dasfoo
10mo ago
Consider teenage socialists - are they getting that socialism from their middle or high school teachers? Their parents? No.
They aren't? It seems to me that over the last 15-20 years there has been a massive influx of teacher-activists whose entire raison-d'etre is to turn their students into activists for progressive causes, with LGBTQ+++ only the current fad. A key part of the Left's slow march through the institutions over the last 70 years has been through the education pipeline, trickling down from academia to grade school (and younger), and that the current credentialing system for emerging teachers is essentially a factory line for producing good little socialists. This is not, IME, dissimilar from how higher education has done the same to journalism programs, leading to the current situation with a media that is 90+% ideologically captured. Control the narratives through school and TV, and even the kids who aren't political will grow up with the socially approved understanding of the world. By the time the teenagers are being riled into activism by their cool young green-haired teachers (at my kids' charter school a few years back, they all worked on a class project to obstruct drilling at Standing Rock, even though we are thousands of miles away) they've already been primed with 8 years of socialist righteousness.
Go back to the 1990s and you will find socialist-driven environmental messaging seeping into every pore of the public grade school experience. A bit farther back, at my large suburban American high school in the late 1980s, the advanced history class used as its primary textbook Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. This isn't new; on the contrary, it's just so normal it's hard to notice.
dasfoo
6mo ago
I wonder if the online right intellecto-sphere will ever figure out that Trump wasn't for them.
Trump was needed to show that "the narrative" could be countered on the biggest stage, which would inspire craftier right-ward politicians in the future who better understand how to leverage political mechanisms in their favor. The question that remains to be answered is: Will a smarter Trumpism appeal to the same wide base that loves Trump, or do they uniquely love the "dumb" version that is Trump's persona?
I know very smart college-educated people who loooove the way he trolls and, rather than looking forward to the smarter next-gen Trumps, look suspiciously on anyone who isn't exactly in the Trump mold. These people have already largely lost any faith in saving the western political system, so they aren't concerned like I am with civics and compromises for a saner future. They want it to burn, as if that will improve anything.
dasfoo
5mo ago
Bro, he had sex with a 13 year old after confirming with her mother it was OK.
Can you substantiate that? I recalled the girls he approached were older, and there were allegations of him chatting up teenagers above the age of consent at the time, and there was a single allegation of inappropriate touching but not rape. His Wiki bears this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Moore. And he won a defamation lawsuit about last year.
In the south in the late 1970s it was probably not at all uncommon for men in their 30s to date older teenage girls. Moore did and married one of them and is still married to her today.
dasfoo
4mo ago
Even if not all poor people have high time preferences and low willpower, the large majority of people with high time preferences and low willpower end up poor, and make life miserable for others in their community trying to escape.
There is also, I think, a psychological addiction many people have to familiar environments, so a person who grows up around the physical and emotional chaos of poverty will in some way continue to crave that chaos in their life even if they have the will power and conscientiousness to move themselves out of that environment. It will be a constant struggle for them to not fall back into the "comfort food" of the bad life decisions that were normal during their formative years.
dasfoo
5mo ago
I'm in my late 30s and married and have to say that one of the mildly surprising, but quite pleasing aspects of marriage is that this temptation isn't strong at all.
I felt the same way in my 30s and when my marriage was going well. It was blissful to not be tempted at all. Fast-forward ten years, with little incompatibilities growing exponentially, and things might look different. Although I have not done so, I have much more empathy now for some men who do cheat (not the compulsive, chronic cheaters, but the ones who feel abandoned in some aspects of marriage). There may come a time when it looks like the least bad of the terrible options.
dasfoo
5mo ago
a conservative activist and 9-11 conspiracy theorist
I'm so tired of this oxymoron. The new right is not "conservative" in any meaningful sense. Conspiracy theorists are not, essentially, "conservative" in either ideological predilection or demeanor. Trump is not and has never been "conservative." Maybe I'm just being pedantic over a term that has specific meaning to me, but while it is true that a lot a previously self-identified "conservatives" have become something else, what that is can hardly be called "conservative." Maybe the same applies to "liberals," to some extent.
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
10mo ago
It's all very fascinating and puzzling to experience.
I agree with all of that, but I don't find it puzzling. There's an easy answer: the impatience of virtue signaling. At this point in late-stage entryism, we're seeing that the cultural inheritors of the Left's long march through the institutions have zero of the patience that made their current positions of power possible. Not only do they demand instant justice for current wrongs, but they also want to refresh past wrongs and demand instant justice for them, as well. The problem for today's Left with the long march is that, to work, it had to be invisible. Today's political activists want to be seen protesting and be seen enacting change, and as a result appear obnoxious and taint their causes rather than move them forward.
All of this is also true about the New Right. The immediacy of rage and the catharsis of public tantrums are exactly the wrong way to go about reversing the Leftward drift of the last half-century, but since the Right doesn't believe in institutions to the same degree that the Left does, they don't even have another option. This is why the New Right would happily destroy the Constitution for short-term political success, thus destroying the foundation of future long-term success.
dasfoo
5mo ago
Maybe, but this will probably not be synonymous with "white". For one, there are already millions of mixed race people living in Europe.
Just take a look at The Proud Boys, supposedly a white supremacist group, but every time I see a picture of a get-together, half or more appear to be mixed race.
dasfoo
6mo ago
Over the past year and a half, I have come to believe virtually every awful thing I hear about Russia, with the added tint that I also assume the reality is probably worse than the reports. I have also come to disbelieve nearly every positive AND negative thing I hear about Ukraine. Their true identity has been completely obliterated for me by propaganda from both directions. A lot of this is formed by my opinions of the people who make arguments that I have heard in-person. My pro-Russian friends are always twisting themselves into knots to defend Russia, and are otherwise so captured by conspiracy theories that their default fallback position is that everything is fake and we are close to living in a simulation. As a natural contrarian, I feel like I see right through their contrarianism on this one. For the vocal pro-Ukranians -- I myself am pro-Ukranian in this conflict but have a dim view of the country otherwise -- they just sound like, and I hate this term, NPCs. That is, I don't sense a coherent worldview behind their Ukranian fanboying, they are just waving the flag because they're caught in a social contagion.
dasfoo
4mo ago
Bernie couldn’t even beat Hillary in the primary
We'll never know if he could've beaten her, as the Hillary-funded DNC fixed that race.
dasfoo
11mo ago
I don't mean competent in regards to passing good legislation, but literal competency as politicians.
The incentives have changed. Now a politician gets their approval from rallying their social media followers with knee-jerk momentary populist complaints, while old-school "get things done" legislators (like Mitch McConnell, who successfully ran a 20-year gameplan to overturn Roe v Wade) get pilloried by the populists (who crave his results!) for understanding that the way to translate politics into long-term outcomes is to get dirty by sacrificing purity.
Obama also played a (shorter) version of the long-game with the ACA, first putting in place the CBO people he needed to score the plan in a way that would help it get passed. Understanding how the system works and working within it is a key to success; standing outside and yelling "the system sucks" might get a lot of likes, but it won't get you very far within the system.
dasfoo
4mo ago
I have to ask, at this point, why does the West still support Ukraine?
Do you think any of the concerns you've raised are relevant to why the West supports Ukraine?
dasfoo
10mo ago
Another theory I've heard is that Prigozhin and Putin are both involved: have a mini coup, clear house in the MoD, and use that as pretext to cut the war short.
That also seems far too elaborate, though.
And I can't see Putin consenting to a subterfuge that makes him look weak. It destroys his entire image.
dasfoo
10mo ago
Right. You made a comment specifically about the flag, and I asked a comment about the flag, but you chose to respond about something else.
There is a huge difference between having sexual experiences during childhood, or even having sexuality being reinforced, and seeing displays of gay pride flags.
Five years ago, before this topic was as heavily discussed in the culture, I took my then-14yo daughter to a concert. Each of the two opening acts and the main act did a "gay" song that involved the waving of rainbow flags, and the 25,000 14 year olds in the arena went apeshit each time. The energy in that place during the rainbow parades was off the chart.
Kids are very susceptible to fads (I myself wore a "Frankie Say Relax" t-shirt in junior high having no idea of its connotations...) and peer pressure. Whether or not the Rainbow flag actually turns kids gay is separate from the idea that this kind of mass celebration reinforces ideas of what is "good," and there probably isn't a wide distance between a kid feeling encouraged to try gay over their innate disgust tendencies, and then forming intimate bonds following experimental gay contact, especially if it's a first sexual experience. If you close your eyes and try real hard to think about how rainbow flags make you special, a mouth is just a mouth, as David Rabe wrote. And maybe there's no looking back after that point.
dasfoo
5mo ago
And they were soundly defeated. And Israel siezed a bunch of land beyond those borders, have never returned it, and have continued to sieze more.
The moral to this might be: "If you wage a war, you may be stuck with consequences if you lose."
dasfoo
6mo ago
I mean, isn't this a.k.a "Intersectionalism?" This is the foundation of contemporary progressive thought: the weakest party in a power imbalance is the one who must be favored in that conflict. Being "Woke" is seeing the world as that series of power imbalances, and "Identity Politics" is being aware of one's own membership in one or more disempowered groups.
It's also the cornerstone of dramatic fiction, which is why IMO mass media is so confluent with progressive ideas and has become their most powerful delivery system.
dasfoo
3mo ago
When Obama was elected, Democrats were, understandably on a high, and while I can't point stats my sense of the national mood was that the younger Boomer Liberalism that first assumed power under Clinton considered itself victoroious in the culture war (and it was!) and this was reflected with unusual smugness. A new generation was in charge, and they were "on the right side of history." There were some prominent books and articles that got a lot of talk radio play in the wake of Obama's election, like the uncreatively titled "The Death of Conservatism" by Sam Tanenhaus (2009, The New Republic) and "The Death of Conservatism" by Lee Siegel (2009, The Daily Beast). Even quasi-conservative Andrew Sullivan got into it with a book titled "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back." More self-eulogizing from conservatives in "The Death of Conservatism: A Movement and Its Consequences" edited by Lee Edwards (2011).
As for the ideological composition of the federal workforce, the size doesn't matter as much as who made up the ranks. I asked ChatGPT and it responded with this:
One notable initiative in this regard was the National Performance Review (NPR), also known as the Reinventing Government initiative. Led by Vice President Al Gore, the NPR sought to make government more efficient, customer-focused, and results-oriented. It aimed to eliminate waste, reduce bureaucracy, and improve the delivery of government services.
While the NPR did involve workforce reforms, such as encouraging early retirements and implementing performance-based management systems, the primary goal was not age-based replacement but rather improving the overall effectiveness of the federal workforce. The initiative emphasized the importance of attracting and retaining talented employees, regardless of age, and creating a culture of innovation and accountability within the government.
Additionally, the Clinton Administration supported initiatives to promote diversity and equal opportunity in the federal workforce, including efforts to recruit and retain a diverse range of employees across age groups, backgrounds, and demographics.
Obviously, there is not going to be a stated purpose in these initiatives to replace older workers with young democrats, but there is going to be a natural influx of Democrats in such an environment led by party operatives, especially with diversity initiatives driving part of it.
dasfoo
5mo ago
I think the tribal thing is overdone with left v right, the problem is the failure of people to think for themselves. I mean your claim that all blue is pro-immigration seems unlikely, or is evidence of some serious group-think. Immigration is a complex, and contextual issue. If half the population has one view on it, that's stupid.
I think the problem is that even though there may be widespread nuance in individual thought on issues like immigration, when it comes to rubber-meets-the-road rhetoric and policy, there's a knee-jerk reversion to the unnuanced view. It doesn't matter if someone or a lot of someones in Party A think some combination of B,C,D & E is true when they will only vote for people who say and pursue E as policy because it's the option that makes the best PR-tested battle cry. This is true of both major parties, who are more scared of losing than figuring out a problem, so instead of threading needles, all the front-line warriors are using sledgehammers. And while the nuanced thinkers sit back threading their needles, they're cheering on the sledgehammers.
Immigration restriction seems to be a big part of your vision, but you are still hostile to the concept of White identity? You don't want White people to internalize any sort of ethnic identity, but you want major policy changes on Immigration. You can't have one without the other.
Not who you're replying to, but I also oppose illegal/uncontrolled immigration, and my reasons for doing so are irrespective of race. Illegal immigration creates a ghettoized immigrant community that is less likely to assimilate into a national culture, and an "open border" creates many logistical issues not the least of which is that it essentially nullifies a nation's ability to rule itself. The kind of Constitutional/quasi-libertarian project that I would most like to see is only feasible within firmly set and well-policed borders. Whether those borders are keeping out brown or white people makes no difference to me.
dasfoo
5mo ago
And they would be wrong to do so.
Doesn't that depend on the method of reduction?
It would be obviously wrong to murder deaf people to reduce their numbers, but would it be obviously wrong to reduce the deaf population by curing them?
I would agree that it would be wrong to cure deaf people against their will, but what if 30% wanted curing? Would it be wrong to reduce deafness by 30% in that scenario? What if more wanted curing but were pressured by the deaf community to reject the cure?
What if, in a world where deafness was reduced to an even smaller fraction of its current presence, librarians and teachers started encouraging hearing children to explore deafness as a potential identity so that it does not go extinct? Would that be noble and something parents needn't worry about?
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
7mo ago
Sound of Freedom beat the final Indiana Jones movie at the box office, albeit through a ticket multipurchase scheme
One of the guys from Angel Studios is on this podcast: https://www.thebulwark.com/podcast-episode/how-2023s-oddest-box-office-hit-paid-it-forward/
He claims that under the "Pay it Forward" ticket scheme, the tickets aren't counted as "box office" until a ticket is claimed and used to attend a screening. That is, the theaters do not see the purchase of the ticket until it is actually used. If true, I don't see how that is any less legit than the buy-it-yourself ticket model. Attendance is attendance.
dasfoo
11mo ago
I honestly don't understand the weird outrage towards these ad campaigns. People getting angry over "woke" ads just don't understand that not all ads are aimed at them. The drag queen Bud Light endorsement was a short instagram reel and it was aimed at that person's followers, not conservatives or rednecks. It's real main character syndrome energy to get mad because an ad campaign doesn't reflect your own individual or group likes/dislikes/personae.
I don't understand why it's hard to understand. These ads are potentially offensive on several levels.
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They offend the core demographic of the brand by selecting a message that is antithetical to the values of the core demographic of the brand.
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One level deeper: They selected this message precisely because it offends their core demographic. The only other possibility is that the marketers really have no idea who their core demographic is, but as the Bud Light exec said in the video that was circulating, this was not the case. They want to replace their uncool customers with cool customers.
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One level removed: From the POV of someone who doesn't care about either brand, it just seems like an insanely bad idea to market against one's customer base, making it offensive to notions of common sense or of an orderly rational universe.
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There is a baked-in dishonestly to several parts of either ad in their concepts of their new targeted demographics. Are women of any biological persuasion really going to be moved to drink lite beer because of these ad campaigns? Is the Miller Lite ad seriously presupposing that sexist ads drove women away from beer as more a likely explanation than sexist ads were created to appeal to the major beer-drinking market: men who like hot women and cold beer? Let alone the claims made about the preponderance of beer-brewing women or the gender of one particular spokesperson.
One almost has to not look at all to not find something offensive to mere common sense.
Something like this:
School holds a function celebrating Trans people as exemplary and people against Trans as bigots.
Kids who don't want to be called bigots outdo each other with effusive praising of trans people. This is a feedback loop of increasing intensity.
Puberty-adjacent kid with low self-esteem who gets no affirmations at home see affirmations of trans people, and at his age the desire to be cool/affirmed is more powerful than his sexual desire, so he wants to be Trans.
After a year or two of getting teachers and fellow students and parents to celebrate him as a her, once the real sexual desires kick in, it would be immortally embarrassing to make a 180-degree turn. The desire to not be embarrassed socially is more powerful than seuxal desire, so he sticks with it.
Likely, once the kid announced as Trans they digested a ton of Trans-confirming sexual messaging online and from peers which assimilates into their sexual development. Maybe at the point it's hard to tell what is organic sexual attraction and what has been formed by other influences.
My nephew is older, but his story goes something like this:
Socially awkward young man with a speech impediment from a religious family (dad is a reverend) gets a job as a software engineer and spends a lot of time remote-working from his dark apartment. Makes a lot of money but gets depressed and quasi-suicidal.
Goes to therapy -- provided by his work, I believe. Therapist suggests that social awkwardness could be gender-related, tells him that transitioning genders will alleviate suicidal ideation.
Transitions, comes to some family parties in dresses and apparent top surgery, has a new name. Everyone is polite to him (except for some of the young children who refer to him as "that weird boy"). Is also the only one wearing a Covid mask. It's like a case study of a misfit making extra effort to not fit in to affirm's one's identity as a misfit.
Year later complains to therapist that it didn't work and that he is still suicidal.
His parents reach out to him, but he tells them that their dead to him and if he kills himself it's their fault.
Turns the most sympathetic family members against other family members for not being effusive in their praise of something that looks like a mental health trainwreck.
No one wants to know what his actual sexual feelings are, and I would doubt even he knows at this point. At least he hasn't killed himself yet, but I won't be surprised when the call comes in.
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