crushedoranges
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User ID: 111
crushedoranges
3mo ago
This is the death blow to the Democratic party nomenklatura: if it goes through then it will be Trump's Great Purge, utterly destroying the federal government as an institution for generations. Even if Vance loses in 2028 there will be nothing left to rebuild. No one will make a career that can be destroyed on a whim every four years. We will see a return to the spoils system where government appointments are cycled in and out with every new administration as payoffs to supporters.
crushedoranges
5mo ago
Checks and balances does not mean that your political enemies don't get to do any of their agenda. Sometimes in a democracy things happen you don't like. The judiciary is the least democratic institution in the American republic, the least accountable. If the President defies the judiciary and Congress supports him then the President gets his way. That's the part of checks and balances you probably don't like, and that's probably how it's going to end.
This is a good essay, albeit, one that I disagree with vehemently, so I will attempt to rebut concisely and with the most gentle of rebukes.
If the sum of his contribution to the fantasy genre is that 'it's more complicated then that' and shades of grey, I'd reply: 'no shit'. He muddles... in a very liberal kind of way. In a way that does not add clarity, but obfuscates. In the way Samwell Tarly (his favorite character and probable authorial stand-in) is. Feast for Crows is him saying 'war is bad'. No shit! Don Quixote tilting at windmills. You mean to tell me that this author who desires to add nuance to the fantasy genre, comes up with the moral... war is bad'. Is his target audience literally children? Are they morons? Are they liberals?
He doesn't have to tell us that the world is full of piss and shit and cum and tax returns, we know that. There is a genre of Japanese novel, of which is called pillow books, which can be best summed up as... things happen. Things happen, in his underedited, over-bloated work, but nothing much of consequence actually occurs. (This is mostly talking about 4 and 5, rather than 1-3.) Contrast it to his own work - the Dunk and Egg novels, which are superior, which reiterate the core themes of ASOIAF - because they are short stories, and they are not allowed to meander into irrelevancy where things just Happen. They have plots.
To sum it all up (and to not be hypocritical about brevity being the soul of wit) if you're going to write a fantasy epic that is very long, write the transcendental and heroic. If you're going to be an indulgent ride where bad people do horrible things to worse individuals (Black Company is very fun) admit it. There's nothing wrong with that kind of writing. It's unpretentious. Don't be a fat fraud, a stammering pussy, and write about sex and gore and baby-smashing and then waggle your finger at the reader with liberal platitudes.
If Martin was honest about his anti-war and feminist beliefs, he would have written Vinland Saga, but he didn't. He chose to write this. And yes - we can judge him for it. He certainly doesn't hold back with his political opinions. He should extend his audience the same courtesy. But he doesn't. I think that sums it up very nicely.
crushedoranges
8mo ago
I have to control for my own partisan bias and wishcasting, but the Democrat confidence in abortion being such a powerful swing issue as to decide this election is baffling to me. Does it have such a powerful grip on the female vote?
In my opinion, it's what Democratic operatives want to be true rather than reflecting the reality of the electorate - in that the most ardently pro-life voters are also women. Kamala is already winning her base of single affluent women by a lot. Increasing their turnout doesn't seem like a winning play - especially with her losses everywhere else.
Reddit commenters and other slave moralists love to sneer at Elon because they have no idea what leadership is (and if they did, they're repelled by it). Leadership, in their heads, is mindlessly executing the agenda of the secret kings like them, which so happen to coincidentally align with a progressive agenda. Softheaded wannabe intelligentsia and open source communists who want the world to be run like a university.
Fuck them.
All the certificates and university degrees and soy can't make up for a lack of vision and a absence of testicles. If you gave a billion dollars to one hundred Silicon Valley alumni, ninety-nine of them would be overrun instantly by blaqq kweens and transsexual gooners because guileless, naive autists have no social defenses against San Francisco grifters.
Musk isn't perfect. But he has a spine, and he has vision, and in our degenerate age that makes him stand a giant in an era of dwarfs. No amount of technical ability can protect you from the culture war, just ask Stallman.
crushedoranges
11mo ago
From the point of view of the Britons, the Saxons and the Normans are recent immigrations, recent meaning in the last thousand years. The Romans only get a pass because they immigrated before the time of Christ.
crushedoranges
1mo ago
Land is perhaps the ur-investment, the one thing guaranteed that God (and perhaps the Dutch) aren't making more of. Even in societies where the government owns all the land, like in China, and merely hands out leases you have crazy real estate bubbles.
There is fundamentally no way to uncouple housing from investment because houses are expensive and take a lot of time and effort to build. There will always be fewer houses then there are people willing to buy them.
crushedoranges
3mo ago
The problem with a less educated support base is that it simply has a less accurate understanding of the world. In fact, I think the problem is much worse than a simple analysis of voting patterns by educational attainment would suggest. Populists not only often fail to appeal to college graduates as a broad class, but they do particularly poorly among the small slice of the public that is the most informed about policy and current events, like journalists and academics.
Thinking that the electorate MUST regain the confidence of the elite is a notion reserved only for the most biting of satires and Hanania's midwittery.
See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Lösung
News flash: the people have ALWAYS been stupid, always been short-sighted, provincial and backwater in sensibility and lacking in education. And in a democratic system, their votes are equal to your well-educated and informed one. So you better have a convincing argument to sway them to your side! Use what they say, rhetoric? The classic politician's art?
What is presented here is not even an argument. It is simply a fact. Most people are uninformed. You can't govern a country as if it consisted entirely of reporters from the New York Times. Any argument against populism is inherently a argument against democracy. The masses chose their own elites in defiance of reality or whatever standard you might impose on them. There is no argument against this that does not end in 'some animals are more equal than others'.
Hanania is merely restating what the Greeks have always known, which puts into doubt the depth and quality of his education. If democracy requires the electorate to be highly educated elite human capital like himself, perhaps democracy is a BAD IDEA because such a thing will never happen. If he would just flat out state that he wants democracy but only for himself and his pals, it'd be more honest but he is not in the business of honesty, is he?
I'm not sure what use 'soft power' is if you can't do something as simple as returning a country's citizens back to their homeland.
That's what all the liberals are whining about on twitter and reddit, about American international standing.
Not like they already hold America in contempt, and blame them for all their problems. Dumb South American leftists.
It feels like international relations majors are jerking themselves off to the concept of a rules based international order.
When you govern for results instead of the approval of an international global elite, the difference in outcomes is obvious.
crushedoranges
6mo ago
'Performative' is the fig leaf that liberals use to distinguish good theory from bad praxis. In practice, however, it is a nuance without a difference, given that liberalism has no defense against bad actors from the left. We know this to be true because of spectacular tactical victories on part of activists and 'the groups' to impose their views on (charitably) good-meaning and agreeable people.
Let me give you my definition: wokeness is the barely-disguised will to power through the soft and feminine language of slave morality. It exults the weak and marginalized to the height of society, to right historical wrongs. That is the 'social justice' part. The 'woke' part comes from the conspiratorial assertions that the dominant racial group in the West (white, male people) have been systematically keeping the marginalized out of power and that it is fundamentally imbedded into every aspect of society.
This concept is called 'white supremacy.'
Therefore, every effort must be made to make society 'woke', to advantage minorities, ethnic and sexual, within the system to counteract the inherent bias of the institutions. Although this definition will be fiercely contested by its own proponents - they are self-aware enough that the programme is wildly unpopular - one defines things by its outcomes, by its real-world impacts. Definitional word games do not change the fundamental power-seeking, inquisitorial drive of the movement. Individually the elements that compose it may not be novel but it is the combination of these elements that make 'woke' what it is.
crushedoranges
9mo ago
You should vote because it is a holy ritual that strengthens your household and girds your soul. You are not voting just for yourself, but you are linking the fire of American democracy, from your father to his father unto infinitum. As the Romans would say, it is a matter of religion, not politics. All the votes are rigged anyway, the candidates pre-selected, but that doesn't change the necessity of the act. So as long as you vote, the sacred institutions of the republic are preserved.
crushedoranges
10mo ago
I'm sorry, which set of partisans coined the term 'stochastic terrorism' and used it on speech they didn't like? Schmittian dynamics aside, splinter in my eye, log in yours. Even now, after excerpts from her diary saying she fantasized about her imaginary penis to fuck a black woman in the ass, you still hear the calls to respect 'his' pronouns.
Of course this damages the Narrative™️. If the left were more strict about policing autogynophiles and penis-envying school shooters, maybe people on the right would take the self-affirming takes more seriously.
crushedoranges
11mo ago
Trump linked the fire of Jeffersonian politics that is in the lineage of Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Huey Long and Reagan, burning away the soul of his fame and legacy to reignite the Kiln of the First Flame beneath the Washington Memorial to extend the Age of America.
crushedoranges
1d ago
I'd be obliged if you wouldn't treat the Motte as some sort of twitter offshoot, where you pithily dismiss your opposition with short, one-line messages.
How do you think immigrant fruit pickers get so good at picking fruit, fast enough to do it for a living? They've been doing it since childhood. American children obviously can't do it (it's literally illegal for them to do so, child labor.) Why is a Mexican meatpacker hired over the American one? Is it because he is illegal and can't ask for breaks or agitate for a union because he'd be immediately turfed across the border?
You either are completely unaware of the reasons why illegal labor is hired, or you are aware, and are acting dumb. Either way, the manner of which you speak with such utter confidence on matters of which you know nothing is infuriating to an incredible degree. Your priors are wrong. The conclusions you derive from those priors are wrong. It's pointless to debate you because you utterly refuse to acknowledge anything that even resembles material reality.
An American worker cannot compete with a Mexican agricultural worker for the same reason he can't compete with a Chinese industrial factory worker: both work in conditions that are illegal in America! If your conclusion is 'let them work at the global median of worker's protection and compensation' then I would take a good look into a mirror and think on the morality of your politics: that is, if you still cast a reflection.
As much as the meaning of Matthew 16:18 has been stretched to assert papal primacy, let me be the first to dunk on the central conceit of faith of Mormonism: Joseph Smith and his golden plates. As a recent convert to Catholicism, I spent quite a bit of comparison-shopping between the Christian denominations. Mormonism, even in comparison to the other sects of Christianity, is too much to ask to believe in without being born into it.
Joseph Smith does not claim to be a prophet, but merely the reciever of revelation of historical apocrypha: translated to him from the original 'Reformed Egyptian' created from a Native American script. This is an article of faith of the Mormon Church: you cannot be a Mormon without accepting this. You can probably guess that I'm not a Mormon because I don't believe this for a second.
Now, you might say from a secular perspective: isn't this the narcissism of small differences? You believe in the resurrection of Christ, don't you? You believe in miracles? Surely, you can't give the benefit of the doubt - or even faith - to an American finding golden plates with the word of angels on it? Yes. Yes, actually. I'm not a midwestern subsistance farmer with less than a grade-school education. Egyptians never crossed the Atlantic, and even if they did, they certainly wouldn't have passed their script in such a way that there is no sign of the language anywhere else than the Book of Mormons attests.
Catholicism, on the other hand, has thousands of years of writings of church fathers in Greek and Latin. Is the New Testament an 'add-on' to the Old in the same way the Book of Mormon is? Perhaps. But the New Testament is the description of the life and ministry of Christ (with added prophecy.) The Book of Mormon describes events that no human being could plausibly witness the entirety of (the post-Resurrection ministry of Christ in the Americas.) The Gospels, at least, are written to be the accounts of different church fathers all witnessing the same thing. We only have Smith's word that it is relevation of God at all.
As a Christian, and as a Catholic, even if the papacy is so astray as to have broken the church of Christ, it was certainly not amended or renewed by Smith. His claims to being a prophet hinge on the legitimacy of a dubious forgery. By Nicene standards, his followers are not even Christians - being non-Trinitarian in belief and dogma. No doubt you've heard of these arguments before. You might even have been taught how to rebut them. But you can't get away from the golden plates.
If he had merely asserted that he was a prophet from the beginning, no such artifice would be necessary.
So why didn't he?
Christ, was, at some point: a living person. The Church fathers were real people who attested to him: the writings of early Christians that formed into the Catholic Church exist. Secular analysis into the Bible has even analyzed the different authorial voices and styles within it. Doctrinal discord within the Catholic Church is nothing new. But the basis of Mormonism is in an article of faith that is transparently a fraud. If the plates aren't real, then everything he teaches and every commandment he pronounced is a falsehood.
crushedoranges
3mo ago
It's getting annoying enough that I say there should be a rule that deleting a top-level post is grounds for a permanent ban, but that's probably not a strong enough deterrent.
Rather, the ability to delete a post should not be given to new accounts. I'm not sure if that's possible to do, admin-wise, but it should be considered.
crushedoranges
5mo ago
I feel called out at the moment, so, first, my mea culpas.
@Amadan I am aware that being a rightist partisan is not very conducive to the kind of space that the moderates wish to nurture. I, myself, personally moderate spaces where I have to manage people being political. Knowing this makes my behaviour even more unacceptable, and for that I apologize. I don't really have an excuse for my rhetoric, for liking the heat instead of the light. But I am not a passing internet troll, or fishing for responses from outraged liberals. I have been here in one form or another, and I actually like being here.
Moving forward, I will try to not clog up your moderation queue with my hot takes. I'll try.
@4bpp I disagree with the notion of reports as an enforcement mechanism because it is trivially easy to game, if one is a motivated bad actor. If an individual post is bad, one can downvote it. If it annoys one sufficiently, one can rebut it (although I concede the effort may not be worth the squeeze in nearly all cases.) Reporting is the tool of last resort, when something is noisome and of no value whatsoever.
But you report so much that the lack of response feels like a waste of effort?
I can't recall the last time I reported anyone. That's how little I use the feature. Do you want to be a moderator? You have a thousand posts... a lot more than me. Obviously you have opinions on what the Motte should be. But the demos has an opinion, too. Expressed through upvotes. Metathoughts about the pernicious nature of such social media systems nonwithstanding, is that not the fairest way of determining the merit of what someone is saying?
(I admit that the proposition of 'being maximally evil in posture to EA people' is horrifying, but no more so than the people who constantly talk about 'race realism'.)
I am also aware that the Motte has problems with ideological diversity. But that isn't my fault, that those on the left evaporatively leave. It's not like I'm running around conspiratorially reporting the TracingWoodgrains of the world. They left. Cannot I talk to those of a similar ideological bent? It's not like I'm pretending to be objective or anything. Am I being asked to keep it down to make sure the last leftists don't just pull up stakes and leave, leaving the Motte a witch-chamber?
I've been on a hot streak of hot takes recently, so I'll probably take a step back for a while. But if you have a problem with my posts or you believe that I don't belong here, you can say so. You don't have to write me up in a post complaining about moderation. That's all I have to say.
crushedoranges
5mo ago
The judiciary doesn't have any formal mechanism to enforce a ruling upon the executive branch other than by tradition and precedent. If he makes unlawful, unconstitutional orders, Congress has reason to impeach him. But if Congress doesn't want to impeach him, then he gets away with it. It really is that simple. What do you want the judiciary to do? Send in the US Marshals, start a civil war?
Now perhaps there's a constitutional argument to go against whatever the president is doing. Certainly you could make a case for anything. But the vesting clause is very clear that the President is endowed with the full powers of the office. The Supreme Court will not suddenly make a ruling that will formalize any sort of control on the executive branch.
Do you have an argument to bring to bear against the unitary executive? How is the presidency supposed to work? Is there a strong legal theory behind the ability of fifty state judges to have a veto over the President?
crushedoranges
6mo ago
Elon is attempting to re-establish Right Wing bonafides and embarassing Starmer and the UK establishment is risk-free. Everyone knows Britain ultimately follows the American direction and Trump doesn't give a shit about UK-US relations: not after Labor sent staffers to campaign against him.
crushedoranges
11mo ago
I will make this post with the prior that I personally favor the Ukrainians and their cause.
I do not like warfare by media spectacle. Insomuch as this is a victory, it is giving the Ukrainians a positive media cycle. What strategic value was gained here? Has the overall situation changed much? It is very much stinks of desperation. Perhaps if you subscribe to vibes-based warfare it is a victory worth talking about. It embarasses Gerasimov (and Putin by proxy.) Who cares? Gerasimov is a nincompoop. He is a butcher and a moron, but even a moron can hold a trench line.
The memory holed offensives with the much-hyped Western equipment half a year ago destroyed much material and good men for no gain at all. I also believe that they wanted a good media cycle before the NATO conference. Zelensky's generals seem to be strategizing, not to win the war, but to get the best headlines in the west. Why are they doing this? I don't know. Why aren't they trying to win the war? Why are they spending manpower and material on what are essentially photo ops?
The only comparable situation I can imagine from history is Republican Spain throwing an excess of resources to holding Madrid, of planning offensives for newspapers and prestige. The Republicans lost for many reasons, but they lost, because they weren't fighting to win. Can the Ukrainians even win? I suspect that their American backers need political cover to continue their aid.
crushedoranges
11mo ago
Weird is a miliquetoast epithet, and not even the worst w-word one can imagine.
I think most everyone knows that Trump can escalate to Defcon 1 and call Kamala Harris a whore for sleeping with Willie Brown in exchange for political influence in California. If Trump was truly shameless, he'd have already done it. Asking whether or not she's ever given him a blowjob would destroy political discourse forever.
(The dems could call Trump a whoremonger, on the other hand, but typically procurers are less stigmatized than procurees.)
crushedoranges
1mo ago
Because taking on sovereign debt is borrowing from your children and incurring a obligation upon generations yet unborn for your personal benefit.
If great men are those who plant trees who will shade those long after they are gone, then the weak man consumes those fruits, and leaves the future to the harsh light of the unforgiving sun.
Goya: Saturn Devours His Son
crushedoranges
1mo ago
I'm not going to go into the semantics game of gender. It is a trap that has consumed too much time for ultimately no purpose.
Sex is far more important: and indelible in which the exceptions make the rule in nature. The male anglerfish is a male anglerfish. Evolution has shaped him to end his life as a vestigal set of gonads, his face permanently melded into his mate's flesh. It is a horrible fate, but that is what nature dictates his life and function to be. A transgender human is more capable, for human beings in general are more capable, but all humans are animals and must obey what nature has endowed them with.
A MtF lacks the qualia of female-ness... womanhood is not acquired, but innate. As a 4chan shitpost brilliantly in my memory states: the state of being is inachievable by any level of becoming. They may claim to have been born a woman and assigned male, but they have the sex organs of a male: the body of a male. Their conception of what a woman is no different than their conception of what a transcendent posthuman intelligence would be. Or what an anglerfish imagines a man to be: fundamentally limited by the limitations of their bodies.
In other words: women don't have to think about passing, and neither do men, because by nature they are effortlessly what their birth sex is as their gender, to the point where the two terms are identical. It is only the trans perspective that insists on a duality!
Even if the technology were perfect: if it were a machine that turned XY to XX, they would still not be a woman. They would be a man who has become a woman through scientific miracle. The transgender demand is not 'I can do what a woman can do' but 'I was always, in essence, woman in nature, in defiance of my biology'. That is the contentious part. In the modern day, the best they can do is 'you are a man who is trying to become a woman, and failing'. And, in spite of that failure, demanding the special privileges of those who are women anyway.
To contrast, human flight has obvious and inevitable consequence for those who do not respect the natural law: that we lack a righting instinct to pull out of death spirals, that we are susceptible to horizon illusions that kill many pilots, etc... it is not comparable. That is the price we pay for heavier than air flight. Transness would be to insist to the universe that you be treated like a swan.
crushedoranges
2mo ago
Trump has always sounded like that. He's definitely slowed down as he's aged, but he has probably the most distinctive cadence in a politician today. I would argue that the only sign of senility I'd take seriously is if he suddenly started speaking normally because that's Trump reading off a canned script.
His opposition's sneers about his dementia were always whataboutism, deflecting from Biden's (obvious) incapacity. In the aftermath of the former president's downfall, it feels like so much vivicarious seethe: 'now it's our turn to throw this attack in their faces!'
But no, that's not how it works. The coverup was worse than the scandal, so to speak. Trump gets a pass on his age because of his opponent's hypocrisy. People aren't that stupid. Trump isn't going for reelection anyway, so if his brain goes out before the midterms Vance is ready for prime time in a way Kamala was not.
Woke right is not a thing: it never was a thing, because actual Nazis, fascists, and white nationalists don't use or accept critical theory. Any resemblance (da joos vs da whitey) is coincidental: the true similarity is that both wokism and fascism are illiberal, but for completely different reasons.
Let us use argumentum ad Hitlerum to demonstrate what I mean. Hitler is uncontroversially a Nazi, a fascist, and a white nationalist. To call him 'woke' is a definitional collapse. He's not building a intersectional coalition against Zionism and its supporters. He has a particular volkgeist and conceptions of ethnic superiority that is not postmodern in the least. (This is why hoteps aren't woke, despite arguably being the originator of the term: they're particular, not universal.)
It's dumb. It's dumb, lazy thinking: liberals playing definitional games and labels as if they mean anything. If you have a problem with white nationalists and cryptonazis, you can say so: that's a popular opinion in normieland. You don't need to invent fake terms that only you and a particular clique define.
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