Tretiak
30d ago
The Satmars don’t live in Israel because they’re opposed to its existence and it’s sacrilegious for them to do so. And they put in work to support groups who desire to see Israel dismantled.
Among those that are religious who support Israel, most of that comes ordinarily as you’d expect from the Orthodox, but even then there’s no overriding consensus on the matter. Israel is extremely worried when it comes to mobilizing the very religious sectors of their society because they haven’t been able to move the needle in any substantial way without risking a huge rift in fabric of Israeli society. I think if worst comes to worst things will run the other direction. I don’t share your prediction on this.
Edit: Phone keeps autocorrecting/making typos.
Tretiak
30d ago
Dubai has Sharia And Civil Law dude, it’s not a socioeconomic laissez-faire society.
Tretiak
30d ago
The vibe I get is that people here seem to mistakenly think that “Israel” is this one big, indivisible thing. They’re supporting the Zionist regime under the mistaken premise of thinking it’s in support of Jews. Most religious Jews hate the State of Israel because its secular and want to see it dismantled just like Hamas does, and they work to protest and support groups directed at that end of things.
Tretiak
30d ago
Israel is not going to hold a world democratic referendum on its own existence.
Zionists aren’t. The Ultra Orthodox Jews are as anti-Israel as Hamas is.
Tretiak
30d ago
Possession is nine-tenths of the law. If the Palestinians want a change to the status quo, they should have cultivated an army to beat the IDF. Now they're beggars in the land of their forefathers with no hope of recovery. No, you're not getting your land back: the people with guns who took it aren't in any mood to just hand it over. It is for them to accept the reality of impotence and exile, as every people who lost wars before them have.
Actually the funny part about this is Israel may not even be around in its current form in a couple generations and it won’t be due to military conflict. The Satmar Jewish sect is the largest congregation of Jews in the world and they are fervently anti-Zionist as well as many (though not all) Orthodox. Guess who fertility rates are favoring over the long run? And it’s not even close.
All Palestinians may have to do is continue to hold out. Jews are on their side in the long run.
Tretiak
30d ago
I watched an interesting interview on Tucker Carlson’s podcast not too long ago that offered an alternative perspective of what it’s like for an ordinary person to live under Israeli occupation and also has to live with Palestinians and Hamas.
Israel isn’t helping itself using this conflict to support its ulterior designs for expansion to create a Greater Israel in the region. You can argue who started the fire and draw your lines in the sand wherever you want but to me there’s no doubt Israel is pouring more gasoline on it at the moment than Palestinians are.
Tretiak
30d ago
I've personally chosen to live in one of these and it's been a massive improvement to my quality of life and that of my friends and family. Mostly out of not having to worry about constant petty crime anymore. But in fact I've observed the exact opposite of what you're claiming. People are a lot nicer and more respectful of cultural differences than I've seen in supposedly enlightened liberal democracies.
You live in Tamaulipas? Because we definitely aren’t talking about the same thing if that’s not the case. And I don’t know of any rich trillionaire that owns an entire city outright, so I’m going to call it that you don’t live in such a city.
I choose to trust my personal experience over your conjecture.
You have quite the unheard experience from anyone on planet Earth if that’s the case.
Tretiak
30d ago
If that were the case I know more than a couple of people who should’ve been imprisoned a long time ago.
Tretiak
30d ago
Financial support for riots/ers is a crime after all
It is?
In the case of something like January 6th, assume for the sake of argument it was an attempt at a coup (in my view it of course wasn't). An almost direct but legally implied right to overthrow a tyrannical government is built into the 2nd amendment of the Constitution. Why wouldn't any of the rioters get off on that defense? Because that one isn't entirely clear to me.
Tretiak
30d ago
It doesn't mean the police can't arrest you for activities outside of work. It means corporations can't terminate you from your job for your out-of-work activities.
Tretiak
30d ago
... hell I like it...
Aside from the fact that I've actually met libertarians who are fine with privately own cities operating as if they were corporate fiefdoms and see that as the highest form of social organization, in reality it'd be a world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it.
Tretiak
30d ago
There was a book I read years ago and for the life of me I can’t remember who the damn author was or what the title of it was, but it was by a prominent American Jewish lawyer (not Alan Dershowitz).
He was a radical advocate of social and economic laissez-fairism. To such an extent he thought if you were someone who harbored racist beliefs and wanted to hang Neo-Nazi slogans on the window of your business, you should be able to do that. Or if you were a prejudiced business owner who wanted to refuse someone because of their religious beliefs you could turn away anyone you wanted for any reason.
I think there’s a point where unconstained liberty brings you far too close to the breakdown of society and it just becomes unworkable. Large segments of society refuse to cooperate with each other. Everyone is suspicious of their neighbor. People have to travel far out of their way to buy groceries or make a living. Violent retribution is always a looming concern. Corporations may refuse to provide power to your neighborhood’s electric grid. Who knows, police may refuse to help you if you get into trouble; depending on who you are. But at least you have freedom of speech and expression.
But without the metapolitical and social prerequisites that allow a shared community to flourish, it’s ultimately worthless. It’s why when the program of economic “shock therapy” was introduced into Russia under the Yeltsin era, hitmen and assassinations were a readily available service in the Russian free market.
Tretiak
1mo ago
Everyone believes it’s below the belt to say something exciting about someone’s death until Adolf Hitler enters the chat.
I’ll accept the finger waging of the morality police when they can show me they remain consistent in the face of a person with no redeeming element in their legacy.
Milton Friedman was about as liberal as it got but even in Free to Choose he capitulated and said “this is really a family society and not an individual society.” And there’s where the core of liberalism lost the plot in thinking “groups don’t have rights, only individuals do,” because the fundamental unit of human society isn’t the individual; it’s the family. The US could use a restoration of clan and tribe in society to the benefit of everyone.
Clannish nationalism is an extremely powerful thing. The most extreme variant today you probably find with the Hindus in India which is the only one able to stand up against Islam in its own backyard. Now tell me how that stacks up against liberal capital? Facebook refuses to ban hate speech in India or deplatform nationalist groups like the Bajrang Dal because it fears for the safety of its staff. It’s the only religion on Earth to retain its Indo-European clan lineages unbroken since the Bronze Age and can put multinational corporations in their place.
Narendra Modi currently holds power over the credit lines in India and subordinates financial corporate bodies to himself. That’s the power of the clan. A healthy society looks like blood over the abstraction of liberal principles. It doesn’t derive family duties from justice; it derives justice from family duties. A healthy society looks like collectivism. The rugged individualist lives a shorter and much more anxious life.
Unless you like having your cities burned down you need something like the clan system. Violent activism that happens to me will also happen to my cousin or fellow Catholic. Your enemies are fundamentally mercantile and will fold the moment things begin to get uncomfortable.
In the Punic Wars Rome was a military society going up against a trading merchant society. Rome won and then burned Carthage to the ground because they were willing to spend both more blood and treasure. The Romans lost 70% of their fleet in a single afternoon and then rebuilt the entire thing. Carthage was more concerned with the Iron Age equivalent of its portfolio. Rome won through strength and force of will, and identity.
There’s been other times in our history where we thought we’ve outgrown tribalism. But growth isn’t inevitable and plenty of signs indicate we’re due for a civilizational downgrade. Systems can only get so complex before they become fragile to the point an unforeseen event pushes them over.
Out in the world, life continues. The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming. The majority of people are not paying attention to this stuff.
Out in the world, most people are on their phone when I’m walking on the sidewalk or driving in traffic.
Tretiak
1mo ago
Not only was Kirk not far-right but the far-right hated him more than the far-left does.
Tretiak
1mo ago
None of what happened afterwards was what I expected at all. Immediately, celebrations, dark ironic pitiless humor, and hideous one-liners with no thought put into them started everywhere. It was official, the Hermann Cain Award logic about when it's acceptable to dance on the graves of your enemies extends about as far as certain leftists want it to.
I’m not sure how closely you followed his development when his name first began to crop up, but the reaction I saw from a lot of people were very predictable.
And to be frank, I roll my eyes and really get tired of the straight-laced, “you’re better than that,” “act like an adult,” high minded moralizing of unfortunate events. Expressing glee over very unpleasant opinions you have about others means you’re human. Going out of your way to take a shovel and knock someone’s gravestone off sets you apart from everyone else.
… there are even more people out there who will run cover even for this awful behavior…
Pretty much. But I continue to be amazed how anyone gets surprised over this. Do people have that much sheltered of a childhood?
Here's a small collection of everything I've witnessed: They're all bots. There aren't that many of them. They're only online.
This is where I believe you’re wrong. You don’t see this largely in interpersonal interactions because it’s potentially costly and damaging to people’s reputations and “painful truths,” were replaced long ago by politically correct sugarcoating and misdirection.
Cenk and some of TYT as of late have mellowed out. I always tried to keep my ear close to the ground and always tried to keep left-wing content somewhere in my media diet, lest I put myself at risk for living out the world in my own bubble. I think they've realized to some degree that it doesn't pay dividends to advancing your cause by being ham fisted and angry all the time at your political counterparts.
I first remember getting that impression when I saw a brief clip between Cenk and Patrick Bet David that seemed unusually civil, considering the gulf between their political views. You can still find Cenk occasionally raging on Piers Morgan and I can't really blame him for that. I wonder if Piers really is as dumb as he presents himself at times or if it's part of his overall act. Ana Kasparian's appearance on Tucker Carlson really surprised me and I always thought she was even more of a lunatic than Cenk was when she was having a moment. In either case it's good for them to broaden their horizon and engage in active discussion with those they disagree with more than satirizing and sneering at them and conservatives should do the same as well.
I don't think there's a difference really. Rights aren't prayers, they are tools we use to protect society. I do think free speech and expression is the most important right, but that's because it is the last line of defence against the tyrannical - even if they lock you up, if you can talk you have the opportunity to convince your captor to let you go. Sure in practice that is very rare, but the potential is better than nothing. In abstract I can agree we shouldn't burn the whole thing down just because one guy can't shout obscenities at passers-by, but in practice that historically means I'm next. Unlike many on the right these days I will still defend the right to speak of people I find abhorrent, which is why that congressman annoys me. But fighting for it, that is fighting for your own demise.
The sad part, in my view, is that many of those who will suffer the consequences of 'belittling' speech will have been indoctrinated into it and raised in an environment where their speech didn't have consequences. They are victims of a zeitgeist shift, but to them, unaware of history, it will look like right wing authoritarianism run rampant. The cycle will begin anew. I'd be worried about that if I didn't think it inevitable.
I think rights are more than just tools we use to protect higher values. They're the values we aspire to themselves because we're happier living in societies that carve out spaces for different human activities. I think depending on where you are in society you're going to have a different view on what kind of society you live in. In my own case I can agree with what people like Jaron Lanier says and I think many people in country's across the world would say the same thing for themselves, even without an explicit commitment to free speech. If you're a black teenager that inherits the circumstances and conditions of having to grow up in inner city Detroit, you still may not say you live in a tyranny, but you live in a dog-eat-dog world in a 1st world shithole society that doesn't care about you, from some of their perspectives. And it's hard to disagree with that when it's baked into your life experiences. Those communities would greatly enjoy a little more security and a little less freedom if you offered it to them on a plate. There are compromises to reach on civil liberties which include free speech. I used to get criticized all the time for "not understanding" how important freedom of speech is. I can assure people I absolutely understand it's importance. But it's important to understand there are different sociopolitical planes and axes that people live under. And freedom of speech isn't a one-size fits all solution. Countries do what they believe makes sense in their circumstance and history.
Oh man, I know. And looking back, my life would have been much easier - and better - if I'd embraced the friend/enemy distinction. I used to feel like a poster child for 'here's why you shouldn't live by your principles.' But I think I'm just meant to stick to a smaller community, once I started focusing more on improving my community on the local level my life improved immeasurably. Liberal democracy is not entirely stable in a polarised society I think, it tilts back and forth. People like me will never be in power, but we remind those in power that their righteousness is false, and they can and should do better, which - up to a point - is useful imo. It is also probably cope, but it works for me.
This is why I'm a conservative and think it's ultimately the proper fit for society. It's hard for mere mortals to know what will work at a first glance. Even a John von Neumann or Einstein can't hold a candle to the thousands of years of human trial and error. The world's complicated and individuals have only seen so much of it, which is why you have to live life with a useful rule of thumb. Just like in evolutionary biology, we learn that adaptions are 'good' inasmuch as they promote survival, what's old and lasts through time as tradition is also adaptive becauase traditions are evolutionary adaptions for societies. We want something so secure that we can't even remember a time when it wasn't around. The longer something has been around, the more likely it's weathered every imaginable storm, under every condition, on every subject and at every point. When people come around and say "times have changed," that isn't a serious argument when you have 300 million years to wade through in order to make that statement. Anyone would laugh a remark like that off the debate stage. At the very least tradition works and it's dues need to be paid because it's a way of being pragmatic.
No civilization out there better grasped that than the Romans. The highest authority to them in their society wasn't science, it was the "mos maiorum," or what we translate as "the way of the ancestors," (i.e. 'tradition'). And to question or put it in doubt, was literally to question the experts. Incidentally no other society was as anti-Utopian as the Romans were by the same principle. Tradition in this sense is ideologically agnostic. The content of the belief itself doesn't matter, which is why different societies have different traditions. All it has to be is useful, stabilizing, adaptive or productive and the best way to know that is how long it's been around. How else can you forecast what's rational? Only by repetitive, brute and often 'very painful' experience and by what 'works'. This is why contra an earlier statement by someone here who claimed conservatives want to tear down liberal institutions, no conservative I’ve ever met has said that. Conservatives are drawing some very important lessons on the utility and follies of liberalism on their 21st century Jupyter notebooks. Even Einstein conceded that:
"As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists."
All I know now is that I want Kash Patel giving my eulogy. That’s hilarious.
A general appeal to God is good enough. Conservatives should appreciate where K.P. was trying to come from. Just like in serious court cases you’re called to swear before God or make an affirmation, it’s a gesture or sorts that for better or worse people don’t take too seriously. If K.P. was giving this statement in some theocracy, he’d have reason to worry. As long as Indians aren’t after me if I were to say “One love in Brahma, my nigga!,” at his death, we’re cool.
Tretiak
1mo ago
The above wasn’t me that you replied to. I wasn’t born in the 1950’s or 60’s (or 70’s) either. I also never said gay people never experienced any prejudice or persecution, in fact I made sure I stated as much.
Let me ask you this. LGBTQ activism may have achieved substantial political equality for gay people, but do you think the activism on par helped or harmed their social reputation in the eyes of the average person, the more aggressive it became?
Then why does he keep responding to an argument I’m not making?
“Yeah yeah, I understand what you’re saying but I’m going to ignore it and replace your statement with one you didn’t make and reply to that instead.”
My entire statement was about a socially and economically hands off, laissez-faire society. That is absolutely ‘not’ what Dubai is, and not by a long shot.
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