Amelia Earhart is a very good suggestion. I think my criteria would be pre-1950, not a DEI exaggeration of her accomplishments, non-political, not the wife of a more famous man as that’s a bit demeaning. Earhart has a nice feminist aspect, with bravery and technical competence. I would nominate these:
Laura Ingalls Wilder as kind of a stand-in for the bravery and hard work of women on the frontier, as well as their literary contributions.
Lilian Gish representing women in entertainment/Hollywood. Though maybe her involvement in Birth of a Nation disqualifies her. However, importantly Gish was gorgeous, and would make for beautiful money.
Emily Dickinson representing women’s contribution to literature, especially poetry.
Maybe Grandma Moses?
My issue is all of these feel sort of DEI. Why Earhart and not Lindbergh? Why Dickinson and not Whitman? Why Gish and not Chaplin? I guess Wilder would be my top choice followed by Gish, but more as emblematic of women on the frontier than her specifically.
daguerrean
1mo ago
Yea, anyone that has been on 4chan or Discord knows that young conservatives are most likely full Deus Vult if they are engaged enough to care about politics, and this stuff is truthfully pretty run of the mill.
That said, this is bad, I have no problem saying this is bad. However, I think it is a sort of LARPing for 99.9% of these people, the same way Eat the Rich/Punch a Nazi is LARPing for the majority. But in the Kirk discussions we already hashed out the reasons this is bad. I think there is a crisis of earnestness, people are absolutely allergic to being serious which creates this sort of “Haha just joking….unless?” aspect which rightly scares people. In part I blame Trump for the degradation of seriousness as a virtue in American politics, but perhaps he was more a effect than a cause.
Now a bit regarding Nazism specifically. The left has so abused the term Nazi/fascist, similar to abuse of Antisemite or Communist/Socialist, that at some point you can’t be surprised when people start to think Nazism isn’t so bad, and start to wear the badge in defiance. In a weird way it becomes analogous to blacks reclaiming the word “nigger”
daguerrean
1mo ago
Just as a sanity check let’s run the same test cases against wokeness. By my count these apply.
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Rejection of modernism. Obviously wokeness favors alternative “ways of knowing” and rejects objectivity, rationality and the scientific method as white supremacy.
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Cult of action. The motto “Punch a nazi” is certainly proudly anti-intellectual, elevating the propaganda of the deed/direct action above any intellectual debate.
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Disagreement is treason. This is too easy, wokeness considers silence as violence and obviously disagreement is violence.
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Obsession with a plot. White supremacy is behind everything. Bad test scores? White supremacy. Crime statistics? White supremacy. Every institution is full to the brim with hidden, covert racists.
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Enemies simultaneously too strong and too weak. Trump is simultaneously a fascist dictator but also a bumbling, senile buffoon.
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Newspeak. Control and redefinition of language is one of wokeness’ defining traits.
The selective populism and appeal to the middle class are basically free squares that can be applied to any ideology
daguerrean
1mo ago
Not to be rude, but this feels like an unusually weak post for Scott. Those celebrating Kirk’s murder would obviously disagree with his third premise, “Political violence in America is morally unacceptable (at the current time).” In fact I’m having trouble imagining someone that would agree with his first premise, that most Americans are fascists, without believing political violence was acceptable. This post seems aimed at a constituency that I’m not sure exists, those that believe fascists are everywhere but are opposed to any political violence.
daguerrean
1mo ago
I think most the responses here are taking “Current Thing” to mean something like “biggest issue”, but I disagree. To me the Current Thing is what normie women put in their instagram bio. Palestine, Ukraine, BLM, those were current things. The AI bubble deflating will simply never be the current thing no matter how earthshattering it is
daguerrean
1mo ago
Mass riots over some ICE injustice. In the leadup to George Floyd you could tell the media was agitating for it with Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, it took them about six months of sustained efforts to get the temperature high enough. The media has certainly been trying with ICE, but until somebody gets shot on camera I don’t think they’ll get much traction. They may pivot back to blacks if ICE isn’t working though
daguerrean
1mo ago
You know this has lead me to an important realization. If it came down to it, I would choose to be ruled by the wokest HR lady on Earth before this guy. As much as wokeness disgusts me it doesn’t really scare me, it doesn’t strike me as outright evil or insane. I’m switching teams as of now.
daguerrean
1mo ago
You, in fact, are not obligated. You can quit and live off welfare. You can live on the streets. You can find another job. You can, as the kids say, keep yourself safe, if no other options are open to you
All this applies equally to the dog. It can attack Piker and go out in a blaze of glory, mouth red with his blood. We can observe from its behavior it is not unduly burdened by this obligation. If he had to shock it every minute to maintain compliance then that would be evidence this was extremely burdensome for the dog. Your dog mind reading act does not impress me
daguerrean
1mo ago
I’m obligated to sit at my computer and code for 8 hours per day when working. Is my life net negative? I see no evidence this dog experiences its life as a net negative.
daguerrean
1mo ago
Ok, since many people are raising more or less identical objections I will summarize the basis of my views in response to my own comment so I don’t have to reply with the same to everyone.
I think the following two things are fundamentally reasonable and acceptable.
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I believe it is reasonable to demand a dog perform a job for you in exchange for food and shelter. I do not believe dogs are entitled to human servitude by virtue of being cute.
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I believe it is reasonable to use physical punishment on a dog even if it is not the most optimal or effective training method.
Obviously these things can be carried to extremes and become abusive. I judge by levels of pain generally accepted for things like spanking a child, which is roughly on par with a common shock collar. When judging a situation like this I look at it and ask, is there any evidence the dog is pervasively unwell? I don’t see it. Is he applying the punishment constantly, excessively or gratuitously? I don’t see it. Is the job asked of the dog fundamentally deranged or evil according to my values (such as sexual services)? No. Okay then, carry on
Well the proof is in the pudding. Is the dog able to stay in the designated area for the required time and only requires rare and mild punishment (as evidenced by this being the first time anyone has seen him shock his dog)? Then the observable evidence would seem to indicate this is not inordinately painful for his dog’s specific inclination and temperament. I agree that if he was shocking it every few minutes to maintain compliance then obviously he is either asking too much of the dog, or is unnecessarily cruel. But a shock that is only necessitated perhaps once a day seems to evince that the dog is not unduly burdened by compliance with its job
daguerrean
1mo ago
Of course the dog has no understanding of acting, but that’s irrelevant. The misery is not pointless, presumably it increases the entertainment of his stream (I have no idea, I’m just assuming this is his motivation). The dog is presumably disinclined to sit still for hours at a time, but so what? I’m disinclined to sit at my computer coding for hours but tough shit, that’s what my employer wants. A blind guide dog accompanying a student to class has to sit still for the duration of the class, tough shit. Dogs having jobs is perfectly normal and in the grand scheme of things neither this job nor his training method seem inordinately cruel. Historically perhaps a dog might be gored by a boar while forced to participate in hunts.
daguerrean
1mo ago
The animal did something wrong though, it strayed from the desired position necessary for the stream. I don’t see why “actor” is a less valid vocation for a dog than any of the other myriad tasks we have forced them to do through the years. Being forced to stay in a given location for a stream seems quite similar to dogs assigned to guard a certain area, which are often chained for the purpose, and this seems like a much more luxurious assignment than a junkyard.
daguerrean
1mo ago
So at worst he is guilty of using a less-than-optimal training technique. I view it as identical to spanking children. Perhaps there is a more optimal way of training a child, but people are under no moral obligation to be maximally optimal in everything they do. Obviously physically disciplining a child could be taken to the point of abuse, but a spanking is not in-and-of-itself abusive and does not require being the most optimal method
daguerrean
1mo ago
It is wrong to abuse a pack animal, but all physical punishment is not abuse and the same applies to humans. The relationship of owner to pet is closer to parent-child than me-UPS driver, and it is certainly widely (but not universally) accepted that spanking a child is acceptable.
daguerrean
1mo ago
Well humans have all sorts of cultural taboos around physical violence that clearly dogs have no comprehension of. In the absence of cultural taboos and laws I think for a big enough bonus many employees would prefer a short electric shock over missing out on a 50k bonus. I know I would.
daguerrean
1mo ago
Why is physically negative feedback taboo but other negative sensations are not? They are all just dolors, negative hedons, whatever you want to call them. I’m fairly confident that dogs might choose a small shock over, I don’t know, being refused access to a particular treat. In my mind if a dog would prefer it I struggle in understanding what makes it wrong other than the squeamishness and moral purity of the pet owner
daguerrean
1mo ago
Have you not encountered invisible fences? They are extremely common and widespread in my experiences and use shocks based on proximity to the fence
daguerrean
1mo ago
There is nothing wrong with using a shock collar. View the dog as a working animal, its job is essentially to perform as an actor contributing to his streams. In exchange it receives food, shelter and so forth. It seems like a fair deal for the dog, I see nothing wrong with this.
Pet owners online are some of the most deranged, toxic people I have ever encountered. They seem to view dogs and cats as our masters, that we must deliver them lavish accommodations and expect nothing in return. Suffice it to say I find this unreasonable. If a human is expected to have a job, so too can a dog.
daguerrean
1mo ago
TheMotte is weirdly averse to admitting the Trump’s administration is often deliberately maximally inflammatory and absolutely does engage in “liberal tears” style antagonism. Yes, I understand that the media will always portray conservatives as the villain no matter what you do (Nicholas Sandman, Binders full of women, etc) but that doesn’t mean you have no agency in being more or less provocative. In many cases it may make no difference in your public perception due to media manipulation, but we shouldn’t ignore that Trump is openly, deliberately inflammatory
daguerrean
1mo ago
He has been transparently trolling across about a dozen comments over hours in flagrant violation of site discussion rules. Users have been asking him pointed questions clearly and politely and he has been deliberately obtuse and made no effort to discuss aside from low-effort snide dismissals
daguerrean
1mo ago
…no? Prohibition was totally legitimate, attacking random police officers during prohibition would’ve been very wrong too.
daguerrean
1mo ago
You are purely baiting at this point
daguerrean
1mo ago
He is just playing dumb and pretending to not understand the question to avoid answering it. I’m not sure why, but I doubt repeating it will get anything more meaningful out of him.
I reflected a bit on this. Generally among conservatives and here on The Motte there are two types of responses, both I dislike.
“The left started this with Charlie Kirk/Jay Jones so this is fine.” All I can say is that this way lies ruin. Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals? Are we expecting some kind of come-to-Jesus mutual disarmament moment or just escalation until Civil War? If we are hoping for mutual disarmament, how does that happen? Why can’t this be that? Doesn’t someone have to move first?
“This is different from Charlie Kirk/Jay Jones, that was not okay but this is because reasons.” Here my reaction is to say that you never step in the same river twice. Even though I share the intuition that this is a nothingburger while Kirk was a big deal I have to recognize it is always possible to conjure self-serving reasons why “this time it’s different.” I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough
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