dasfoo
4mo ago
I think it's more that he says a lot of stuff, and there's an army of people employed at sifting through it to snip out bits that make him look maximally evil out of context.
And that he is imprecise and careless about what he says, especially when he's regurgitating things he has only vaguely committed to memory, so he leaves a lot of room for others to figure out what he meant.
dasfoo
6mo ago
Except, of course, that classically it isn't; rather, it the expression of outgroup bias against particular groups.
I think the point is that the outgroup bias follows the ingroup bias: "In order to protect/provide for my ingroup, it is useful to stigmatize the outgroup."
dasfoo
9mo ago
I would not be surprised if the new BlueSky app stays in invite-only mode for precisely this reason. A private Twitter probably has more appeal/value to the blue media class than a public Twitter at this point. Like a super-powered Journolist.
dasfoo
1yr ago
How do you do toilet training with your kids if genitals mean sex and a taboo with regards to children?
Presumably one would not employ a real or photographed demo penis during toilet training. I think keeping the kid's focus on their own penis is good enough. Thankfully, in the Elmo book/video that was popular when my kids were learning how to become civilized, Elmo was not hanging dong.
Besides, how does the statue with a penis become okay at 10 but not at 6 years old? They are still very much kids right?
If we can agree that older kids are better at contextualization than younger kids, I think that answers your question. Anyway, these questions are irrelevant.
dasfoo
1yr ago
but it's not the kind of progress that would satisfy anyone rioting in Seattle in 2000.
Not a metric I would put any stock into.
Another issue I take with the moralists is that there is seemingly no plausible metric that would satisfy them. There's a lot of talk about being "on the right side of history" but very little interest in the long arc of history. Progress is never enough nor fast enough, the work is never done. Once you let their nose inside any tent they will ruin it with relentless reform until it no longer resembles what they once were trying to protect.
dasfoo
1yr ago
It demonstrated that although Asians had higher rates of poverty in NYC, compared to even African Americans, their crime rate remained the lowest of the various ethnicities studied.
What's the argument for why Asians are such an outlier?
Is it possible that low-income Asians tend to live in insular mostly low-income Asian communities and that whatever crime does occur inside the insular ethnic community gets handled within that community and isn't reported to the data collectors?
dasfoo
1yr ago
Can you briefly expand upon why? I only vaguely know who he is. I've seen him in TV a few times as a talking head but that's it.
If you want the self-serving Hollywood version of Dershowitz, there's a pretty good movie of one of his books, Reversal of Fortune, in which Dershowitz (played very well by Ron Silver) defends Claus Von Bulow (Jeremy Irons, who won an Oscar for it), an aristocrat charged with attempted murder.
dasfoo
4mo ago
I think you misunderstood me- deaf activists who object to curing deafness are wrong to do so.
Yes, I did. I read it as "government interventions to reduce the number of deaf people..." "...would be wrong to so"
dasfoo
1yr ago
I forgot all about the Awan Brothers! I am guessing nothing ever happened with that, even though it had the stank of suspicious incompetence all over it.
dasfoo
1yr ago
They don’t “speculate” in the sense of disclosing uncertainty, they outright state they have the data. The book actually lays out that data.
They speculate that their data reflects a conspiracy of vote fraud. What they never show is a single actual person going to multiple ballot dropoffs. Not just in one night, but ever. Their "4 million minutes" or whatever of video either fails to corroborate their claim or they decided not to show that it does, which is very weird.
I didn't know that there was a book, too. I doubt that it proves anything more than the movie did, beyond possibly doubling their profits on their uncorroborated speculation.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Look, I'll propose something much simpler: DePape ringed the bell, someone (maybe even mister Pelosi) answered the door, and DePape said something that was misinterpreted, resulting in the person letting him in, thinking that he was expected.
Sure, but if it happened in the way you speculate, it's what would be reported. However, I doubt anyone can simply walk up and ring the Pelolsi's doorbell (in the middle of the night). Unless the Pelosi's themselves don't take seriously all of her public hand-wringing about right-wing violence, they surely have active measures in place to protect themselves from it, right?
dasfoo
1yr ago
Really? Is that true? I didn't follow the story closely at all, so I'm only inferring details. But if he didn't do anything without them saying they were okay with it, then why was he cancelled at all?
CK's crime was taking old feminism at face value: treating women as equals who are capable of consenting to sexual interactions (which is how it ought to be, IMO).
What he didn't understand, as a good liberal, is that he was guilty of original sin before doing anything, and that new feminism's model posits that women are always weak victims who are trivially easy to manipulate and should therefore, paradoxically, hold more positions of governmental and corporate power.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Hiring conservative professors in overwhelmingly liberal humanities departments is part of the solution, but another serious part—and a responsibility that can only fall on conservatives themselves—is the cultivation of more intellectually serious humanities and social sciences departments, alongside liberal arts colleges, with sincere commitments to presenting conservative thought.
How does this responsibility "fall on conservatives themselves?" Conservatives (of the type that I think you mean: classically liberal American Constitutional conservatives) hold as one of their values the free and robust exchange of ideas. They are already there. Progressives hold as their primary value the exclusion of these types of Conservatives from institutions and the toxification of all of their ideas -- and they've been successful! Without a change of heart or voluntary surrender from Progressives, what can Conservatives do except embrace conflict theory, take back institutions by force and block the entryists, forsaking the very mistake theory that you and I wish to have restored?
dasfoo
1yr ago
Last night I watched the absurdly stupid and awful-looking surprise hit movie of 2022, the Tollywood epic RRR. While slogging through this 3-hour parade of xenophobic melodrama, incoherent action, and kindergarten-level sentiment was a struggle, it did make me wonder about two ideas that I’ve always thought should be in direct conflict with each other but aren’t treated as such: “Anti-Colonialism” and “Open Borders.”
As I understand it, the principle behind “Anti-Colonialism” is that Group A is never entitled to move into Group B’s space and take it over, replacing Group B’s preferred culture and/or method of governance with Group A’s preferred culture and/or method of governance, thereby subjugating Group B as second class in their own space. However, this school of thought seems to be most popular among the same political/intellectual cohort that also champions very loose immigration controls, commonly referred to as “Open Borders” (even though that phrase suggests no control whatsoever, whereas the reality is probably something closer liberal immigration controls). With an “Open Borders” mindset, there is no stopping Groups B-Z from moving into Group A’s space and altering its culture or assuming control of its institutions if any of those Groups does so with enough numbers or organization. “Open Borders,” on principle, refutes the very notion of any group’s ownership of any space, which more or less dismantles the paradigm of “Anti-Colonialism.” How do these two ideas co-exist in the same mind without producing uncomfortable cognitive dissonance?
It seems uncharitable to suggest that the salve for this cognitive dissonance is simply racism; or, to put it how I suppose the “Open Borders Anti Colonialist” would think of it, “intersectionality.” That is, the principle behind “Anti-Colonialism” is not really the wrongness of generic groups subjugating each other but rather the wrongness of one static “Bad Group” (that happens to be largely defined by skin color/geographical origin) subjugating other Groups (of other skin colors), who by the nature of their subjugation and opposition to “Bad Group” are thereby “Good Groups.” “Open Borders,” too, is a policy only sought after when the same “Good Groups” are immigrating into the space of the same “Bad Group,” rather than vice versa. These are intended as strictly one-way ideological roads, and not as equal-use roadmaps for Groups A-Z.
I don’t get the impression that this intersectional solution to the “Open Borders Anti Colonialism” knot is oft-contemplated by the typical “Open Borders Anti Colonialist,” who rather thinks of both notions as having sprung from the same well of humanist good intentions. Is the racial/intersectional question actually essential to this paradigm, or is there some other less invidious key that unlocks the conflict between “Open Borders” and “Anti Colonialism?” in the progressive mindset?
I’ll hand this to RRR: It aptly confounds Western culture-warring by presenting its own set of ideas that may be difficult for some Western progressives to reconcile: It pits noble indigenous revolutionaries against the cartooniest of all racist villains and does so with a strident rallying cry against gun control. One of the protagonists has the stated goal of “putting a rifle in the hand” of every colonial subject, and suggests that a bullet only attains its true value when it kills an immigrant (or, in this exact case, any white person).
dasfoo
1yr ago
Opposition to intervention in European affairs in the 1930s and then to entry into WWII was distinctly conservative.
Depends on when you look. During the 1930s there was a growing pro-war anti-fascist movement among left-leaning Americans. There was even a brigade in the Spanish Civil War for anti-Franco foreigners. Not coincidentally, many American pro-war/ant-fascist leftists immediately became anti-war upon the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, and then became pro-war again when that pact was broken. Some might suspect that their attitude toward war was dependent on its utility to the Communist Party. The Left likes wars in which the Left are the "good guys" and hates wars in which the Left are the bad guys. Go figure.
My far-right friends see the Ukraine war as the Globohomo Lefitst Elite spitting in the eye of a Trad Warrior State.
The growing anti-war sentiment in the US is, I think, directly related the right-coded nature of the military. The Right feels like the military are their people, and that their people are being sent out to risk their lives to line the pockets of effete sexually deviant billionaires who are the lizardy powers behind Globohomo. In the past the right was gung-ho for fighting Communism, but the Communists secretly won and are now pulling the strings.
dasfoo
1yr ago
The reaction of right wing populists, elected officials, intellectuals, and media regarding our lovable insane maga hammerbro doing a little trolling are making me wig out. People I thought were wrong but serious passing around clear bullshit about gay escorts, pretending the dude wasn't Q radicalized, and laughing it off. It's one thing for the lunatic fringe to do that shit, it's another entirely when the largest single conservative news network and most popular intellectuals are doing it.
Speculating about the motive and practical execution of the attack is not the same as endorsing it. I think hammer attacks are bad. I hope that no Democrats are attacked with hammers. I feel bad for Paul Pelosi. Even if he and his wife have been getting rich via insider trading during her decades in Congress, it's not OK to attack either of them with hammers. Or even break into their house to tape them up and talk to them. It's bad. Don't do it.
Now, whether Depape is a right-wing crazy person (with BLM and Rainbow signs in his yard), or a random crazy person, or a crazy gay hustler, is a completely separate question.
There used to be a sense on the Left that rich people indulged in a lot of exploitative and perverse shit and got away with it thanks to their influence on media and law enforcement. Now that the Left have become rich and powerful with heavy influence on the media and law enforcement in their deep blue cities, they strangely don't seem concerned with the misbehaviors of the rich or telling the truth about what happens when they are involved in some kind of suspicious event. I guess that's the job of the Right now. I'd rather the Left and Right cooperate on holding the powerful accountable.
dasfoo
7mo ago
Why did support for Ukraine split along the left/right the way it did (at least in the U.S.)
The "Dissident Right" sees Ukraine as a puppet of their boogeyman, The New World Order, going back at least as far as the Maidan Revolution, which they think was a coup orchestrated by hated Neocons and Globalists (aka Satanic Pedophile Freemasons). Putin, meanwhile, is anti-LGBTQ++, so he's the based warrior holding out against the tide of Globohomo-ism. I know very intelligent people who believe this. To quote a friend of mine (who has two Masters degrees), when I asked him why he is so uncritical of Putin's Russia, "I know we [America/Western Civ] are evil. I don't know that about Putin."
dasfoo
1yr ago
Both images depict nudity. Note that it isn't claimed anywhere that this is an exhaustive list. It is quite possible that other artworks that don't feature nudity were discussed in the class, and the news reporting only mentioned these three because they are pertinent.
If it's not the teacher's choice and they are merely following a curriculum set by the board, that's the board's problem. If the board is telling teachers: Pick any lesson that doesn't contain nudity, and the teacher picks one full of nudity, they have only themselves to blame. If a teacher is required to inform parents of something and doesn't and then tells students not to tell their parents, they should be fired. There is no situation in which teachers/school should be hiding things from parents, and that's the key to this entire culture war chapter.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Republicans aren’t known for forcing speech codes around dubious notions of “harm”, so yea, they should vote R, I’m surprised people don’t realize they are the libertarian team. At worst they might draft a law that states school children shouldn’t be taught america is the worst country on earth that they should defile and shit on at every opportunity
There really is a wide gulf between (formerly) mainstream 1990s centrist Republicans and New Right-ier Trump Republicans on this, and (sadly, for me) it looks like the centrists are losing. I have no doubt that most Rightier Republicans would gleefully embrace the ability to ban language and behavior for "the greater good" with just as much zeal as the Progressives; whether or not the 1990s GOPers have enough sway to argue effectively for the principle of "free speech" is an open question, but not one for which I hold much hope.
dasfoo
8mo ago
But if we contrast that with the case of a harmless shut in depressed teenager who has tied their ego to their identity... What's the argument?
The principle that it's never to the long-term benefit of the subject to affirm the "importance" of identity. In mental health terms, it's long-term destructive to humor a patient's delusion. In societal terms, it's long-term destructive to stress identitarianism. In individual terms, it's harmful to place so much importance on one unstable factor that puts them in natural conflict with other individuals/groups. And I'm an individualist!
dasfoo
11mo ago
The communists lost that round of the culture war so thoroughly that literally everybody, including those few who still consider themselves socialist, will fervently, absolutely condemn everything that has to do with Soviet and Soviet collaborators in the west.
There might be a more thoughtful contingent of people who will argue that any Communist regime that has bad consequences was corrupted by the human weaknesses that Communism was meant to overcome (IMO, the fatal flaw of Communism), but most people don't think that deeply about it. The Communists lost the short game but won the long game, by spreading Communist ideas through academia and, downstream of that, civil rights movements, and downstream of that, entertainment and news media. That these ideas aren't directly associated with Communism any longer are part of its victory. But, for the most part, in the US at least, Communists were (ironically) "free speech" martyrs who were oppressed by the omnipresent fascism of big business and right-wing political leaders, or they were liberators of dispossessed groups in the U.S. globally, from labor to minority racial groups. It was a very smart strategy, and it divorced the incremental steps from the ultimate goal in the minds of the short-term activists.
dasfoo
1yr ago
In other words, their minimum wages are about 1.5x to 3x country's median wages for essentially half-time work.
But these aren't steady jobs. A writer might have that job for 6 weeks and is then on the hunt for another gig. It pays well, when it happens, but it's not dependable like most lower paying jobs are.
dasfoo
1yr ago
On the other hand, you need some way to distinguish between "hey, it turns out rules, structure and hierarchy are valuable, who knew", and "rules, structure and hierarchy are valuable to the exact extent that my side controls them."
That is always the tension in centrist/civic politics. Trump is not a centrist/civicist though -- and, importantly, neither are many of his opponents; I don't see Trump as wholly unique problem, except for how he doesn't bother to cloak his extremeism -- he's a bull in a china shop that gets cheered by people who resent the mean owners and the social implications of the china shop. Rather than finding some way to ignore or replace the china shop with something more useful, they choose destruction. I have a good friend who, though he has soured a little on Trump recently, loved that about him, loved January 6, loved that he insults Elaine Chao for being Chinese, because he shares Trump's contempt for "the system" and all of the proprieties that make the system work. I don't think anything better than the current system comes out of that style of destructive performance, however.
dasfoo
1yr ago
That is, mental illness alone of any severity does not meet the requirements for a risk protection order, which instead must depend on clear and convincing evidence of danger to himself or herself or others, according to the statute.
Isn't the basis of the argument for gender-affirmation that the trans person is an imminent risk to themselves? Affirmation is required to subvert suicidal tendencies; to not affirm is to commit "genocide" because this is all that stands between the trans person and self-harm? And since affirmation relies on the participation of uncooperative third-parties, the stability of the trans person is in constant jeopardy?
I don't know how you square this argument, which is the basis for the current mode of treatment for people with gender dysphoria, with "not a danger to themselves."
Good point. Now, unless there are any objections, since we're finally off Reddit, I'll started on this site's Jailbait thread later today....
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