coffee_enjoyer's profile

coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

[re-quoting yourself] ”You seem to have misunderstood the point of the opening, which was to contest your characterization of the limit of child soldiers, which itself wasn't limited to Hamas. A child soldier is not a 16 year old. A child soldier is a child who is used in the function of war, regardless of their age, and as such age alone does not disprove someone from being a combatant unless the age is so low that they physically cannot.”

The definition of “child soldier” is <18, agreed. Ages lower than 18 do not preclude one from classification as a child soldier, agreed. But the NYT focuses on <13 children, and my original post specifies <13. This means we are not talking about legal definitions, but a specific cohort of <13 children. If Hamas is not employing <13 children, then the IDF is not expected to be killing <13 child soldiers. If the IDF is not expected to be killing <13 child soldiers, then we shouldn’t have loads of dead <13 children. Yet there’s evidence that we do have these dead <13 children (NYT+Guardian). So Hamas’ hypothetical employment of teenagers is an immaterial red herring to this topic.

The issue of child soldiers was raised as was a definitional dispute

I don’t see why a definitional dispute would be raised at all.

and as an omission not addressed by the NYT editorial that served as the OP's basis of posting

They did not need to address it, because it’s immaterial to their reporting.

Moreover, child soldiers had nothing to do with the majority of arguments in the post nominated for the AAQC

It was the quoted line and it was included in your post as an argument. It is what I find most disagreeable, and I don’t have to post everything I find disagreeable.

The concluding arguments didn't even raise child soldiers as a basis for the children being shot when listing a half dozen competing hypothesis.

Right but you included it and it was quoted in the award. Perhaps some other time we can discuss your other arguments if I don’t get banned for doing that.

Since this clarifying argument was not disputed, challenged, or otherwise responded to

This is too opaque for me to decipher exactly what you mean.

and the entire subject of child soldiers was only used in the AAQC as the introductory lead-in / hook and to establish a relevant topic missing from the NYT editorial

It was an assertion, and you didn’t prove it was a relevant topic to their reporting.

it is possible that the clarification has simply been ignored to further advance criticism of the position

Not sure what you mean.

just as the sources discussing to the Hamas youth wing child soldier activity within the last decade that was referenced within your article was also ignored

Now we are getting close to something. “Hamas youth wing child soldier activity within the last decade”. Wonderful. Is it <13 children and what’s the evidence?

Truzman 2021 is supposed to be evidence that Hamas employs pre-teen child soldiers. Rather, it’s evidence that there is a military summer camp for teenagers run by Hamas. America also has military summer camps for teenagers. JROTC begins as young as 15, and there are military camps that begin as young as 8. “Hanover and the surrounding districts combine for Young Marines meetings, with a total of around 40 students. Nationwide, the youth group has around 300 clubs. The ages range from 8-18.” They do gymnastics, drills, maybe some shooting practice. Do the tens of thousands of children at American military summer camps constitute clear evidence that America employs child soldiers? No. Of course not. And that’s the same for Hamas. A Hamas summer camp is not the same as employing child soldiers, any more than an American military summer camp is the same as employing child soldiers. Israel has similar summer programs.

There is no military necessity argument for training children instead of adults if you want adult soldiers.

Why do both America and Israel do the same thing? From the New York Times

“They told us it was mandatory,” Ms. Thomas said. J.R.O.T.C. programs, taught by military veterans at some 3,500 high schools across the country, are supposed to be elective, and the Pentagon has said that requiring students to take them goes against its guidelines. But The New York Times found that thousands of public school students were being funneled into the classes without ever having chosen them, either as an explicit requirement or by being automatically enrolled. […] J.R.O.T.C. classes, which offer instruction in a wide range of topics, including leadership, civic values, weapons handling and financial literacy, have provided the military with a valuable way to interact with teenagers at a time when it is facing its most serious recruiting challenge since the end of the Vietnam War. While Pentagon officials have long insisted that J.R.O.T.C. is not a recruiting tool, they have openly discussed expanding the $400 million-a-year program, whose size has already tripled since the 1970s, as a way of drawing more young people into military service. The Army says 44 percent of all soldiers who entered its ranks in recent years came from a school that offered J.R.O.T.C.

Now you claim that at these camps the “children” (teens) are taught to take hostages. But when Israel takes back PoWs they also put cloth over their head, so you can’t allege allege from this they are being trained in atypical terrorism or something.

certainly a take for an ongoing practice in the current war.

This article specifically says that “as young as 14” are attending training, not that they are being employed by Hamas. If I attend JROTC, am I being employed as an American child soldier?

It is also not covering easily-findable but also easily-dismissed-on-account-of-(Israeli-)sourcing from the current war, which includes reports of children-sized explosive belts, children carrying explosives in vegetable bags to hamas ambush points

Correct, Israeli wartime propaganda can be dismissed in the same breath as Hamas wartime propaganda. We have third party observers: UN, Amnesty, journalists, doctors. Israel is trying to eradicate third party observers from Palestine, of course. Something Israel can do is take their abundant drone recordings and share to the world examples of child soldiers, right?

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

The only way that “Hamas has a sordid history of [preteen] child soldiers [including 10yo grenade lobbers]” has relevance to the topic is if it’s understood that Hamas is employing them today, or is probably employing them today. Because if Hamas employed them and then stopped, and there hasn’t been evidence of it for more than a decade (despite the eager wishes of Israel apologists), in fact possibly two decades, and the cases of their employ in the early 00s and earlier are sporadic and unusual, then their “sordid history” is immaterial. The normal way of reading Dean’s statement is that Hamas continues to employ these child soldiers, because otherwise there’s no reason to bring it up. Surely no one would allege that, because Israelis assassinated the UN security member Folke Bernadotte in 1948, that it’s now likely they are continuing to assassinate UN security members, and that every article about Israel must include their “sordid history of assassinating UN representatives”. Or because Israel assassinated European scientists in 1962 under Project Damocles, that Israel has a “sordid history of assassinating European civilians” that must be brought up in every news article. “NYT ought to report on Hamas’ history of child soldiers” only makes sense if child soldiers are employed today, because the article is about the killed kids of Gaza, and if they aren’t employed today then IDF units aren’t justified in killing kids under the assumption that they are child soldiers.

you cannot follow the comment to an AAQC roundup and start shitting on the process. It's obnoxious.

If that’s how you interpret criticism I don’t know what to say.

You even pulled the stupid language games trick here--"my last top-level post" throws in a completely unnecessary qualifier to determining whether you're a little too focused

Wow, so the ban on talking about Israel even includes sub-comments?

on something for the community's comfort

That’s an excellent idea actually, put it to the community in a poll — should we ban people who discuss Israel too much and what qualifies as too much. Or do you mean the mods?

So I'm actually gritting my teeth and being extra patient with you about this: stop it.

The threats or whatever are so lame.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

The PDF I provided explicitly mentions children under 15

It’s a general article about all kinds of child soldiers in the history of Palestine, so naturally.

which Hamas has recruited in its history, in some cases quite recently

The article you cite has a paragraph on page 8 which mentions historic practices, linking to a publication from 2001 for the alleged recruitment of someone under 15. Then there’s reference to an Amnesty article from 2004. The amnesty article from 2004 does in fact mention an 11yo who regularly carried bags across the border and once carried a bag that had an explosive, but 2004 is in fact two decades ago. Do you believe that Amnesty has recently published findings about child soldier use by Hamas? Where can I read this?

But one of the reasons for me to not get into the substance with you is that you have shown no inclination to actually accept evidence when it is provided to you

This is a mediocre excuse. You have Amnesty, HRW, and the UN who have specific divisions involved in monitoring use of child soldiers in Palestine, and all over the world. Your paper just doesn’t seem to actually say that, except for an event two decades ago.

I anticipated you would do that, and now you have done it, so there is evidently no reason to continue to attempt to meet your demands

Just say “fine, there is no evidence of Hamas employing preteen soldiers in recent years. Dean lied.”

you are under no obligation to like Dean's post, or to accept his or my evidence of anything

I am under an obligation to accept your and Dean’s evidence. That evidence has not appeared on this forum, but I’m definitely obliged to accept it. To think that 10yos are lobbing grenades at the IDF and everyone is in a conspiracy to hide it…

It's clearly something you care about a lot, for reasons I cannot fathom

According to the NYT Opinion team, recently republished by those antisemites over at Haaretz, and reinforced by separate journalism at the Guardian, there’s compelling evidence that Israeli soldiers are shooting children in the head too much. This is generally considered to be a bad thing.

I should simply ban you from discussing Israel

There’s no easy way for me to check but I think my last top-level post on Israel was about a year ago. Just make a special rule on TheMotte that posters aren’t allowed to criticize Israel too much.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago · Edited 8mo ago

You are uncharitably characterizing my comment here. What I have asserted is that Dean refused to provide a source for his claim, the very claim that is quoted in the quality contribution, when pressed on the claim and asked to provide a source (both of which I linked). There’s a rule that someone should “proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be”. The claim or implication that Hamas employs pre-teen child soldiers is partisan, and he didn’t even provide it when asked. Yet this earned him a quality contribution, which is surprising to me. (All of this you write off as “grumping because it doesn’t reinforce my preferred narrative”. Brother, I am writing on themotte in critique of Israel in the war, I am well aware that I won’t be finding much agreement. I have never cared about agreement here, but I do care if the standards for quality are reduced to rubble.)

emphasis on pre-teen

You need to understand the context of the original thread in order to understand this qualification. The NYT specifies pre-teen children being shot in their reporting, so we were never concerned with teen soldiers. Teen soldiers were never part of the conversation. Our only interest is pre-teen child soldiers because the children who were shot were all in that age cohort. This is obvious in the original back and forth which is quoted in the beginning of Dean’s reply

”I think this is a brilliant bit of journalism. First, they specify preteen children who are killed, a hugely important qualifier for a conflict which may see 16-year-old boys plant IEDS.” [quoting me] ...because the spiritual purity of 15-and-younger boys disarms explosives?”

That is the beginning of Dean’s comment. Now, it’s possible Dean simply misunderstood here, but 15-and-younger isn’t preteen. That would be 12 and under. The conflict may see 16yo plant IEDS, which is an example and not a limit case. In other words, because it may be that a 16yo plants IEDS, we look only total preteen dead. And it may even be that a 15yo plants an IED, or 14yo. Etc.

Dean goes on to make clear he really believes that Hamas employs pre-teen child soldiers in his original reply:

You may feel this is brilliant journalism, but nothing in it really addresses child soldiers, which have a sordid history in islamic extremism even without touching on Hamas' deathcult tendencies. Child soldiers aren't merely 'are they big enough to carry a gun', which can be well below 10, but 'are they old enough to throw stone-heavy grenades,' which is even less. A preteen can easily be a child soldier, and even a cutoff of 6 is being arbitrary in terms of 'can they provide militarily-useful tasks.' [emphasis mine]

Dean implies two claims here: Hamas is employing those under the age of 10 to lob grenades; and Hamas is employing pre-teens as young as 6 in militarily-useful tasks. This is how it is read, surely, because Dean says the article doesn’t go into Hamas’ history of child soldiers. Now, the only reason to go into Hamas’ history of child soldiers is if there is some reason to believe they are currently in their employ, or recently in their employ. (Certainly, “Hamas used a child soldier once in 1988” would be an insane way to explain away why doctors in Gaza see dead preteen children daily). That is because we are talking about current dead preteen children, not any from decades ago.

— — —

Replying to the rest of your comment:

but Google gave me this (PDF warning) pretty readily

Again, we are focusing on preteen soldiers, the original subject matter. The only real evidence from this pdf is in the 2021 UN address where it is quoted

call upon the al-Qassam Brigades to cease the recruitment

And if you read the 2021 report (pdf) it identifies only one “child” (that is, under 18 with no specification of preteen) being “recruited”. This appears to be in reference to their summer camps and not a military use (?), so in other words training, but I’m not entirely sure because it doesn’t specify. This does not provide evidence of preteen soldiers, indeed the age isn’t mentioned, neither is the role of the recruit mentioned.

I'm not going to get into [sources] with you

Lmao of course. Well look, Dean provided an empirical claim, for which he received a quality contribution, which does not appear to be evidenced, which he flatly refused to provide evidence of. So, okay, don’t get into sources with me, but is this really the standard you want on themotte? You yourself googled it, and there’s no reference in it to preteen soldier in recent employ by Hamas, at least from my reading. So… yeah.

your emphasis on "pre-teen" and the way you referenced "the past decade" while quoting Dean referencing "the last few decades" suggest very strongly to my mind that you are not engaging charitably, or even just honestly.

Hilarious. The heart of Dean’s claim is that there is reason to believe Hamas is employing preteen soldiers. It actually matters if the evidence is from this decade or two decades ago. Is there any evidence from this decade? Or even since 2005?

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

Re Dean’s highlighted comment for

”but nothing in it really addresses child soldiers, which have a sordid history in islamic extremism even without touching on Hamas' deathcult tendencies."

Just for the record, @Dean was never able to provide any evidence that Hamas uses pre-teen child soldiers. In fact he refused to even supply a link. You can read the follow up exchange here where he writes —

If someone is actually interested in whether Hamas uses child soldiers, they can very trivially google "Hamas Child Soldiers" and find multiple reports on the history by organizations including Amnesty International, Child Soldiers International, and the United Nations, among others. This doesn't even include self-publicized material such as from the Hamas Youth Wing. These aren't even 'new' reporting- there are easily observable reports from the early 2000s during the tail end of the Intifada years to late last decade, well before the current conflict. Any observer of the conflict with any significant experience has read any one of these over the last few decades- they are old news, not particularly controversial, and numerous.

— after someone noted that he refused to post a source. He actually made me go looking for his own unevidenced allegation, yet I could find zero evidence from any organization that Hamas utilized pre-teen child soldiers in the past decade. The closest was:

that Hamas once used a 17yo but that they made commitments to not recruit below 18. That was back in 2004. Something similar was published by Amnesty in 2005.

So I’m still waiting on Hamas’ “sordid history of child soldiers”. I’m surprised you can get a quality contribution for an empirical claim that you flatly refuse to supply evidence for.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

Is the visual experience at a movie theater noticeably greater than the experience with the highest end of smaller screens?

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

This Is England (2006) is a fun movie about that. Green Street is also a fun but different movie. The Brits need to keep their white working class around just so that we get more of these movies, IQ be damned.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

JD Vance comes off as a normal guy. More normal than Kamala, Trump, Joe, Pence IMO. Obama had charisma, but his artifice was obvious in longer conversations — too effortful. Vance is so normal that if you removed the political parts and told someone Joe picked a random guy off the street, it would be believable. And his audience isn’t some biased conservative audience, it’s about as average Joe as you can get, and the conclusion in the comments is that Vance is just a normal dude. This isn’t always the case — comments often criticize guests for being blowhards or criticize Joe for not letting guests finish.

This cements my thought that the “Vance is weird” campaign is a fully enclosed propaganda ecosystem, as in, it isn’t exaggerating some aspect of Vance (eg “Trump lies”), it is just totally made up. And that’s really spooky, because there’s a section of the public that will believe whatever the DNC wants them to believe. If they can make you believe Vance is weird they can make you believe anything.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

But why should the reader trust you in your descriptions of art?

the greatest works of art are the ones that induce the most trauma

[art is] wasteful, irrational, even to the point of being actively detrimental; but that's what makes it beautiful.

The way you define art is probably not what most people mean by art. It’s also not how art was understood for centuries in both the West and East. Worse yet, it doesn’t predict a subset of art that people love, like Da Vinci and Wes Anderson movies and Miyazaki movies.

Why shouldn’t utilitarianism (or approximately that) inform us about good art? For instance, we can say that good art benefits us. This includes sorrowful art where that sorrow aids in our adaption to reality. It includes horrific art, where that horror aids in our cultural wisdom. It includes architecture we intuitively find beautiful, because the experience of beauty is pleasant and healing. And it excludes art that many people find mediocre, like Michael Bay and abstract modern art. This definition would also exclude pornography, because there is little benefit to art that includes pornography, because pornography is immediately distracting due to human nature.

The only “traumatic” art I can think of for centuries of European history is the crucifixion. I’ve written about this enough on themotte, but traumatically bonding with the Christ is a way to effect beneficial personal and social change. It’s not trauma for trauma’s sake, it’s participating in a traumatic death to enjoy a dramatic rebirth.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

You are welcome to practice Bogomilism, but because the movement already died out it’s improbable that it contains beneficial features that haven’t already been incorporated by mainstream orthodoxy. With tradition, what is beneficial is kept and what is harmful is culled over generations. Whichever group utilizes the best traditions is the group that has the healthiest families, the best social order, and the most industrious members. It’s for this reason that atheism is an infertile abnormality in the history of mankind, why a great atheist nation never developed, and why the cultures that went full atheism inevitably rediscover religion (France, Buddhism). Instead of the humble acknowldgement that “my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me”, the atheist believes that all he should believe is all that he knows. Illogical, given the limitations of the human mind.

But anyway, I think atheists should be allowed to spend their school credits however they wish. They should be happy about that — wouldn’t they get an advantage from 8 extra secular non-religious credits?

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

There’s no reason to believe that religions which perished in the past are going to be as competitive as new and evolving religions. It’s a theological survival of the fittest; you wouldn’t think business practices in 1600 were better than today, right?

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

Puerto Rico is a political entity; supporters are human beings. Puerto Rico has so much corruption that its anti-corruption laws created new industries of corruption. Its former governor was arrested on bribery recently, and in only six months, 10% of all mayors were arrested for corruption. Calling the place garbage is a normal way of describing such a cesspool of corruption. Let’s also dwell on that last phrase: a cesspool is for storing sewage, the worst kind of garbage. Trump himself has called America a “cesspool of ruin” due to crime, and DC a cesspool of corruption — was he being racist against Americans here? Obviously not.

This is all a very normal way of talking about things, and the distinction between entity and ethnicity is important. If Puerto Rico wants to be part of America then it needs to handle the bants — calling New Jersey trash or an “armpit” has been common for decades. It’s shocking to me that some people care more about how we describe a horrible place than that this horrible place is within the domain of America. Why not acknowledge it is garbage and focus on how to fix it up?

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

If we’re arguing outside the premise of the First Amendment then there are valuable reasons for why a State would wish to permit the exercise of religion. (1) It’s a social technology that increases fertility, wellbeing, and civic engagement. (2) Ethics as a discipline lacks the moral force of religious language and ritual in promoting behavior and community, because religion involves personification and story and metaphor (and what you call myths). Ethics is to ethical behavior what “learning about oxytocin” is to experiencing love; religion is the beautiful woman. (3) The State should allow for competing forms of religious and ethical thought because humans have yet to determine the best one, and diversity will increase competition so we can judge them by their fruits.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

Israel says Unrwa staff have colluded with Hamas in Gaza, and claimed 19 Unrwa workers took part in the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023.

The UN investigated Israel’s claim and fired nine of those accused, but it said Israel had not provided evidence for broader allegations. Unrwa insists that dealings with Hamas are purely to enable the agency to do its job.

According to the UN, there’s only evidence to warrant the firing of nine UNRWA staff.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

What you’ve listed are leisure activities. Video games, fantasies, sports, and playing an instrument are for leisure. (Unless a student is exceptional, they have just one hour a week of a violin teacher or something which may constitute non-leisure education, I suppose). The fact that students do not typically learn from books/teachers in an organized setting away from their school system strongly indicates that school has a monopoly on non-leisure learning. What we can call “book learning”. But book learning is an essential part of religious indoctrination, which means it is an essential part of the exercise of religion. A human is simply not able to absorb “book learning” after ~6 hours of secular education with 1-2 hours of at-home work. To me this means that we have thwarted the free exercise of religion. We have overburdened the right.

I am sure that there are religions who mandate that their followers study their scripture for at least five hours a day

One hour is more reasonable, but adding an hour of book-learning on top of the modern school curriculum is an unreasonable burden. I think up to two hours is acceptable.

Do you generally propose a system where the general taxes of people in some special interest groups are used for the goals of these groups? So the religious taxpayers get to fund religious education, while the taxes paid by of fans of adult entertainment go to fund state-run strip clubs?

Category error. Religion is not mere special interest or mere hobby. Religion is a special protected activity for a reason: it encompasses urgent, existential and totalizing moral concerns. It’s its own category of human activity. And the believer necessarily believes that the education in his religion is urgent and essential.

Ideally, taxes are there for universal expenses […] But the key point is that taxes go to what society has decided are collective needs

Your theory of taxation is not an enshrined right. But freedom of religion is such a right. It’s both more logical and more just for the tax revenue from a religious group to go toward that group’s religious education — not with extra money, because that overburdens their right to religious exercise. If they are paying for 18 “credits” of high school, then allow them to substitute 8 of these credits for up to “8” religious credits. This way the school is not funding religious education except with the funds of those who desire to practice their right to pursue religious education.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

The free exercise of religion is thwarted when the state mandates that you cannot exercise religion in public school, because the exercise of religion necessitates regular practice and study, and this necessity conflicts with the time schedule and obligations of secular education. 8am to 3pm every day of the workweek, with extra-curriculars extending that to 5pm, effectively abolishes religion if religion is not included in the classroom. A good solution is to allow the taxes of religious people to go towards their own religious education which is to take place in public or private school. The “separation of church and state” is a succinct phrase which helps explain why the free exercise of religion can’t be prohibited, but it shouldn’t be misunderstood to mean that the state prohibits religious activity in state facilities — if anything it means that it must allow all kinds of religious activity in state facilities. This includes religious activity in schools.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

There’s an interesting study which found that “postponing a desire” reduces temptation more than swearing it off altogether. The postponing must be unspecific to be most effective: “I will enjoy this later”, without specifying a date. There are other studies that claim this result. The mechanism is in dispute but I think it has to do with the perception of scarcity and the belief that the enjoyment is easily obtained in abundance (just, later. Not right now.). If so this has lots of fun implications for culture. When Muslims say that the afterlife is filled with sensual enjoyment, are they raising up the sensual to heavenly heights, as is argued? Maybe not. If they believe that at some unspecified future time, they will get to enjoy as much wine and food and women as they want, then this may paradoxically reduce their desire for these things in the world: it isn’t scarce or urgent, it will be enjoyed in abundance, so no need to desire it so much. There may be implications for the reduction of casual sex too, where the emphasis should be less on “don’t do this pleasurable thing ever”, and more on “you get to enjoy as much sex as you want at an unspecified future date, so don’t worry about it now”.

I think there’s something to this. I mean, when companies want to induce desire they increase the perception of scarcity and rarity and urgency, so to reduce desire you decrease these as well.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

It makes sense that Hamas members would be found working at the organization, as the org employs 13k Palestinians. This says nothing about UNRWA really, only about the nature of secretive political movements. Literally any organization that employs 13k in Palestine will have some of its members go on to collude with Hamas. A radicalization rate of 9 out of 13k is insignificant, and actually tells us they UNRWA does a good job vetting its employees. “0.007% of UNRWA were determined by the UN to be working with Hamas”is another way to put this. None of them in leadership position at UNRWA but just working as drivers or teachers. So this seems more like casus belli for cutting aid.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

Rape fetishes usually involve implied consent. The “rapist” is the most attractive person in the erotica’s universe, and the protagonist usually knows that he would stop if she didn’t enjoy it. We should probably just stop calling it rape fetish altogether and call it dominance fetish or something. The phenomenon of the fetish is totally distinct from the real world phenomenon of rape.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

It’s about creating a strong unconscious distaste for Trump by associating him with the most universally distasteful political “thing”. Its Cue->Response, pure animal psychology. My dog doesn’t leave the yard because she will get zapped; my sibling gets nauseous smelling cinnamon rolls because it reminds them of long car rides; the subject doesn’t vote for Trump because when his name is said by the TV the tone gets grim and they hear the word Hitler. I think that’s it. Vance weird, Trump Hitler, say it over thousands of trials across different contexts and it will stick. There’s no thinking required at all. How did Voldemort and the N-word become verboten? The same process: the word is said (cue), there is an immediate stimuli associated to it (response, the verbal response of others), this occurs over iterations until you are now afraid to utter the word.

But clearly some people really believe Trump is a Nazi

Truly believing Trump is Hitler would lead to the moral prerogative to commit illegal acts. Clearly, the vast majority of Dems do not believe he is Hitler, or even Hitler-lite, because they aren’t storing weapons and organizing resistance networks. “The resistance” political meme is like Star Wars cosplay, whereas if they really believed he was Hitlerly it would be like the IRA. You can draw a comparison to abortion. How many people really believe that abortion is murder? The same amount of people spending every weekend protesting it and being jailed in doing so. If the store down the street were massacring children by the dozens every month would you really be watching football on the weekends?

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

Young Latinos love KillTony and older Latinos from Puero Rico are probably critical of their home country. I doubt it changes their vote.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

Well, do you think that Jeff Bezos would not have created Amazon if he didn’t expect to gain hundreds of billions of dollars? Do you think Bezos would not continue to run Amazon if a competitor popped up which reduced his profit by tens of billions of dollars? We would still have Amazon if we literally took billions of dollars from Bezos, so those billions are genuinely just wasted. Inefficiently allocated.

”People rationally decide things” is much better than “the whims of economic chance are magically right about how much profit the founder of Amazon should get”.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

Tax deduction or credit to those earning less than 160k a year. Why not? I understand this is functionally just redistribution from wealthy to less, but if you call it a tariff more people will be supportive than “we are literally going to redistribute money now”. It has a nice conservative tinge. But also, this isn’t my steel-man of tariffs per the OP.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

Which option are you talking about? I do not support a tariff where the revenue doesn’t go to those who have more use for the money. I don’t know the fine print of Trump’s “replace income tax with tariff plan”, but we can imagine a policy where the revenue of a tariff disproportionately benefits the lower through middle classes. Well, if everyone pays the tariff, and if wealthy people pay slightly more of the tariff because they import somewhat more goods, but if all the revenue goes to the lower and middle class, then the lower and middle class wind up having more money at the end of the day, implying that price increases pass on to all consumers equally and no American industry develops.

Unless I’m misreading you, then this doesn’t have to do with % income spent on tariff at all, so it’s simply a case of imported red herring to talk about % of income going to the tariff. Everyone pays tariff, and that total money goes to lower/middle class. I would support that. If that is what you were asking.

But the policy I support is a tariff so high that American industry develops. This has all the benefits of the aforementioned with one key difference: we now see wages rise because there is more middle class employment opportunity and employers must pay more to recruit workers.

The excess consumption of the wealthy is largely in the form of luxury services (personal cleaners, drivers, chefs, accountants, lawyers, etc.) or housing

Sadly it’s also in wasteful vacations, multiple cars, rolexes, foreign alcohol, cocaine, ayuahuasca retreats, multiple homes, homes that are too big, private jets and yachts, superfluous degrees. If we apply pressure on their finances they are likely to keep the stuff from your list but get rid of the truly crazy amount of inefficient resource waste from my list.

where most people are just unwilling/unable to buy that good any more

Before that happens the profit margin would evaporate, with the businesses owned by billionaires forced to cut into their profit margin.

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coffee_enjoyer ☕️ 8mo ago

I think so, yes, you need the tariff to be so high that it promotes American industry. Otherwise it depends what you do with the tariff revenue. If everyone pays the tariff but the revenue goes to the middle class, then it’s just a tax on wealthy people really.

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