cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1yr ago
By the standards established by the media in 2020 it was peaceful.
That is my claim.
It is a different claim than "it was peaceful".
The media and most of the country was happy to apologize for a base level of violence and conflict at protests in 2020. I'm not arguing this is a good standard, I'd in fact be happy to return to the old standards. But the old standards for everyone, not just politically approved protests.
cjet79
1yr ago
Not sure if this is some in-joke that I don't get. but there are reports of it being antagonistic, so maybe other people don't get this "joke" either. Whether its a joke or not, its not a good contribution, please don't do this.
cjet79
1yr ago
The new myth would have been something like Biden and the deep state geriatrics conspiring to ruin the country, with cooler heads prevailing and deciding that hey we need to get the old fogies out and let the hot young people run stuff. This would have also been a myth. I don't Biden is to blame for getting his pants on straight in the morning, much less some coup.
I said it elsewhere, I don't think the government is overall that important to American Society. Our culture and marketplace matter more, and government is somewhat downstream of those things. If government is broken it doesn't mean we all fall off the cliff. It will just increasingly get in the way of the good things like culture and the marketplace, and things won't get better as fast as they used to. But we are a long way off from the pain of government outweighing the pain of switching governments violently. Or at least that is the case from where I'm sitting. However, people reach that tradeoff threshold at different points.
cjet79
1yr ago
the italian army could have swatted mussolini's rabble like flies
You mean they could have kicked off a civil war against the political faction favored by the military, police, and people that wanted to keep the factories running. That probably would have had a predictable outcome. Smart man to skip the bloodshed and get to the end result.
cjet79
1yr ago
No, it did nothing. But it may have emboldened the next mob, the next coup , and that is reason enough to crush it.
Or it did exactly what it needed to do, which was make everyone aware that the symbol is dead and meaningless. The next mob will be approved or denied depending on the flag they wave, just as it was in all of 2020. There was no coup on January 6th, that is a ridiculous idea. The deep state need not commit a coup, it was already in charge and continued to be in charge.
Seems like you’re implying I ruined things, but I’m not blue tribe, american, or progressive. And you owe me one ring. Sex is sex, but money is cash.
You are admittedly a stand in for people that aren't here right now. The people I blame would never be on themotte, but I have to hear them talk all the same. All public lobbies decided at some point that news channels are the only thing that can ever be displayed, and since then my ability to ignore the clowns in Washington has decreased.
I don’t get your point. It’s over, democracy means nothing anymore, is that it? Boogaloo Day? Can’t tell the difference between the worst civil war and your day-to-day life? Wouldn't have pegged you as a blackpill overdose patient.
I don't think democracy and our government are a very important aspect of America. I see those things as downstream of culture and the market, and those are still pretty good and healthy in most places in America. It would be a shame to ruin the culture/market by starting a civil war.
Having a broken system of government is going to mean that cultural and market problems pile up for longer and our less likely to get solved. The fact that I usually don't have to worry about or deal with government was a feature, not a bug.
cjet79
1yr ago
Is the guy prosecuting his ex-fiancee for theft of the $5000 ring really hoping to have a harmonious marriage with her in the future?
If they were hoping to repair the broken symbology Harris should have made a point to pardon the most obviously peaceful protestors. Then she should have launched an investigation into the timing of the vaccine news release. Then launched an investigation into the people at the FBI responsible for suppressing the story about the former president's son and his corrupt dealings with Ukraine. Another large investigation would have been launched into the handling of the security at the event.
The outcome should have been a massive reform of the FBI, specifically making sure they get rid of all their "setup the retards to do terrorism" campaigns. An explicit expectation of non-partisanship, and a removal of the FBI and CIA from all internal political disputes.
And invite Trump to speak at Biden's funeral. The president passed peacefully in the night, two months into his presidency. Trump can hopefully be trusted to say a few nice things. He then is forced to retire from politics as the new old age restriction is added to the constitution. Trump goes back to being a cultural icon, and talking shit about how he is healthier than the young guys currently running.
That is the alternate history where I see things sorta kinda working out. The actual history we got looks like the American people saying "fuck it, lets try this again until you learn the lesson or we break this country apart".
cjet79
1yr ago
cjet79
1yr ago
Power resides where men believe it resides.
Even by that standard Jan 6th was harmless. Do you or anyone else believe that delaying that event changed who is president, or who won the election?
You're telling me about BLM and the democrats did this and that, and I sympathize, but really, it has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
I made the comparison in another post but I'll bring it up here. Man buys his girl $5000 engagement ring and proposes. A few months later she catches him cheating and throws out the ring in anger.
Man: "You are crazy why did you throw out the $5000 ring?"
Woman: "You cheated on me you asshole!"
Man: "I get that you feel bad and all, but what does that have to do with the ring? Can we please focus on the issue at hand."
Don't ruin the thing that is being symbolized and then complain that someone has trashed the now meaningless symbol. All of the complaints about ruining something sacred sound hollow.
cjet79
1yr ago
It feels very much like blaming a whistleblower for the crimes they uncover.
Or the toxic relationship equivalent of a guy calling his ex-fiancee "crazy" for throwing away the engagement ring when she caught him cheating. Yes, I get it dude, it was a $5000 ring, but maybe its your fault for cheating and ruining the relationship in the first place?
What people tend to forget is that a symbol being destroyed only really matters when the thing it symbolized has been hollowed out and rendered useless. If there had been a freak accident and the capital building was rendered unuseable on that day in January 6th, would democracy have been in danger? No, obviously not. They would have just reconvened and done the thing again. If that $5000 ring had been lost but they were a happy loving couple, its not like they would have called the wedding off. Even when the Capital buildings were burned down in the war of 1812 it was not a real threat to "democracy" or republican rule. Those institutions were strong at the time, and it meant they just put the symbol right back up and it continued to have meaning. And the fresh coat of white paint to cover up the burnt sections just became a fun new little tradition.
cjet79
1yr ago
According to this perspective, the march on rome was just a health-conscious bald man taking a stroll with friends.
Ah, sorry was there a military general leading armed troops into the capital? I must have missed that news story.
Protests that get talked about tend to either be symbolically important, or violent. There is often a claim that the January 6th riots were violent. I'd say by all standards established in 2020 the January 6th protest was peaceful. Was it symbolically important, yes, obviously.
Any state in such a situation is justified in using lethal force, and lots of it, way earlier than the US actually did here. It's a threat to democracy in a way burning the whole city of minneapolis to the ground isn't.
It wasn't a threat to democracy. It was a threat to the illusion and symbology of our democracy. There is a big difference. A threat to democracy would be something like withholding news of a major medical intervention until the day after the election. Or lying about evidence that suggests one of the candidates has a corrupt family member taking bribes from foreign governments. Or changing the rules of how the elections are carried out and risking massive security breaches in an untested process. Or working with all major social media platforms to censor your political opponents. Those things all hamper a people's ability to govern themselves. You cannot effectively govern if you are lied to, can't talk with one another, and can't trust the means of giving your voice to the government.
January 6th burned the symbol, but the deep state and media were busy trashing the thing it was supposed to symbolize for the last 4 years. We woke up afterwards, looked around and realized the power of the symbol was gone, and you blame the people that burnt it, not the ones that spent all their time undermining it.
Also the Roman Senate deserved what they had coming to them, they deserved much worse than Julius Caesar. It was a morally bankrupt empire that filled its coffers by looting foreign countries. They deserved to be ruled by force, because that is the way they sought to rule the rest of the world. So sad that one of their best looters realized he didn't need to ride all the way out to the frontier to do some good looting. Read the story of Carthage's fall and I dare you to tell me you don't hope there is a special place in hell for those people.
cjet79
1yr ago
A ceremony is supposed to symbolize something.
In this case a ritualized agreement that 'hey it was a good fight in the election, but we all agree it was fair, and we will now crown the winner'.
The obvious problem is that it didn't actually symbolize that for a decent portion of the country. I personally believe the actual votes were generally tallied correctly, but that it was not a "fair" election in many other senses of the word.
January 6th broke the symbol, but they certainly didn't break what it was supposed to symbolize. That was slowly broken over the preceding four years, and then quickly and fully broken in 2020.
I also generally believe that attacking symbols of a group is a bit more civilized than the alternative ... which is just directly targeting people in that group. When foreign protestors burn the American flag, its sometimes because they don't have an actual American to burn or behead. Taking a crap on pelosi's desk is better than showing up to her home and taking a hammer to her husband.
cjet79
1yr ago
I dated in the early era of dating apps, but it was a weirdly low success rate compared to in person interactions. (or maybe it wasn't weird and I was using the apps wrong)
I played a co-ed recreational sport. It was about 75-90% male. After a tournament there would usually be a party. About half the time I could find someone to be with for the night at those parties. Aside from me there were many couples that formed. Something about physical exercise gets the human mojo flowing. Probably part of why dance is such a good activity.
It does sound like you are in bad ratio environments, but I can't honestly say that always stopped me. I met my wife at work, where about 80% of coworkers were male. The unspoken benefit of a broken ratio environment is that getting picked means you are a top pick, and not just whats available. I think it tends to create situations where maybe the women are a little more interested.
In general, I'd say don't be worried. If your end goal is to meet someone and marry them, and you are getting any hits then time is on your side. It may not feel like it. But five years of getting a chance means you are probably going to get lucky. The people I know that stayed single well into adulthood did so for one of two reasons:
- They chose it. They did not want a committed relationship, only sex and flings.
- They accepted it. They did not even attempt to get out in the dating game. They never asked anyone out, never flirted, and never even left the house.
Keep it up, you'll meet someone. Might take longer than you wanted, but don't lose hope. The dating 'game' is a game you can only lose by quitting.
cjet79
1yr ago
invaded by an angry mob
They were invaded by the 2nd politest mob of the covid era. Politest goes to the canadian trucker convoy.
There was only a single death from violence, and it was a protestor shot by security. I think all the other deaths were via heart attack, including the one security guard that people originally claim was attacked with a fire extinguisher.
Nothing was burned down. No one was run over by a car. There were no large scale medieval weapons fights. The "mob" dispersed when asked to.
There were a few groups of FBI informants that roped in a few retards to plan on doing more stuff. They got caught and heavily prosecuted, the same way every other group like this has been caught and prosecuted. The racial makeup and supposed "motivations" of the retards has changed, but the FBI playbook hasn't.
I normally don't care to comment on Trump stuff, but I don't like the massive gaslighting that it feels like we all went through during 2020.
During the summer of 2020 there were massive riots in the streets. Cars, police stations, and businesses burned to the ground and looted. Large physical confrontations in the streets. People out at the wrong time being beaten to death by mobs. It was helpfully pointed out the time that the protestors themselves didn't carry out these beatings or killings. I'm sure the victims of the violence felt much better in their afterlives knowing that their deaths were only tangentially caused by the lawlessness that the protests created.
The health authorities that had insisted on everyone being locked down and not going outside to even mingle within parks also wrote a blank check to these protestors. They were no longer "super spreader" events, but some weird health carve out where protesting police violence somehow made you immune to spreading covid.
That was the context of the January 6th protest. Some people broke some windows and busted down a door, and then a bunch of others just calmly walked through the capital building like they were on tour and took silly photos like it was a fairground. Meanwhile every news station in the country breathlessly talked about the "violence" of the January 6th protest. The same news stations that were talking about the "peaceful" protests that same summer as buildings burned in the background of the newscast.
"They interrupted an important government function" - someone, hopefully not you
No, they interrupted a ceremony of the state religion. The presidential level of politics isn't a place of law and order, its a place of feelings, perception, and group consensus. At most it caused the equivalent of a rain delay, and it was all still done within a day. There was no plausible way that delaying the ceremonies on January 6th would have impacted who was president for the 2020-2024 term. Even if the ceremony had somehow never happened, Biden would still have become president. Because most of the US government acknowledged him as such.
The January 6th incident has caused the media to invent this weird perception that our government is one delayed ceremony away from being overthrown. As if every top leader in the country is a rules following robot, where if the proper procedures aren't exactly followed then they'll just collapse in a heap and stop functioning. We are supposed to believe this despite mountains of evidence to the contrary ... the explicit rules of the constitution have been broken many times, and the typical reaction, if there is any at all, is a collective shrug.
cjet79
1yr ago
I've changed slowly over many years. Was an INFP Myers Briggs personality type as a kid and teen. Now I consistently test INTJ, and the degree of introvertedness has gone down a lot.
The noticeable effect is that I am much more hard hearted. Can be good and bad sometimes.
I think there are some limits on how much you can change, depending on your brain. Even the most socially inclined autists are at a social disadvantage. I spent years trying to fight and cope with depression through willpower and habits alone before giving up and getting medicine.
I think most people are more mentally flexible than they give themselves credit for. But it takes many years of good habits to create the change. The main way to do it is just pretend to be the person you want to be, and if you do that long enough you no longer have to pretend eventually.
cjet79
1yr ago
I've wondered if my dad is a faker. He'd certainly want to look cool to his son I suppose.
That is interesting and hopeful to hear about the soldiers that hold back. There was some famous account from WWI about them having trouble motivating their soldiers to kill each other.
Is There some sense of morality or honor playing in? For the soldiers in WWI 'i dont want to kill this poor idiot who got drafted into the same dumb war as me'. For a modern soldier, 'I dont want to kill the dumb son of a poor family that got paid $5 to drop off a thing on the side of the road'.
I've always found those accounts hard to believe. Mostly from introspection. I've tried to type out an explanation a few different ways. They all seem wrongish. I'm just gonna go with the summary, take my word for it, all of these sentences are things I have thought through thoroughly:
I don't think I'm a psychopath. I don't want to kill other people. In a war, I think it would be easy for me to kill other people and feel very little remorse. If I had to use violence to kill them, I think it would permanently fuck me up, and I don't think I'd be very good at it.
Modern warfare has done an interesting thing where they have disassociated killing people with violence. A drone pilot can press a button and kill an entire wedding party while seeing only faint black and white outlines of bodies. The kind of man that could go to that same wedding party and cut them down with a blade is a very different person. There is a spectrum between those two people, and I think the infantry is much closer to the second kind of man than they are to the drone pilot. I'd consider myself close to the drone pilot.
It is weird to think that I'm not capable of violence, but I think I'm capable of killing someone.
Some of the "violent class" might be able to switch it off when they enter into civilian life
Nope. The only ones who can "switch it off" never had it to start with.
I've had a similar belief, but I was trying to be generous.
cjet79
1yr ago
No, it won't operate mostly the same. New topics will be crappier and crappier.
There will be a point where (if its not there already) where people talk about 20XX wikipedia, and how it was so much than today's. And if you see an article edit after 20XX just ignore the edit and read the old stuff.
Wikipedia will trade on the remnants of their old reputation to gain funding.
cjet79
1yr ago
I had a father that wanted to be the point of the spear. Luckily for me he didn't make it. Most of his military career was spent trying to get out of a tank division and not end up in jail for leaving. Timing also helped, he joined after Vietnam. He wanted to join Green Beret, and in his approximate words "they should have just dropped me off in a jungle and let me kill those gooks".
The "violent class" definitely fits. He grew up with stories of him and his friends having bb-gun wars where they'd shoot at each other with pellet rifles. He was on the cross country team in highschool, which routinely did illegal things, and simply outran the cops through back woods whenever shit hit the fan. After finally getting out of the military he did manage to complete a college degree on his second attempt. The stories I've picked up suggested that he was in a few fights in college.
I've inherited some of his anger and temper, but I've always avoided situations where that anger or temper might be directed at strangers. I also don't know how to fight, and I consider that a good thing. It would be bad if I felt I had the option of fighting.
He is no longer part of the "violent class" and I feel like I dodged a bullet. There was a temporary glance into that alternate lifestyle when I was too young to remember. My older brother and mom have stories of him coming from the bar every other night drunk and angry. They would hide under the table until he went to bed. He never beat my mother or older brother, but it was fear of living with that type of person.
Some of the "violent class" might be able to switch it off when they enter into civilian life. But I feel like I've heard plenty of stories where they could not switch it off. They've been taught violence as a way to solve problems, and they apply it throughout their lives. Argument with the wife? Violence. Kids misbehaving? Violence. Someone being a jerk in public? Violence.
My sister nearly married a cop a few years back. My main worry was that he would get violent with her. Instead he just cheated on her and dumped her a few months before the wedding. More of a typical dirtbag guy move, and not a violent dirtbag guy move.
From my somewhat sheltered perspective violence looks like a slow spreading disease. In order to handle it you have to be inoculated to it. The soldiers and police of our society are often familiar with violence before they ever experience it within their profession. They then take it home and spread it to their families. The first time I ever heard the term "generational trauma" I thought this is what it referred to.
How much of man's violence is the brutality of nature, and how much is from painful nurture?
cjet79
1yr ago
Wikipedia will soon eat its own in a purity spiral.
People always remember that the left takes over organizations, but they forget what happens afterwards. They become the victims of their own successful take over. The information isn't as good. The place isn't as fun. A group of people that live off of being victims must find an oppressor.
Scott Alexander already had to go through a minor version of this with the NYT article. The article talked to an admin of wikipedia that had things to say about Scott Alexander, the NYT repeated those allegations, that wikipedia admin then went and edited the article about Scott to effectively cite himself saying things about Scott.
They barely turned it over when this bullshit became known within the wiki community. And the admin that did it? No punishments, no loss of admin status, not even a slap on the wrist as far as I know.
Scott is a heterodox leftist for the online world. But he is still very much a leftist in the real world compared to real voters. He is to the left of about 90-99% of the country on most issues.
They'll keep purging until it starts falling apart, and then they'll beg for and likely receive government funding to stay afloat.
cjet79
1yr ago
I had my highest hopes in 2016, when Gary Johnson (a good governor, who won reelection 55-45 against a Hispanic Democrat challenger in a 40%-Hispanic blue state) was going up against the most-unpopular and the second-most-unpopular (as measured by opinion polls) major party presidential candidates ever. These hopes don't pan out. The mathematics of voting are complicated, but everybody has an intuitive understanding that a plurality vote for a non-frontrunner "doesn't count", so if someone's not neck-and-neck quickly or doesn't stay that way up to election day then they might as well be out of the race entirely. Kennedy's best chance lies in actuarial tables; an average 77-80 year old male has a 4-6% chance of dying in any given year.
It was the only time I voted in a presidential election. I was hoping Gary Johnson would at least get 5%. Which is a break even for certain legal thresholds in various places.
Otherwise my only motivation for voting is being able to say "I didn't vote for them" whenever the topic of the president comes up.
cjet79
1yr ago
protect thing X from being taken with force by those who are young enough and strong enough to do so
...
some element of coercive redistribution on the young
Seems like a bit of topsy turvy logic to call "not allowing young people to steal" the same as "coercive redistribution". Most people would consider is "coercive redistribution" if you did allow young people to just steal whatever resources they wanted just because they are young and strong.
Old people aren't the only ones who like to save resources, I'm young, I still like to save up and occasionally splurge on larger purchases. A system of saving benefits everyone. Even if I knew for a fact that retirement was unavailable to me I'd still often save money. I wouldn't be saving as much maybe, but still saving.
Saving valuable assets is really just a continuation of owning that thing in the first place. If you want to think of ownership as coercive, then sure go ahead. I wouldn't want to live in a world without ownership. There probably isn't enough common ground for us to have an economic discussion if you believe ownership is coercive.
cjet79
1yr ago
It has happened, just not in the US. China and Russia have had their periodic purges and confiscations from rich individuals.
I can't help too much, because I've always gone desktop, even when I didn't necessarily have tons of space. I feel like the difference between a laptop on a desk and a desktop on a desk is usually very minimal. The Tower for a desktop computer can also go under the desk, and the wires just poke up to operate the screen. The screen can be placed farther back from the keyboard so you can have a healthier eye distance for a screen. A Tower also has far more flexibility on the type of plugs available. Usually as much as your hardware can handle you can manage to get plugs on the outside of the tower connecting it all together.
Here are my current desktop specs:
CPU Brand: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
RAM: 64GB
SSD sizes: 2000G,1000G
I think that would break your budget, but I'm able to play modern tripple A games at mid or high graphics settings, so its also overkill from your perspective.
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