daguerrean
13hr ago
The slightest glimpse into real violence leaves a lasting negative taste in one's mouth (unless you're a psychopath). That's why well adjusted men don't make violent threats easily.
I think it is most likely those that have engaged in violence are most likely to make threats and follow through to engage in more violence, I’m basically talking about the low IQ criminal underclass. I don’t think experiencing violence turns them into prudent philosophers on the subject. And of course I’m as effete and faggy as they come, but am horrified by the prospect of political violence in any direction.
daguerrean
17hr ago
They will hate you because you tell them the truth. Is this and the recent Kirk reactions an escalation by the Democrats in that it goes further than anything I can name from Republicans? Yes. But that’s how these endless tit-for-tat escalations work. Each new unprecedented devilry becomes justifications for a new hitherto unprecedented norm violation by the other side, and back and forth.
These new escalations are in fact escalations, and should be recognized and denounced as such, but we shouldn’t use them to excuse further norm violations by our side and we should acknowledge our side’s role in the escalation chain
daguerrean
22hr ago
If there is one thing I fault Trump for most, more than any specific governing actions, it is erosion of norms. I'm not trying to excuse this latest development of mainstream Democrats on Reddit openly proclaiming their support for murder, but in my estimation this is just the latest in a long series of escalations and norms being discarded.
I didn't really appreciate it at the time, but I think Trump's general style in 2016 was a big part of this, penis size jokes in the primary, comments about imprisoning Hillary, insulting nicknames for his opponents, a general crassness and lack of concern over scandals. I think the Democrats have been a long time learning the lessons from 2016 Trump, that any norm can be discarded if you have popular support to do so. Accusations of sexism are not actually magic spells and can simply be laughed off if enough of the populace is willing to laugh along with you. Trump's quote about shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue seems more and more prescient daily.
Of course you can trace back the norm violations further than Trump, I'm not trying to say he started this, but I believe any fair assessment would regard Trump as a massive demonstration of the powerlessness of norms in the face of voters that no longer care about them. And to be fair, we still haven't really seen a Democrat Trump, meaning a President-level Democrat that absolutely revels in upsetting the other side and breaking norms left and right. It troubles me to think what that would look like, maybe Ilhan Omar if she were the President.
daguerrean
6d ago
I doubt that beards in specific pose any problem. But I can easily imagine that having strict grooming and fitness standards pay dividends even if the exact contents of those standards are largely arbitrary and unimportant. If I had to make up a BS but plausible sort of justification, I imagine that these things foster a sense of pride, unity, and brotherhood as belonging to a special class, and it is not hard to imagine that such things are actually beneficial to functioning according to a sort of “broken windows” theory of organizational functioning. Like, if you can’t even hold standards around something low-cost and easy to police like hair, what hope do you have of maintaining standards that are much more critical and harder to police (like courage under fire)? Of course I have no proof it actually shakes out this way but as I said it seems plausible and directionally correct. As a civilian my impression of the military is that it is made up of mostly literal cuckolds, 4’10” fat latinas and idiots that had absolutely zero job prospects outside of what amounts to a government make-work program. They would certainly do well to start combatting that perception because I doubt I’m alone
daguerrean
7d ago
As I felt when similar arguments were had about Kirk’s assassination, I don’t even really care about the act of violence in itself but the reaction. I’m not aware of any widespread right/conservative celebration of either of these attacks. As a consequence, even if they are in some degree influenced by right beliefs there is no real danger of organized support from the right or escalation beyond a tiny group of loner lunatics.
The left’s reaction to Kirk seems to indicate there is a very large base of support liable to offer funding/material support/legal support for left leaning terrorism, which poses a risk for this to expand beyond loner lunatics into organized groups of functional people like The Weather Underground
daguerrean
9d ago
Stupidpol is neither mainstream nor left
daguerrean
10d ago
they didn’t have hungry man dinners
My mom was eating frozen Swanson TV dinners all the time in the 50s
daguerrean
11d ago
Kind of silly given that the synoptics are so similar and Mark is essentially contained within the other two.
That said I find Luke and John to be the most academically interesting, but they are both pretty bad to read imo
daguerrean
11d ago
Ah, that is less political than I imagined. As traumatic as that may have been I have to give a hearty lol at the situation. The Motte has so many interesting characters…
Are you sure you should be posting this publicly? Anyway, as you’re unusually forthcoming I have to ask. You claim to have a dozen illegal VNs and have written illegal fanfiction but all of this has zero sexual appeal to you? I have nothing against pedophiles but you must admit this sounds a bit curious and difficult to believe.
Anyway I hope you’re doing better now and have recovered without any lasting damage, either physical or social
daguerrean
12d ago
I think it’s more just that these people are suicidal and actively want to die. People kill themselves all the time without strategic motivation.
But to address what you said, you are saying you tried to kill yourself to avoid a court case humiliating your side? What could possibly have been the circumstances here?
daguerrean
12d ago
Tarrant did write a manifesto though, The Great Replacement and it was reasonably entertaining
daguerrean
13d ago
It is difficult for me to imagine a situation in which refusing to answer any questions will improve your outcome unless you are at risk for uncontrollably blurting out “I have a dead body in the trunk of my car.”
Police have a lot of discretion in how to treat you. I’ve been pulled over several times for speeding and every time gotten off with a warning because I was friendly and polite. I am fairly confident that if I completely bunkered and insisted a lawyer be present my outcomes would’ve been a lot worse, at the very least they would’ve taken up much more of my time.
Assuming you are a normal person guilty of no more than normal traffic violations like speeding (no body in the trunk of your car) it is undoubtedly most advisable to be fully cooperative and polite, answering all questions truthfully and promptly without demands for a lawyer.
daguerrean
13d ago
To me this feels like a totally fake controversy reminiscent of Romney’s “binders full of women” thing. As long as I have been alive this has been common wisdom, that if you have a more “edgy” candidate you need a normie to balance it out. That’s why Obama (young, black, inexperienced) went with Biden (older, white, long-time politician). Effectively you only have so many weirdness points to spend before you become offputting to the mainstream. Whether or not this is smart politics in 2024 is a separate question, but this strikes me as completely typical
daguerrean
13d ago
I met my wife on Tinder for what it is worth. Dating apps are just so popular that they really have all kinds of people, even those you wouldn’t expect to find there. In my opinion ignoring them is just shutting yourself out of what is by-far the largest pool of women, which seems inadvisable if you are trying to meet someone. They are also great for practice
daguerrean
13d ago
I see that you are one of those law-n-order conservatives who never expects to find himself on the wrong end of such a situation.
But I would never find myself in such a situation precisely because I never engage in pointless dominance displays. I've been pulled over several times, I've always responded politely and it has neither been humiliating nor escalated. In fact, despite flagrantly speeding I have always gotten away with a warning and never actually received a ticket precisely because of unfailing politeness.
It is only humiliating if you choose to make it humiliating. I say yes sir and no sir to everyone I interact with in commerce, whether it is a cop or a taxi driver. And because I don't have a basketball mentality this doesn't cause me any psychological distress.
where even advising a woman against putting herself in a position of vulnerability around strange/potentially malicious men with alcohol or other drugs involved is considered full-throated justification for her being raped. Heck, even pointing out the fact (citation needed) that this raises one's odds of being sexually assaulted has been equated with explicit condoning of rape.
Lately I have been reflecting on the strange parallels between this and the recent cancellations for improper reactions to Charlie Kirk's assassination. I have to admit I have maybe found a bit of hypocrisy in myself and I'm unsure how to feel about it.
When I was perusing Reddit in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, I saw a lot of reactions along the lines of "Well if you're spreading hate and antagonizing people you can't be surprised when somebody snaps and kills you shrug." And to be honest, yes, at the time this seemed to me to be a justification for his assassination and an expression of implied support for it.
But truthfully, this isn't that different from responding to news of a woman being raped by saying "Well if you're going out doing XYZ you can't be surprised if somebody rapes you shrug." I was never viscerally angered by people offering such rape commentary the way I was by the Kirk commentary I saw last week. Obviously, there are object-level objections that could be made here, Was Charlie Kirk really "spreading hate"? and so forth.
I think it has caused me to have greater sympathy for the feminist side. While I won't go so far as to say that well-meaning advice on avoiding rape is never appropriate, I think, like comments on Kirk's death, it should be done with exceeding care and sensitivity which I myself lacked in the past.
daguerrean
13d ago
Obviously yes, I agree that we shouldn’t get into DNA screening people and preemptively punishing them. However when it comes to men I actually do favor some sexist restrictions against men. For example I think men should have probably have more firearm purchase restrictions than women. Maybe even requiring 2 adult women to testify to a man’s good character to purchase a firearm seems reasonable, while such a restriction on women would be unnecessary
daguerrean
14d ago
Public transit is ground zero for race realism. I don’t understand how anyone in NYC can ride the subway without, as they say, “noticing”. I lived in New York for a few years and still visit now and then and you would have to have seriously impaired pattern recognition ability to not come out of the experience extremely racist. The guy is obviously in the wrong, I don’t even need to click the link to know. MTA allows all kinds of insanely degenerate behavior from certain groups. To actually end up cuffed he really had to be asking for it
daguerrean
14d ago
The SJWs (not really 'woke', which is more of a high society new religion, though we conflate these now)
What would you say is the distinction here? To me they were interchangeable, SJW was just the older term that didn’t achieve offline usage
daguerrean
15d ago
It’s good optics, an especially sharp contrast to the gravedancing we saw last week. But it isn’t especially surprising for serious Christians. Pope John Paul II famously forgave the man that shot him, which was especially meaningful as he directly requested (and was granted) a pardon for the assassin. That said, I am too pessimistic to think this will do anything. I think the media landscape is too fragmented. The vast majority of leftists will simply never hear her remarks. And even if they do, echochambers will ensure they are provided with readymade dismissals to avoid ever feeling an unpleasant “are we the baddies?” thought.
I think of Bin Laden’s aphorism that people will prefer the strong horse. Ultimately the left is killing their enemies and celebrating it, that seems like strength to me. Forgiving them feels like a flavor of Trudeau style “if you kill your enemies they win” cuckoldry, which is vaguely repulsive to most. I’m not sure which will prove the more powerful influence
daguerrean
16d ago
Yes, I mean this is the central disagreement, and sadly I’m not sure it is possible to bridge this divide. Most people agree that if you were in Germany in 1928 that assassinating important Nazi activists would be justified, given foreknowledge of what was to come. So the question sort of becomes, are Trump/Charlie Kirk/2025 American Republicans comparable to Nazis in terms of the threat they pose? Of course I think this is an absurd comparison, but it seems like a substantial portion of the left believes at least semi-sincerely the answer to that question is “yes.” It is a divide that I’m not sure how to bridge. If I were speaking to someone like this I don’t even know where I would begin attempting to dismantle this. We’ve been inhabiting totally isolated media ecosystems for 10+ years at this point
daguerrean
17d ago
My neighbor's youngest, older than my oldest but close, started public pre-K this month as a boy and came back this week a girl. The mother of the family seems to think the school knows best
I have nothing meaningful to add. This is just so insane to me, it is hard to believe we ended up here and normal functional people are just accepting this
daguerrean
17d ago
His videos were fine when they were twenty minutes long, but as they grew to one or two hours I lost interest. They just became obsessive recountings of every change to the record over time. “But then, in June 2017, a Canadian runner named MisterPoop69 did the impossible and had this run…” which proceeds to shave maybe half a second off the record and will subsequently be beaten one week later.
In his obsession to accurately detail every change to the record he neglects to tell any kind of story at all and he buries the interesting parts in two hours of meaningless microimprovements.
He is more or less unwatchable to me these days
daguerrean
18d ago
You’re overthinking this quote. Here is all that really matters:
- At the time Kimmel said it, it was overwhelmingly clear that the shooter was not a conservative
- The left was absolutely running wild with blatant misinformation all over social media cynically lying that the shooter was a Groyper
- By saying that the MAGA gang was “desperate” in their attempts, and that this was a “new low” to suggest he was “anything other than one of them” it is obvious he was positioning himself with the people mentioned in point 2. Why would it be a new low to suggest the shooter was anything other than MAGA unless he was in fact MAGA
Combine this with Jimmy Kimmel’s known history of outrageous bias and the (correct) interpretation is obvious.You could probably show 1000 people that Kimmel quote and ask them if Kimmel thinks the shooter is MAGA and you will get essentially 100% (minus lizardman constant) saying yes.
I’ve often wondered this myself and I’m not sure I’ve ever come up with a good answer. I wonder what other Motte users would say for this question
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