crushedoranges

crushedoranges 15d ago

We are three generations into the liberal experiment of the emancipation of women and the resulting sexual revolution and birth rates are already in the terminal phase. If you want an example of societies that are collapsing because of it, you just have to look out of the window.

Societies do not have to be healthy by liberal standards to be self replicating: see, all of history.

You think the Somali Muslims and Amish that will replace us will share our egalitarian ideals?

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crushedoranges 21d ago

the Ayatollah is hiding in some Persian bunker, wondering if the Americans or the Israelis will give him the martyrdom he's being hoping for.

Bibi is on Fox News, talking about his friend Trump.

I think Israel is winning.

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crushedoranges 19d ago

You can't fight against a man who has the Mandate of Heaven: history bends to his whim, success manifests in his chamberpot. All that the hero king touches turns to gold before his manifest destiny.

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crushedoranges 2hr ago · Edited 2hr ago

Why do slaves pick cotton? It's obvious that they don't want to, and neither do white sharecroppers: but only the latter have the skills to do better jobs.

Answer: because slaves beat out sharecroppers because THEY HAVE A COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE. THEIR LABOR IS CHEAPER. IT IS LITERALLY FREE.

YOU CANNOT COMPETE WITH FREE.

Do you know why American workers are paid more? It's because their aggregate productivity is higher. And because of this, the basket of goods they have to purchase to live makes WORKING AT SLAVE WAGES ECONOMICALLY UNTENABLE.

IF SOMEONE CAN WORK AT A TENTH OF YOUR WAGES, IT IS THE SAME THING AS COMPETING WITH FREE.

You know who picked the fruit before the influx of illegal immigrants? AMERICANS! Very poor Americans, but your countrymen (I'm assuming you are American). That an entire industry is sustained by the systematic violation of immigration law is no mere accident or economic inevitability. The only reason this perverse status quo exists is for the profit margins of corporations and the electoral schemes of bourgoise liberals.

Going back to having one's food picked by one's countrymen isn't the end of the world. The job isn't pleasant. But if it paid a livable wage, then Americans would do it. Americans will do many unpleasant things for the right kind of money. Just not for the pittance given to illegal aliens.

No doubt you have some sort of smart alecky answer to this post already prepared, but I will tell you now that you're not fooling anyone. You're being ratioed (a term that as a twitter addict, you are no doubt familiar with) into the ground because your arguments are bad. Whatever you're thinking you're gaining by pretending to be retarded is diminished by the fool you are making of yourself. Then, of course, is the retreat into sour grapes. You can tell yourself that we're all chuds and we're ganging up on you, that we're all woke rights no better than the ones on the left.

That isn't the case either. But believe what you want. It's a free country. People also believe in lizardmen and astrology. You do you.

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crushedoranges 15d ago

"Dad, I want to get married to a husband who takes marriage seriously and wants to start a family with me."

"Noooooo, my daughter, you need to ride the cock carousel from fifteen to thirty and waste your time with cads and fuckboys! How else are you going to become a bitter wine aunt? The world needs more girlbosses. Focus on your career and I'll pay for your IVF in your late forties with the finest Oxford sperm!"

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crushedoranges 3d ago

Hollywood was always a platform for activism but it was understood that it was ultimately a business at the end of the day. The people in charge of Hollywood don't want to be capitalists in the business of selling tickets and getting bums in seats. They want to be activists, full stop. Talent no longer cares about profitability or marketability and the executives no longer care about artistry or culture. End result: slop.

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crushedoranges 8d ago

I'm sorry, this is where I break with libertarians. What exactly do you think gives courts and contracts their teeth? Violence and kidnapping. Or sovereignty, as it is more commonly known. A monopoly on violence.

Suppose me and a few hundred thousand people came together and formed a corporation with salaried employees with the duties of ruling over contractual disputes, dealing with petty crime, and all issues related to security, and everyone involved agreed to defer to this body in binding arbitration and forgo their right to banditry and warlordism.

That corporation is a state. Congratulations, you've recreated statism with extra steps.

Libertarians aren't prophets in the wilderness screaming about the injustice of collective violence. Yes, it is worth killing people and imprisoning people over. People for thousands of years have valued law and order over the Hobbsian war of all against all and people are greatly relieved to have left the tribal experience of feuds and wergild.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei%27s_fatwa_against_nuclear_weapons

crushedoranges 8d ago

The current Supreme Ayatollah declared a fatwa against nuclear weapons.

Now, obviously, the degree of adherence to this is obviously not strict (why else have such facilities capable of it?) but the Islamic clerics may not know to what precise degree their nuclear program is progressing, or have the technical know-how to really understand it. So it's hard to say if Iran 'knows' anything, or to ascribe rational-actor motives to them, if only because the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. How much information is the IRGC relaying to the clerics that supposedly rule the country?

I suppose only the Mossad really knows what is actually happening.

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crushedoranges 25d ago

The American economy is not dependent on imports from China, and neither does it rely on exports to it. All it needs to do to blockade China is block the straits of Malacca and Tiran.

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crushedoranges 26d ago

Assume that you are a democrat and you have progressive inclinations, and you live in a community of similarly minded individuals.

What if I told you I was going to import a lot MAGA Republicans, and not the standard Republicans, but ones who compete amongst themselves to buy Trump-labeled kitsch. Who immediately demand that the public library be replaced with a church, and the lesbian cafes with titty bars. That the buses should be sold for scrap as they take too much space on the street for their hummers to pass. And not only are they so numerous as to immediately change the demography of the town, they also vote, so that your well-meaning local representative is replaced by a used car salesman who loots the public treasury at every opportunity.

This would approximate the reaction that many people have to having the city's least desirable renting underclass moved into their neighborhood.

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crushedoranges 15hr ago

A lot of the current angst in the left is that a table with one communist and nine people remains a table with one communist and nine people, which drives them crazy.

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crushedoranges 25d ago

If we decided immigration policy based on what aesthetically looked good to liberals, we'd have open borders.

I'm reminded of the meme of 'Top Twelve Images That Will Make You Go Fuck Having Borders And Laws', roughly paraphrased, with a picture of a crying brown crudely drawn in fake news article. If you give into emotional blackmail, then every illegal will cry and sob as they're yanked to the border. No one ever goes 'it's a fair cop, guv' and gamely goes back to South America with a cheeky, roguish grin. We're not playing cops and robbers. This is real life.

What you are getting now is the compromise between open borders and putting up guards on the Berlin Wall and ordering them to shoot to kill.

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crushedoranges 1d ago

Let me demonstrate how irritating you're being.

"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Sam Brinton."

"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Anthony Weiner."

"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Jasmine Crockett."

"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask AOC."

You are not strawmanning. You are weakmanning. You are not giving your political opposition the benefit of the doubt. I have a whole list of leftist politicians, intellectuals, and academics that have said embarrassing and stupid things I'd like you to defend, if you'd care to play at this particular joust.

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crushedoranges 10d ago

The Buddhist would, of course, be horrified.

The Christian could reason that, acting in the same way as a mother cat would for her kittens, the man is simply doing what a cat would be inclined to do in nature, which is to hunt. And God made his creatures to do what they do, and lacking volition are inherently blameless in deed.

The aesthete would go: "Which is cuter and/or tastes better?"

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crushedoranges 6d ago

But you see, if I evinced a personal desire to kill you, that would swiftly earn me a ban: because the law of the land and the policies on the internet are very much against personal threats of murder. Laundering it through the guise of collective action at least has the plausible deniability of turbulent priests.

But make no mistake in that I have both the altered state of mind and the required blood alcohol level to personally take responsibility in killing you, if the opportunity should arise in a hypothetical: and do my duty as a Roman to destroy an enemy of the republic, if I am able. What I lose in moral terpitude, I gain in strength of conviction - and perhaps your respect.

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crushedoranges 24d ago

The Antipopulist is literally the nerd emoji who goes around saying, 'if we replace all the MAY with SHALL, that TOTALLY restores the legitimacy of the system. This won't be worked around by motivated reasoning! The open-borders advocates will take their ball and go home and the government will enforce the laws as intended!'

I refuse to accept it, on this face, to believe that someone could be stupid enough to argue this. Or that he would believe us stupid enough to believe it. It is totally pedantic, almost surreal. This will not happen. It has never happened. No one has given up on a cause because of the wording of a law. And all of it is a moot point, because, and let me shout it loud so that the people in the back can hear...

IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW WELL A LAW IS WRITTEN IF THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF ENFORCING IT DECLINE TO DO SO.

OBVIOUSLY.

The hostility is deserved.

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crushedoranges 4d ago

When the floodwaters surprise you it's generally a choice between bad and worse. If we were put in the position of those girls, I doubt we'd have great chances either, but the simple fact that we're adults would greatly improve our probability of survival.

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crushedoranges 23d ago

I'd rewrite it to... 'that black hole of tastelessness, of which the very fabric of space-time screams in silent surrender to the singularity of vulgarity.'

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Pokémon for Unrepentant Sociopaths: A Review of Reverend Insanity

crushedoranges 26d ago

Melkor and Sauron were already immortal spirits with immense power amongst the Valar and Maiar. So in this sense, they were already beyond Fang Yuan's desperation. But this was not enough, never enough. Melkor was arguably the most powerful amongst the ranks of the Valar, in his capacity to create dissonances, but he was not Eru Iluvatar: and he could never usurp or replace him. Similarly, Sauron was great amongst the Maiar, but aspired higher. Even in Lord of the Rings all he does is attempt to take the place of his absent master, rather than attempt to free him.

Our poor MC would have loved to been Sauron, to have an immortal span of life, but quickly the prize would seem poisoned, as there are immortals of higher station still, and inevitably he will scheme and plot until he runs into the face of God, for that is the only logical end, other than defeat and destruction.

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crushedoranges 3d ago · Edited 3d ago

You're arguing about the moderation of the forum, and the Motte's very ethos as a forum. This is neither interesting or productive. I'm certainly not aligned with the moderators in everything, but I didn't come back guns blazing, hot off my ban with a chip on my shoulder. What are you trying to prove? That we're all a bunch of chuds?

Well, let's say you proved it. Do you have anything else left to say?

I do indeed want ideologically diverse discussion place, but I don't think you're the person that fits that bill. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that.

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crushedoranges 18d ago

I am constantly reminded day after day that although the right has a very good understanding of what the left wants and thinks, the opposite is not true.

Suppose I told you that Democrats want to make abortions of unrestricted term legal on the federal level. Then, you would say, that is not true: that only certain extreme activists would say so, that they are a minority within a minority: that democrats in general absolutely do not celebrate abortions or attempt to sacralize it as some sort of female right of passage.

But yet, knowing this, you apply the broad brush to Republicans without the nuances or the understanding. All of the logic and reason of the previous paragraph falls out of the back of your head, and you say: "Republicans want to ban abortion federally."

Be honest with yourself. Are you being generous with your political enemies, or are you close-minded and prejudiced?

(After writing this out, I realize you could be referring 'they' as evangelicals, but the basic observation still is the same. Which ones?)

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crushedoranges 7d ago

I said no such thing, you set up a false dichotomy. Vegans can call slaughterhouses concentration camps and although there are superficial similarities it is ultimately not a true comparison. The same is true for libertarianism, because collective action in the form of violence (either directly through force or indirectly through coercion) is a normal and trivial thing.

And in a postmodern, Foucaultian sense, I suppose this is tyranny and murder and kidnapping. In this case, I will take personal responsibility, as a individual, to assert my social project of throwing people who assert naive libertarianism into the wood chipper: as a collection of pederasts, drug addicts, and tax evaders who do nothing but redefine perfectly normal things and call it injustice.

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crushedoranges 8d ago

I was more objecting to the provocative terminology that libertarians use: that taxation is theft, that bans are imprisonment and murder, that many straightforward and inoffensive things are in fact statist violence to the individual. It is no more convincing to me than the vegan framing of an industrial concentration camp of imprisoned bovine lifeforms is, in fact, a cattle pen. It is a stupid way to argue and no one is actually convinced by that sort of rhetoric.

The sacral force of the law has always held the connotation of life or death consequence: since Roman times it was thus. Not everyone follows laws because of moral duty: justice carries both the scales and the sword! It is so obvious that only libertarians feel smug about stating the obvious. Yes, the state has the power to enforce its directives with force. That is a good thing. If it did not, then it would not have the power to make anyone heed it. And that threshold of necessary violence is decided by the people of the nation, not libertarians!

If you don't have that, you don't really have a society: only a collection of strangers in an economic zone.

Only a libertarian would believe that without a state, men would follow laws. Thousands of years of history have taught us this, that ambitious men who break weak states soon place themselves above it, to rule like tyrants. Similarly as you have encountered hundreds of critiques of libertarianism, I have read just as much apologia for it and have emerged thoroughly unconvinced of its merit and totally dumbfounded by its complete unseriousness.

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crushedoranges 24d ago · Edited 24d ago

They're stupid by the standard of Supreme Court justices. The late RGB, although I ideologically disagreed with her, could actually argue the case for a living, prescriptive constitution. Sotomayor and Ketanji are unashamed diversity-hires whose dissents are so embarrassing that I'd credit them to their clerks to save face.

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