (that we later adopted) was pulled out of their home at around 3 years old, went to their grandparents who didn't really want to raise a child, then went to one foster parent who was stretched too thin. This kid was eventually brought to us at 4 years old and we've had them for 5 years now. There are some clear personality and learning struggles the kid has but overall they're pretty happy.
Our second foster to adoption was picked up straight from the hospital as a premature infant and is a different race. Interestingly enough, I actually told the foster service that I preferred not to have someone of a different race. This hacked off one of the supervising social workers, but considering the need for foster families, she let it be known how she felt then allowed us to open up our home again. As fate would have it, the next available child was a baby that was not white. Our social worker informed us of the situation, my wife and I discussed it, and we decided to take the baby. The baby, despite having drugs in their system and being born premature, seems to have developed pretty well into a young normal kid. Extremely cute and happy. The race thing may came into play at some point, but they're not black, so I don't expect it to be as big of an issue as it seems to be with black kids adopted by white families.
All I can provide is a stable home and love and security. They have both had that, and will continue to have that. I enjoy watching them grow, and even though they're not angels they seem very social. I do have what I consider to be minimal expectations of structure and responsibility. The older one struggles pretty badly with having any responsibility, and while I think some of that is just engrained in their DNA some of it is also just their youth. Overall, my philosophy toward it has always been one where I accept that I cannot control the inherited traits they bring with them. It just is what it is. I also can't predict the future, but my plan is to let them find themselves without pushing too hard. If they grow up and become menaces to society some part of me will be devastated, but I'll be pretty confident in thinking it wasn't because of their upbringing.
Totalitarianit
18d ago
This post's conversation also reminds me of first amendment auditors who go to public places and record everything and everyone around them because they're not legally in the wrong. They operate under the guise of protecting the first amendment, but this (as Primaprimaprima put it when describing Karens) is of secondary importance. Their real motivation is to create a reaction that they can capture and record, then post on their YouTube page.
The extent to which these people who aren't "technically" wrong corrode the cohesiveness of our society can't really be quantified in real time. I think a lot of us just understand that it is bad and that it will have future implications. Normal people recognize the problem as well, but there is no way to say "no" with any real force unless a law is broken. An atomized society has nothing but the law to truly dictate behavior, but more laws ultimately lead to less freedom. Informal resolutions while they can be deeply satisfying also carry the potential for overreaction or being too heavy-handed.
When it comes to feminists bitching about family structure, they're just trying to ensure they maintain as much social power and freedom as possible, and, since the receipts of "family structure" abuses are readily available, they constantly point to them to beat back the opposition. What makes them even more powerful is the online presence of women, especially neurotic ones, who will collectively treat any issue they're arguing for as if it's the most morally important problem of our time. These women are numerous, and passionate, and hysterical. The only real recourse seems to be one where society collects the receipts of unchecked feminism and pluralism. Unfortunately, it will have to run its course and we will have to continue to watch people be as annoying and as immoral and as disgusting as possible while still not being "technically" wrong.
Totalitarianit
21d ago
This almost perfectly describes me, but my maintenance is a little more frequent. Haircut every 4 weeks.
Totalitarianit
22d ago
Yeah, the Amish are a pretty good example. I don't think they actually hold any racial animus toward anyone. They just have insular and hard working lives, which serves as a natural deterrent for most people outside of their community.
Totalitarianit
22d ago
These sort of small separatist community attempts always seem (at least in the US) to draw in very unsavory personality types. The reason why these never really last starts to make sense when you factor in the psycho-social dynamics and the broader moral framework of this society when it comes to race. Is there a single popular separatist here in the US that doesn't have some noticeable level of disagreeableness or collection of anti-social traits? It just seems like maintaining such a society requires an overt level of resentment or even hostility toward other races, which of course doesn't pair well with pro-social behavior or stable community-building.
Some might argue that Jared Taylor walks this fine line pretty well, and he can seem quite cordial, but after reading some of his writings he comes off as having at least some distrust and disdain for those outside his racial group.
The idea isn't necessarily unworkable. It seems like they've pulled off some version of it in South Africa with that town called Orania, but in practice here in the US it continuously attracts people whose motivations tend to be more about who they don't want around coupled with personality types that have a high tendency toward social dominance and rigid in-group/out-group belief systems. I can somewhat sympathize with the concept, but I find communities whose entry requires a shared racial animosity somewhat repulsive.
Totalitarianit
1mo ago
I see. I'm not talking about "TV clips" as just being ICE raids. I'm talking about "TV clips" as being part the optics, or even the "aesthetic" (like the other commenter mentioned) that goes into what I believe to be an effective anti-illegal immigration strategy.
Totalitarianit
1mo ago
The problem is, the clips on TV couldn't have started in December 2024
I'm with you on this part. Pushback in Congress started in January of 2024, but before that Ron DeSantis orchestrated the Martha's Vineyard publicity stunt all the way back in 2022. Outlets like CBS News were documenting record high daily crossings in May of 2023. After that, local reps and officials started making public demands for federal action shortly after. It was a gradual accumulation of outrage from the right and the undeniable reality of a border crisis that even left leaning outlets couldn't ignore.
nor could they have had much of an effect even in January 2025 on account of Trump being sworn in on the 17th of that month.
I'm not with you on this part, and I will indeed claim that it was in fact the threat of the Trump presidency that caused numbers to drop even faster. The Democrats trying to get the border bill through in 2024 affected groups from an optics standpoint. For the immigrants, it showed Democrats might do something about the border. For undecided moderates, it showed that Democrats were willing to come to the table about the border issue.
All of these things had an impact on illegal immigration from an optics or "TV clip" standpoint, but the most impactful were the "TV clips" showing that Donald Trump was elected president. As far as that not being the "claim I made" I might be misunderstanding what you're saying.
Totalitarianit
1mo ago
In that link, what period of time has the starkest drop by percentage?
Totalitarianit
1mo ago
It is a safe bet. My response to this is to double down on the optics. I'm mostly onboard with anything the Trump admin does between actually following through with their threats and doing a full scale crackdown all the way to them crafting a convincing illusion (for the uneducated) of mass deportations that drastically decreases illegal immigration and pressures current illegals to fly under the radar, but secretly allows a decent number of them to work because it brings us back to a happy medium from an economic standpoint. There are drawbacks no matter what though. A full crackdown that deports as many people as possible will have immediate negative effects on the economy, but would probably be worth it in the long run. On the other hand, a convincing illusion for illegals and MAGAs keeps border crossings low, maintains the economy in the short-term, but falls into the low scale effect you talk about and it doesn't really help us in the future.
Any scenario in this spectrum is preferable to whatever the Democratic party does with the "No human is illegal" optics they try to portray, which I find to be far more detrimental to our society.
Totalitarianit
1mo ago
but the clips on TV go hard
They do go hard. The optics matter to people who aren't educated. Which demographic is the least educated? It's illegal immigrants. Check out the plummeting border encounters if you need evidence of the impact of TV clips and rhetoric.
The educated lib class takes a lot of pride in their knowledge of stats and trends. So much so that they forget that other people believe what they see in front of them, and not numbers on a screen or piece of paper.
At what age did Aniston start trying to get pregnant? From what I recall, she was already in her late 30s, early 40s when she started. I get why she chose to put it off, but it speaks to the broader issue here where women are told (whether implicitly or explicitly) that motherhood can wait.
This speech from Michelle Williams represents a not-so-small percentage of the modern Western woman, and, as someone who's always been begrudgingly pro-choice, I have a visceral reaction to it every time I see it. I get that it's the Hollywood bubble who is applauding here, but for a lot of people these are the role models for young women in our society. Also, take a quick guess at who's applauding in that video at the 1:59 mark.
To be fair, the current incentive structure makes childlessness materially more rewarding. You have fewer responsibilities, more freedom, and more status. That being said, there is just something so disgusting to me about the unapologetic self-worship that comes after the willing sacrifice of their own flesh and blood. The celebratory nature of it, how what happened to her body "wasn't a choice", and how her child was effectively nothing more than a stepping stone to success. It's not so much the facts of her story, but the philosophy behind it, that seems to resonate with millions of women, that is just vile.
Totalitarianit
2mo ago
I'm not convinced of either, which is why I think it is so interesting. There was clearly a political angle that tried to suppress lab leak.
Totalitarianit
2mo ago
The same geographical gap existed for SARS which originated in Guangdong, but whose origins were in Yunnan too.
Chinese studies don't have a good reputation at the best of times, even on non-political issues. It's extremely naive to believe a study on something so controversial would be done by the book, and with no pressure to come to the politically correct conclusion.
The 2022 study Worobey study was an international collab that involved western scientists and that was also peer-reviewed. I'm not oblivious to the fact that people have political leanings, but this isn't just about China. If it is a lab leak, America has a hand in it too. Bottom line is that Bayesian analysis works for both sides.
Totalitarianit
2mo ago
I think this point makes it hard to lean definitively on the other side of this debate, but do I think there is a reasonable Bayesian counter to the lab leak:
- SARS likely originated from a market
- While wet markets do exist all over China, Wuhan is a massive transportation and population hub.
- Wildlife trafficking into Wuhan from places where bat coronaviruses occur naturally was very common and very poorly regulated, meaning even though these bat species weren't local, the market supply chains were.
- Studies from 2022 show early case clusters centering around the Huanan Seafood Market with positive environmental samples
This doesn't prove zoonosis, but the presence of illegal wildlife trade, specific species susceptibility to Covid, the crazy density of these environments, as well as the historical precedent all provide for a decent argument in favor of zoonotic spillover.
Totalitarianit
2mo ago
Fair enough. My point in saying exceptionally deadly was to make a relative comparison to other modern and common diseases like the flu. It was statistically more deadly than the modern flu both in absolute and relative terms. Higher hospitalization rates, higher death rates. If the word "exceptionally" is too strong then I can use another word. It was notably or demonstrably more deadly than the flu.
As far as our reaction, yes, it does sort of track that way. Before it had really spread across the US, the world was watching Covid destroy Italy. Our country's reaction in March and April of 2020 was totally understandable given what we knew at the time. What was less understandable were the prolonged lockdowns with exceptions for racial justice protests that were backed by open letters from medical professionals, demonization of Ivermectin (like it was poison), accusations of racism for entertaining the idea that Covid might've leaked from a lab, constant narrative shifts on the efficacy of the vaccine, etc.
Totalitarianit
2mo ago
But it wasn't a nothingburger. It was a somethingburger. The mainstream lied, often and badly, but that doesn't mean Covid itself wasn't siginificant.
It can, and has influenced people, but to whose benefit outside of Hamas'? This influence appears to actually be leading to more death and suffering. So, to the extent that your moral correctness on this issue intersects with realpolitik, I see it as a mechanism that prolongs the conflict and props up the worst actors. The dilemma as I see it is if the practical outcome of your moral correctness is just more suffering then do you accept that suffering so that you can stay ideologically consistent, or do you abandon it for what you would consider a more favorable practical outcome?
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