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
21hr 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
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.
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