atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
No bio...
User ID: 2162
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
4mo ago
Thank you for proving my original point. At this point, maybe it was correct for scientists to have been so left-leaning because they saw through that the right had this much hate for them.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
2yr ago
And the charming lady didn't deserve it
Queen Elizabeth was an direct inheritor of stolen wealth who personally claimed fame, importance, and power for the sole reason that her ancestors were some of the worst war criminals who ever lived. For the reason she didn't renounce it all as soon as she could, she definitely deserves every insult.
The point is that because of ofcom no one in UK can run a piece calling the Queen a cunt
This makes matters even worse. I think we have an obligation to insult world leaders this morally compromised who protect themselves from criticism through censorious laws and policies. In that spirit, Queen Elizabeth is a dead, inbred, nepo-baby under the delusion that her family's legacy of warcrimes was something to be proud of and (example below) Xi Jinping is an incompetent Winnie-the-Pooh look-alike running the world's second-largest economy into the ground. Don't be afraid to say so!
Despite what you think, the point is there weren't struggle sessions in math/hard-science departments. As the OP said, all you ever had to do was write in your grants about how things you liked anyways, like organizing events where older and younger graduate students could meet each other and become friends, also helped "underrepresented groups" sometimes. You could extremely easily just not be interested in politics and ignore everything outside of writing this paragraph.
Also, if you were upset about what was happening in humanities departments, you didn't really have any option except getting in bed with the creationists and Obama-birther conspiracy theorists.
The chaos and funding issues the administration is creating is not at all the same thing. Now you have to desperately scrub every appearance of links to crazies like Tema Okun and Robin DiAngelo just because they're associated with the same industry as you. It's not even clear which buzzword in which random context sets the censors off.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
In 2020, during a period of mass rioting and looting.....
It's a matter of comparison---the most direct analogue is the literal president of the US encouraging an attempted violent overthrow of the legislative branch.
Black Lives Matter, an explicitly Marxist police abolitionist organization
The analogue here is explicitly hereditarian and anti-meritocratic authors like Moldbug/BAP/some parts of the Claremont Institute being inextricably enmeshed in the intellectual foundations of the modern right.
The Biden administration is overseeing the largest influx of unfettered immigration to this country in over a century
This is also not necessarily so objectionable to people who value meritocracy over hereditarianism like most of the "centrist" authors in the original post. Skilled immigration is definitely not---even the most ostensibly right-wing, Elon Musk, supports dramatically increasing skilled immigration. Increased illegal immigration is getting huge amounts of pushback from the mainstream left and the numbers for that are always more about economic conditions than actual policy.
This is an incredibly risible claim
From your postings here, you are quite hereditarian and anti-meritocratic. Of course the comparison I'm making would therefore feel risible. From the point of view of the listed authors, who have much more mainstream American values, it makes a lot more sense.
People are angry about the immigrants who commit crimes and just make the country a shittier place generally.
It really isn't just this, however deeply I wish it were. I encourage you to try writing something defending skilled immigration on this forum and see what sorts of responses you get.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
11mo ago
I still think a place like this serves a very valuable purpose---if only that whenever you get too upset about some DEI overreach like the whole SF algebra saga you can find some very pointed reminders that the American right is somehow even worse on issues of meritocracy.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Can someone explain to me why teabagging this particular outgroup is a bad thing? Drop the moral relativism: some cultures/societies are so execrable that symbolically "teabagging" them is great. The Confederacy/Antebellum south is one of these---one of the worst cases of hereditarian, anti-egalitarian nonsense in modern-ish history.
no quarter to moderates in the culture war.
What exactly do you mean by "moderates" here? Not hating a person who rebelled to support slavery isn't what I would call "moderate".
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
4mo ago
I think you should take the responses and general lack of sympathy here as a wake-up call about what exactly right-wing rule in the US means for you these days. I've found this forum to be a very good representation of the substantive ideas underlying what becomes right-wing politics/the mindset of people pushing those ideas.
In this case: anything, no matter the cost, as long as it hurts the woke! Scientific progress? I don't care about your fake tears and sad puppies.
If it turns out the natives are in fact better, does that mean the white supremacists had a point all along, or does it just prove that your entire interest in the topic begins and ends with its utility toward bashing the outgroup?
This is not a reasonable argument that is worth replying to. Please don't reply to my posts---I'm not interested in discussing things with you since it's extremely tedious and unpleasant to deal with this sort of mess of malicious misinterpretation.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Do you think there are no Indian or Chinese, bay-area tech workers on this forum? I thought part of conceit of a public forum like this is that you are talking to some notion of "everyone". Either way, I'm definitely sure there aren't any antebellum southerners on this forum (they're all dead), so it's still super confusing why my linked comment wasn't also not antagonistic by this standard.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
4mo ago
Too bad certain people made it partisan and now are shocked that there is a price for ideological capture.
Right so scientists and scientific progress at at best acceptable collateral damage in your crusade to punish these people as much as possible and at worst enemies just because being in the same industry makes you think that they're the same people. This is exactly what I was talking about.
"But scientists vote XX% democrat! They have to be the evil woke!"---well it shouldn't be that surprising that scientists overwhelmingly vote against the party of creationism and appointing anti-vaxxers as HHS secretary even if they might have had serious concerns with woke overreach. If you don't believe me, you can listen to Richard Hanania.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
10mo ago
Your post had this:
The events, allegedly in part as the result of some false reporting concerning Axel's identity, led to a number of protests, which led to a number of counterprotests.
Immediately followed by this
Why would you counterprotest a protest against the knifing of schoolgirls?
This is an extremely sloppy way to write if you were just talking about the specific people in your video instead of representative counterprotestors. Furthermore, if you were just talking about the video evidence/Ricky Jones instead of representative counterprotestors, then you were just doing boo-outgroup nut-picking!
I didn't even mention this utterly absurd interpretation of how to think issues of causality with respect policy making since other commentators discussed it lower down:
I suppose, that people would rather talk about that, than about the dead schoolchildren who, but for recent immigration from Africa, would likely still be alive.
Think about the children indeed!
"the outgroup" in this comment is pretty clearly referring to contemporary people, not the Confederate slavers.
This is not clear at all (except for literal neo-confederates who want to bring things like slavery back). The confederacy is a completely different culture from the modern south and making the connection from destroying a statue of a confederate leader to somehow teabagging modern southerners is almost a non-sequitur! Sure, some people mistaken about who actually represents their values might be upset but this is an unfortunate side-effect and really the fault of those people. It's definitely not anyone's intention in melting down the statue and really confusing if it's referred to by such a motivated word as "teabagging"---to the point where the most natural thing is to immediately dismiss that as a possibility.
Again, the far-and-away most reasonable interpretation for which group is being teabagged by a statue being destroyed....is group the person led/was part of.
I'm clearly missing something here that made modern southerners an at-all reasonable interpretation for that group: which of the following is it?
- Most modern southerners somehow still identify with Confederate leaders even though Confederate values are completely antithetical to their own and everyone here just buys that this is a reasonable thing for them to do.
- There's some weird politics bubble thing going on here where it's just accepted that lots of things are some sort of "liberal elite" or whatever attack against people who don't live in the Northeast or California
- Because the above two are too uncharitable to possibly be true, something else?
He's talking about one thing, you respond with a line that makes it seem like he's talking about something else
Like maybe it was clear to you he was talking about one thing, but that's completely opaque to anyone who doesn't share the politics of this place.
I find it doubtful that you were actually confused by what he meant by "moderate".
I thought he was referring to neo-confederates as moderates and trying to double-check this because that isn't really a reasonable definition of moderate.
My ability to earn a paycheck is affected by PMC white liberals in a way that it isn't by white nationalists.
This is a very strong counterpoint, and I definitely understand that my point here is not going to be very compelling to the stereotypical Motte user working at a Bay Area Tech company where they are only exposed to the excesses on the left.
Just beware of the free speech example here. I'm going to make an assumption that you haven't lived in parts of the country where the bias goes the other way and dealt with their orthogonal set of excesses that are even worse (though I would be very interested if that assumption is wrong).
As a meritocratic individualist, I completely disagree. The anti-meritocratic hereditarians here might hate mi abuela, but they still treat me with respect and state their points clearly. Dealing with DSA-types has been an exercise in frustration - try to argue with them fairly and they posture, form social alliances using whisper networks, make emotional appeals, play status games, etc.
I'm very surprised by this. I've spent significant time in some of the most infamous universities in the country and I've had a very, very different experience. As long as you can play an elaborate game of taboo---never explicitly saying words like "meritocracy" and instead directly appealing to the core values of MLK-style egalitarianism, I've found those on the left extremely pleasant and rational. I can very easily argue about how standardized tests are good, Harvard's affirmative action policy was bad, Claudine Gay was incompetent, etc. It very much felt like talking with people who had all the right values but were just very confused on some correctable factual points.
Conversely, trying to discuss anything with right, for example on this forum, generally means dealing with many unjustified personal attacks from people very explicitly not on board with individualism and meritocracy. Discussing with the right is useful to do to keep my perspective broad enough, but it is far, far more unpleasant.
This comment makes me vaguely uncomfortable.
On one hand, sure, someone who has such a deep level of contempt for a large percentage of a country's population probably should not be welcomed into that country. However large of a salary they earn, they're not going to be contributing positively to the welfare of people they more-or-less think are subhuman.
On the other hand, immigrants that do positively contribute on net in all aspects of society (i.e. not just monetarily) deserve to be welcomed. From the inside view of an individual person, it's morally commendable to always be grateful for what you have and not think you deserve anything. However, from an outside view, you shouldn't expect that high moral standard from others who do actually deserve the welcome.
And sometimes its just so satisfying to see white supremacist rhetoric about certain groups turned back on them this eloquently. The whole idea of judging large classes of people as subhuman and worthless is absolutely despicable, but sometimes you just want to say, "ok fine, I'm done with this, let's just accept your premise that we should do so. Wow, the 'worthless' groups aren't actually who you thought they were. Look at that, guess it's not such a good idea for you after all".
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
You guys are allowed to mod however you want---it's your website. It's just dishonest to pretend to be a neutral "place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases" when there's a pretty clear bias in which groups you're allowed to use this kind of antagonistic language against and which you aren't.
Whatever you guys might claim to be, this seems to be a place where it's ok to call an immigrant group an infestation but not to say that the antebellum south was an execrable culture.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
It's very clear siding with the DSA types is more damaging. Precisely because they control most of the power already
This is an interesting consideration. However, I think it presupposes that the badness caused by extremists on the left is somehow balanced and counteracted by badness caused by extremists on the right.
I think it's more accurate that the badness on both sides is orthogonal so this sort of "we need to push the unbalanced scales the other way" logic doesn't quite apply. The example of free speech seems instructive: there was a general perception around here that the left having too much power caused a lot of unjustified censorship of the usual topics. However, while shifting power towards the right did sort of fix this, this was only at the cost of even more extreme censorship of completely different topics (evolution, gay relationships, etc.)
Unfortunately, one side's extremists aren't going to save you from the other's---the only way out is to get both sides to police theirs effectively.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
No, I suppose it's not their fault, but they're the ones I want kicked out of my country, so they're the ones who will suffer for it regardless. So it goes.
Given some of the statements you've made in this discussion, the US is very clearly not "your country". It's a cliche, but being part of the US is defined by ideals, not descent---this is taught in elementary school civics. You clearly do not fit these ideals.
Who is building beautiful things these days in the public realm?
I'll keep making the same reply whenever I see complaints about beauty---any judgement like this depends on your own, idiosyncratic aesthetic preferences. Personally, I find new ideas in math and science to be the most beautiful thing in the world and the quality and amount of this that is being discovered/made publicly available has never been greater. I am extremely happy to have this even at the possible cost of whatever's going on in our physical environment. I also don't think similar aesthetic preferences are that rare, especially in a community like this one.
So I completely disagree, by a very reasonable definition of "beauty", we are in a golden age of people creating beauty in the public realm (you just have to go beyond physical things).
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
The specific "state's right" that was trampled over in the civil war was the right to keep slaves. This is not something that the modern red tribe supports. The particular culture practicing slavery deserved to have its corpse be pissed on. The modern red tribe does not.
Do you think there's any substantive response to make here besides "please read what I wrote more carefully and try again"? Playing into someone's bad-faith debate games by trying to defend "no, I actually said (blah)" never goes well when they're actively trying to confuse the issue.
It's really not a good look for a moderator here to be employing this sort of tactic given your stated goals. If FCC's reply wasn't violating
Don't paraphrase unflatteringly. Beating down strawmen is fun, but it's not productive for you, and it's certainly not productive for anyone attempting to engage you in conversation; it just results in repeated back-and-forths where your debate partner has to say "no, that's not what I think".
then I don't know what is. But, again, it's your guys' website.
The objection in that thread, as described to you repeatedly at the time, was that you were conflating people to object to the destruction of Confederate memorials with slave owners.
I never conflated these two groups in that entire conversation and repeatedly tried to explain that I didn't. From the very first post, I tried to be very clear that I was only talking about the antebellum south:
The Confederacy/Antebellum south is one of these---one of the worst cases of hereditarian, anti-egalitarian nonsense in modern-ish history.
This is in fact the main issue. If you try to argue many points on this forum, you get pattern-matched and rounded-off to a very different point that is actually objectionable. You can take however many pains you want to say that you are just talking about the antebellum south, and even the moderation team thinks that you are somehow also talking about the modern south. Like how are you supposed to interpret the group that's being teabagged by melting down a statue as something other than the group led by the person the statue represented?
In the case here, a similar effect creates huge blindspots when applying the guideline:
You do in fact have to be careful about how you talk about any group here
How is "infested with Indian and Chinese tech workers taking over" at all being careful while talking about a group? Pointing this out, however, gets conflated with other crying wolf about racism, so this rule about not casually and unjustifiably sideswiping large groups of people doesn't really get applied properly.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Anti-semitism on the right really seems to be restricted to a bunch of fringe characters no one in power really wants to be publicly associated with
Have you paid attention to the comments and voting patterns on this very forum? I have the impression that this place is pretty representative of the intellectual parts of the right and antisemitism here tends to be an upvoted and therefore not at all fringe position.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
It's a question of threat assessment. You can either give the DSA-types more power, or you can give creationists and BAP/lots-of-posters-on-this-forum-style explicitly ant-meritocratic racists power.
It's not at all clear that choosing the side with DSA-types is more damaging. In the last 8 years in the US, the Democratic party in particular has done a much better job of denouncing its extremists. Just look at the most prominent recent examples: if you look at NT Times articles/their comment sections, you can see that the mainstream left's reaction to pro-Hamas protesters or the whole Claudine Gay affair has been pretty condemnatory.
Trying to make the same check on the right for strict abortion restrictions, someone like Stephen Miller being put in charge of immigration policy, etc does not present a compelling case to to change your vote. You can even make a very unflattering comparison by just reading this forum for a bit and seeing how much support explicitly anti-meritocratic and anti-individualistic racism has in even the more intellectual part of the right.
I think the consensus view here is that people should be treated specially for the sole reason of being white instead of any personal qualifications. This is very anti-meritocratic. I recall though that we just had this discussion on this right? I guess your comments didn't get into this point specifically, but do you not think a moderator saying that "race-blind meritocracy" is a controversial, minority viewpoint in the Motte is sufficient evidence?
Otherwise, would you agree that the Motte's seeming consensus against even skilled immigration (well, I get dogpiled pretty hard whenever I try posting in support of it at least) is pretty anti-meritocratic? I have the impression that the median poster here would prefer their doctors, engineers, pilots, etc. to be white/have far-reaching ancestry in whatever country (depending on the exact poster) than being the most competent people that can be found.
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