I appreciate you linking directly to the argument.
However, the presented tweets, especially removed from any greater context, barely budge the needle from what I already believe, as stated above.
It still reads like she's simply sticking to her guns under heavy, withering attacks against her in a battle she never invited but is, at this point, willing to fight. Her guns being that women's rights are a distinct, important cause worth upholding and that redefining 'woman' starts to erode those rights in a subtle way.
"Rowling is an extremely outspoken opponent of trans rights. This has been her main issue for several years now."
Yeah, so right around the time trans rights were made into a central social issue in the culture wars. Could it be that it's just her being consistently pro-woman in her beliefs and responding to just the latest attacks on women's rights as she would on any other matter? I don't think she's been harboring hidden anti-trans beliefs all this time, or that she arbitrarily decided to turn trans rights into her defining cause in the past few years. How does one differentiate between someone who started singling out trans people because they hate them vs. because trans people have been getting much, much more attention than previously?
Also, maybe because she believes that there's an inherent contradiction between what trans-rights activists want and what is good for women as a class?
You can't square that circle unless you agree "trans women are women" which... J.K. by all appearances honestly believes is not the case.
"Rowling doesn't ask her audience to think; she asks them to fear"
And HOLY SHIT if that's the standard for determining who is a bigot and creating '-phobias,' then there's a laundry list of mainstream personalities who are apparently spreading, among other things. incelphobia, Russophobia, and constant, CONSTANT androphobia.
Maybe explain why she's not allowed to invoke anger and emotional pleas while everyone else throws them at her, and happily invokes them on other issues?
As with other groups, this starts to read as a special pleading. "The mere fact that you're criticizing [group] at all indicates you must hate them." But why is THAT group thus immune to criticism in a way others are not?
Why do I even feel like defending J.K. Rowling? I just get really sick of this whole "we picked a fight against someone and they didn't take a dive in the first round as planned, so we've doubled, tripled, quintupled our efforts and HOW DARE they continue to fight back" approach employed by activists.
faceh
5mo ago
It has been darkly amusing to watch the "NAZIS ARE EVERYWHERE, WE MUST FIGHT BACK" crowd going to bat for the honest-to-goodness "Round up the Jews and exterminate them" authoritarian brigade.
What does it take to achieve "friendly interactions between blacks and whites as the norm rather than exception"?
Speaking from a longish life living in the south, in generally diverse areas.
I attended a high school that was 8% white, with the vast majority being black and Hispanic. I was never targeted with racial animosity and I can unironically say I had multiple black (and Hispanic, and Irish, and Pakistani, and Iranian, and Chinese, as it happens) friends. Worst thing that happened to me was getting my gym shorts stolen once. It was jarring but wasn't what I would call a hate crime.
So largely this is observation over time of situations where racial harmony was prevalent, and a few where it was less so.
On the one hand, having multiple things in common with another person that isn't race allows one to forge a relationship that is MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL.
Sharing a favored sports team, or a hobby, a favored hunting/fishing spot, or musical tastes. Now you're bonded with someone over some shared experience which breeds immediate empathy and camaraderie.
At a core this is just basic human tribalism, but instantiated in a way that ignores people's physical characteristics or even political ideology, and so allows for co-existence in happy peace, assuming that everyone feels treated fairly by the system. People will get WAY more worked up over a rivalry between College Football teams than they will over racial tensions, by and large.
What does a middle class white liberal in New York actually have in common with a middle or lower-class African American? I'd doubt they share taste in music, the white liberal probably isn't much of a sports fan, and I'd guess there's minimal crossover in hobbies. What's the groundwork for creating a harmonious interaction betwixt them? I know many New Yorkers view "living in New York" as a cultural touchstone. I honestly can't say how strong that is.
On the other hand, the culture of the south honestly does view race as a secondary concern to the overall need to be polite, helpful, and optimistic. I'd guess this traces to religiosity among other things, and basically results in an underlying assumption that everyone you interact with is going to be friendly, and thus you should default to friendliness until given reason not to. This is where the reputation for neighborliness in the South comes from, ultimately. If your first interaction with the neighbors is a friendly one, then the respective races of you and the neighbors won't even come up as a consideration. Indeed, it wouldn't be 'polite' to make a direct acknowledgement of it. You wouldn't ask a black dude who his favorite rapper is, just because he's black. Of course, if you're deeper into the friendship with someone, the comfort level might actually allow you to use race-based insult humor with them, when it's all in good fun.
And on the gripping hand, the South is more fundamentally tied to the "American" identity than your average white liberal is, I'd wager. History of rebellion notwithstanding, Southern culture is very directly tied to the agricultural land, the geographical features, and the people who occupy the actual territory that makes up the U.S. although maybe less so to the government that lays claim to said territory. Perhaps it is a less 'enlightened' perspective than one which views humanity/earthlings as a whole and becomes less relevant with time as globalization dissolves territorial boundaries to a greater or lesser extent. But When you're deeply rooted to the land itself, then you can have a stronger connection with others who are also so rooted, and your group can feel that you're more authentically 'American' than people who live in cities and have minimal knowledge of/connection to the greater geography of the country.
So this all rolls into a situation where the people are much more likely to focus on what unites them than what sets them apart, and they're sort of culturally opposed to interpersonal animosity when it can be avoided, and has very little reason to single out race as a central part of their identity.
For my part, having grown up in the South makes me feel pretty uncomfortable in situations where people are actively choosing to center their identity on their race and drive a discussion (for some values of that term) about racial disparities and how to rectify them. My phrasing there is deliberate, as it applies to white supremacists AND hardcore lefty intersectionalists.
When I find myself in such a situation, my instinct is to say "bless your hearts, y'all have a good day" and just leave.
Anyhow, if you want a more scholarly take on this, I can say Thomas Sowell has done some strong writing on this topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Rednecks_and_White_Liberals
https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/thomas-sowell/intellectuals-and-race/9780465058723/
I'll just draw a brief comparison to my "Skin in the Game" rant from a couple days ago.
We have here a massive contrast to the problem I pointed out with most elite institutions.
In this case, the particular man responsible for the failures put his own life on the line as part of the process.
So, regardless of what else you think of the guy, he didn't slough the consequences of his decisions off on someone else. If they got stuck and had to suffer for days of slowly dwindling oxygen supply, he was down there suffering with them (unless they killed him or he killed himself first).
Compare that to this little bit from the aforementioned rant:
The overarching issue is that no matter how much damage an elite causes through their decisions, no matter how foreseeable that damage was, no matter how incompetent and unsuited for their position they are, the system as it currently operates does not allow them to actually suffer in any way that matters. There's no 'feedback loop' or filter that catches bad elites early on and keeps them from advancing to positions of greater power or enacts harsh consequences when needed to dissuade others from misbehavior.
In this case, the CEO willingly put himself into a position where his own survival and comfort would be compromised if the comfort or survival of his customers, riding in his vehicle, depending on his decisions, was compromised. His incompetence, to the extent it impacted the outcome, would impact him as well.
The feedback loop and consequences in this case were pretty much instantaneous. We don't even have to go through a lengthy investigation and trial, nor wait for a vengeful family member to attack him. If the submersible imploded, he died. If they survived for days in agony, he suffered... then died.
And now he has filtered himself out of the system, so whatever bad decisions and processes he may have been following are shown to be defective, and the person pushing those decisions and processes has no more influence.
And, in theory, this should make future incidents of this particular type substantially less likely, so the system as a whole is stronger for his absence, although we can certainly mourn for the people he took with him.
Pulling on the Fight Club thread, I can speak directly to how men seem to need structure, challenge, and, yes, some form of 'violence' or otherwise direct physical risk to reach full self-actualization.
I'm a martial arts/combat system instructor at a local gym. Krav Maga.
I fully attribute most of my confidence and positive affect in life on my participation in this hobby. I'm really good. It makes me happy.
And I have now, across dozens of examples, observed exactly how getting to engage in a healthy outlet for aggression can turn a man's whole perspective on life around.
Guys of all ages come in having never thrown a goddamn punch in their life, they awkwardly cast Fist towards a thick, cushioned pad, they feel the impact and maybe their knuckles start bleeding, they tire out within a minute... and a wide grin starts to spread across their face. Not all of them stick with it, mind. But in that moment, it is like they've finally gotten to connect with their primal purpose and let deep instincts loose, and not only are they not chastised for it, they're encouraged!
Those who show up repeatedly and advance through the levels usually get really into it. Their confidence increases, they start training cardio harder, their discipline goes through the roof. We introduce them to sparring and they get hit in the face the first time and it shakes them up, but they redouble their efforts because being able to shake off a smack to the face is actually an important life skill. And this is where the Fight Club parallels really come to a head, when they're showing off bruises they received and talking up how excited they are to go another round. They'd honestly rather be in the gym getting smacked around than spending time at work. I have, personally, given a guy a black eye (accidentally!) and he comes in the next day sporting that thing like he received an award, ready to learn more.
All in all, what I see is guys 'discovering' and embracing masculinity beyond just the superficial brand that Redpill/manosphere types tend to shill. Its not just an image they're projecting, it is a complete renovation of the self. And all it took was learning to deliver an efficient and effective beatdown.
And one of the 'strangest' trends I've noted? The types of guys who take these classes tend not to be the jocks, meatheads, or 'bros'. My most consistent students are the fucking nerdiest, most introverted and awkward types you can imagine who are still able to maintain basic hygiene practices. Dudes getting masters degrees in hard sciences, who hold down tech or tech-adjacent jobs (One guy, about to get his black belt, is the owner of a company that does does computer repair and home networking!). They're not jacked, they're not looking to become jacked to attract women (some are already married!), there's really no superficial motivation other than self-fulfillment and the acquisition of a potentially useful skill.
Its like they've realized that there's some aspect of themselves that they have been deprived of since birth, and perhaps told that they shouldn't express, and yet having found a place where they can express it, they are driven to devote their lives and time to it to the same degree you'd expect a nerd to devote to any borderline-obsession hobby. And they're better for it.
Anyhow, I strongly feel that martials arts might be the sole remaining bastion of pure, healthy masculinity left in Western Society, and it is almost certainly the only one that hasn't come under direct attack from the Cathedral, like team sports, military service, and fatherhood have.
Which is why I also feel like the recent trend of Influencer Boxing, despite being silly on the surface, is actually going to be an extremely positive development if it gets young males to develop their martial side in something other than Call of Duty.
EDIT: I want to emphasize my point about it being nerds who are the surprisingly most devoted students:
Check out Mark 'the Zucc' Zuckerberg, training MMA:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bu3_EW0muC0
I'd enjoy hearing how the sight of that guy throwing hands like a semi-pro has updated your priors.
The playbook has gained a few pages but man it's been the same overall strategy to respond to mass shooting events as long as I can remember:
If the shooter's political motivations make outgroup look bad, hammer on those.
If shooter had no clear political affiliation but their identity (white and male, usually) is useful, hammer that.
If their identity is bad for the narrative but the victims are particularly sympathetic (children, women, LGBT, immigrants, etc.) hammer the hell out of that. I would bet most people don't remember that the Pulse Nightclub Shooter was an Islamist. And the 'new' page is blame outgroup for 'hateful rhetoric' causing the shooting anyway.
If literally all else fails, then just hammer the lack of gun control (even if it happened in a 'gun free zone' in a state with strict gun laws). Usually the pivots aren't as visible, but you see them regularly.
The Kyle Rittenhouse situation was interesting because they tried, very poorly, mind you, to use every one of these approaches, despite it never really being a good fit on any count. There's still people who claim he was a White Supremacist who crossed state lines with an illegally owned rifle with the intention of killing minorities. This, after an acquittal at trial and copious video evidence he was attacked and chased and everyone he shot was white, anyway.
Incidentally, I do believe this is why the Waukesha Christmas Parade Attack got relatively little coverage and has not led to any particular political movement. 6 Deaths, 62 injured.
No political motivations, attacker was minority, and the victims were middle class and white and probably Republican, and there wasn't even a gun involved.
And I'm not saying there should have been a political movement! I think treating it as a semi-random tragedy is the right approach and overreacting by, say, banning parades or something would be stupid.
But the fact that journalists and media don't take this tact with every mass killing gives away the game.
People have seemingly shortish memories as to what Twitter was before.
Users would request seemingly simple features for months or years, and eventually get the literal opposite of what they were asking for.
It would go down on a regular basis, and seemed to have NO CLUE how to monetize the userbase.
There was that massive breach where huge accounts got exploited for a crypto scam.
Like, how can one pretend that the site before was a paragon of stability, usability, or security compared to now?
Nothing of that magnitude has occurred since the takeover.
The site clearly, CLEARLY never needed staffing at the level it had. So long as Musk doesn't break the core feature of short-form messages in easy-to-follow threads it isn't going anywhere in the near term.
And let me be clear, I say this as someone who would much prefer Twitter (and insta, and reddit, and quite a few other sites) died a quick death and have for a long time.
but from my perspective the abortion and trans rights issues look entirely defensive from the left. The left wants the status quo ante of Roe v. Wade and wants trans people to be left alone. The right is the side making those into culture war issues, not the left.
Only in the "cries out in pain as he strikes you" sense, holy cow.
It's really interesting that you simultaneously suggest that "the left wants the status quo ante of Roe v. Wade," (nevermind that was imposed by SCOTUS and not anything like the result of a legislative process where all citizens had their say) because when it comes down to it the right wants the "status quo" of people with penises and Y chromosomes to have separate bathrooms, prisons, sports teams, and certain other facilities from people with uteruses and lacking Y chromosomes.
And definitely prefers the status quo where it doesn't matter what the person claims to identify as, the term 'man' and 'woman' has an easily verifiable component that isn't subject to the individual's personal preference. And that, on it's face, is entirely compatible with trans people being 'left alone.'
If trans people 'just want to be left alone' that message REALLY hasn't gotten through to the actual left.
Why else are, among other things, the existence of a biological male competing against biological females and unsurprisingly dominating the sport supposed to be celebrated as an achievement, even if this ruins the competition for biological females?
In what sense does this gel with trans people being 'left alone,' if it imposes on people who are trying to compete on something like a fair playing field?
Because blanketing a whole town with flags that represents your identity is almost fundamentally opposed to the concept of 'being left alone.' By this very act you are demanding people confront, acknowledge, accept, and support your particular beliefs. In so doing, you are requiring them pay attention, which is the opposite of leaving you alone.
Similarly when you make biological females wax your penis. That's not 'wanting to be left alone.' Nor is insisting to be allowed into a women's changing room with pubescent females. If this isn't some version of culture warring, then what is it?
You don't get to call it 'defensive' and then literally threaten to take people's kids away for failure to comply with your beliefs.
Or appoint openly trans officials to high ranking federal government positions seemingly only on the basis of their trans identity. This is not behavior that implies a desire to be 'left alone.' It is being openly stated there:
As many facilities across the country face harassment, including death threats to providers who offer gender-affirmative care, Levine told physicians “to highlight the importance of the work that they are doing for vulnerable, transgender and gender diverse children and their families, and to continue to do that work and to keep the faith.
What is 'the faith' in this case?
“You can see a pattern here in terms of the attacks on rights,” she said. “I really reject the language that the opposition is using. I reject their terminology. I reject their ideology.”
"Just want to be left alone" but if you disagree with them, people at the very highest levels of government are ready to come for you.
I don't know that you're even arguing in good faith, but assuming you are, please put forward a plausible narrative of the last twenty years in which the right is the side that pushed trans issues to the forefront of public conciousness as a culture war issue.
Literally the only thing I want to hear from the MV residents who were so 'enriched' after this experience is whether they want to accept more migrants or not.
If so, Texas can start sending them trainfuls. Should turn out great. Win-Win-Win for all.
If not, then at least stop playing at being a 'sanctuary' city if you are unable or unwilling to provide sanctuary.
I don't think ANYONE actually believes they support these people in anything more than the abstract sense if they only take action when migrants are brought directly to their doorstep. It's just standard NIMBY behavior.
Finally, I was surprised to see how much more aggressive Rowling has gotten in her anti-trans rhetoric. Not that I necessarily disagree with her, but it looks like I can no longer say that she's being unfairly smeared as an enemy of the trans movement.
I have still not seen a single quote or statement attributed to JK that reads as anything other than bog-standard third-wave feminism applied to a situation she perceived (correctly, I might add) is a threat to the gains previous waves of feminism made for biological women.
She's not come across as 'anti-trans' so much as 'pro-women' and defines 'women' in the terms that are directly related to biology and social roles that inherently set 'men' and 'women' apart.
VERY LATE STAGE EDIT: She confirms as much in her own words. You tell me whether you believe her or not.
If she's gotten 'more aggressive' it is probably just a result of the doubled and tripled efforts to redefine the aforementioned terms in the public eye and she, unlike many, can afford to actively fight back without risking her life being torn down.
I think it mostly implies an extreme economic bifurcation wherein the elites get to live in luxurious towers or gated neighborhoods with private guards and robust social services and get to enjoy the benefits of cosmopolitan globalism by jetting around to whichever major international hub they feel like visiting. And don't have to think much if at all about the state of the rest of the nation.
Whilst the poor end up living in densely packed favelas/apartment blocks/ghettos and while they are generally able to get by their chances at economic mobility are virtually nil so a large criminal element ends up taking root and providing an alternate, highly risky means of achieving the opulent lifestyle that simply cannot be ignored, and as violence becomes prevalent policing becomes more dangerous and cops end up becoming more violent which further sours the relationship between the underclass and the ruling class.
The middle class (such as it exists) probably end up having to put up tall fences and heavy security efforts to protect themselves from the criminal element that cannot be contained and are desperate to prey on the wealth that trickles down from on high. There are no trusted, effective, and non-corrupt public institutions to speak of.
Property crime, drug-fueled violence, and kidnappings shoot through the roof as policing becomes extremely hard outside of the few pockets of civilization that can be maintained against the rising tide of (relative) poverty.
And of course we get maximum 'diversity' which really just means that everyone hates everyone to for varying reasons. EXTREME low trust society as the social fabric that previously kept citizens together frays and decays, even as by many metrics society is finally achieving the demographic ideals that progressives aimed for all along.
Think of an ideal version of America with relatively large middle class, a persistent but small underclass, high economic mobility, a class of elites that are responsive to the needs of the citizenry and thus maintain some level of trust and accountability, and that generally enables every citizen to feel they're safe from violence and have a strong affinity for their neighbors regardless of race, class, religion, culture, etc.
Then imagine whatever the exact opposite of that ideal looks like in your head. THAT is Brazilification.
Using suboptimal methods just because it feels good is perhaps the most common failure mode for everything humans have done in all of history. The entire gambling industry exploits the extreme version of this feature of psychology.
Especially to the extent we are evolved to feel good using the suboptimal methods.
Edit: I don't need awards, this point is general enough it doesn't really contain much insight as far as I'm concerned.
The Steelman is that it's the only vote that 'matters' if you're someone outside of the elite power structure.
Putting Trump at the controls as the result of an election win (as opposed to something like an insurrection) is the strongest possible message that "We do not like how the political class has managed the government, we want them out of power, and to remind them who is 'actually' in charge of the government."
He is the approximate equivalent of a "none of the above" option when it comes to selecting from the various candidates that the Mainstream parties are trying to shove down our throats. Well, not equivalent because he is not a void, he's an actual candidate with a platform, but there's just nobody else who is outside the standard power structure who can provide that option.
This partially explains why he maintains or grows in popularity the harder they bring the hammer down on him. The more the elites/political class express their spite for the man, the stronger the signal that electing him will send. Of course, sending a signal doesn't mean anything actually changes.
Pulling the lever for Haley is a tacit 'approval' of the status quo. You're not registering your voice in the system so much as clicking "Accept" on the Terms and Conditions of the current edifice and its activities. It doesn't 'count' in any real way, as she's fully ingrained in the current power structure and will not modify it's trajectory one bit.
Trump has remained the major Schelling point for everyone who is very much against the status quo and wants to voice that displeasure rather than merely withdraw.
Edit: I would also mention that Bernie Sanders represents a similar sentiment from the left, but in my opinion he folds to the main party too quickly for this purpose.
Yeah, when I pay attention it usually bugs me that they're openly using this tactic to deflect negative press even when the overwhelming amount of criticism is leveled at the work's basic quality.
The Critical Drinker hit on a salient point:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ngqO9Hp19_4
Its like they hate their audience, or at least know that pissing off the audience is just as good a way, maybe better, to grab attention as pleasing them. And if you go in knowing you'll probably never please them...
The part that is most insufferable is when they blatantly race-swap an existing character (with weird tendency for targeting redheads), especially when their race is arguably a salient part of said character's identity, then kafkatrap anyone who dares notice it into either agreeing that its an improvement or outing themselves as a closet racist.
They will mock you for asking honest questions like "doesn't this contradict the lore?" or "what else did you change about the story?" or "couldn't you have written an entirely new character just as easily?"
Further, they'll act as though the race-swap is de-facto normal and expected and the person questioning it is the one who must justify themselves.
"Why does their race matter? You seem to care an awful lot about something minor like the character's skin color." Well I dunno, YOU seemed to care enough to make the decision to swap out the races in the first place, and clearly made a deliberate, calculated decision as to which skin color to swap to, so I conclude that it matters enough to you to set aside concerns like staying true to the source material or selecting the "best" actor for the part, so I'm just curious as to the logic that went into the decision.
And if your logic doesn't seem to advance the quality of the work itself, I believe I'm allowed to use this as reason to be skeptical of the end product's quality.
And yet, if any series were to race-swap a minority character, especially if to replace them with a white character, this would presumably be seen as blatant erasure and grounds to protest and boycott whatever media company did it.
Like hey, why can't the new Black Panther be white? Or Asian? Since we're saying the rules are all made up and the points don't matter, there's no reason we shouldn't be symmetrical about this.
Yeah...
I am old enough to remember, even though it's now been about 4 years, Nancy Pelosi telling people to go out and Celebrate Lunar New Year (as in telling people to go out in public around large groups) when fear of Coronavirus was right-coded. Its right there in an official communication.
This position was, later, switched towards banning any sort of large gatherings altogether.
Which THEN switched to allow people to gather as long as it was a BLM protest.
I saw this with my own eyes in real time, while all the while I'm becoming increasingly afraid of the implications of the virus itself and the politicization crippling our ability to respond to it.
I could pull my old posts from the motte subreddit at the time to back this up.
The left initiated almost every major action that drove the politicization of Covid.
Some days it seems like having memory better than a goldfish is a superpower.
How about "Firearm ownership is literally written into the founding document of this country as a fundamental right and thus we are literally entitled to ignore your pleas for gun control unless and until you can garner sufficient political support to amend said document."
Since "we're trying to overturn a civil right that the very founders of the country thought important enough to specifically enshrine AND ignore the actual procedure for making changes to the founding document in the effort" isn't exactly inspiring either, and it's certainly accurate to describe the gun-control movement's approach to the issue.
Or in short, the deal is that we follow the rules set forth when the nation was created, and those rules happen to include this particular provision for gun rights, so amend it or, literally, GTFO to a country that is more politically suitable to your own beliefs.
So...what gives? Are modern women just that impulsive when feeling unhappy in a marriage? Or misled? Do they have illusions about singlehood?
Probably similar to the reason a gambler would keep playing even when they're way up and the odds are not in their favor going forward. They could walk away from the table, stick the money in an index fund and enjoy the benefits of it for years to come, or they could go another round and maybe double or quintuple their money!!!
More directly, people in general are bad at considering the long term costs of an action when they perceive a short term benefit that would remove what they perceive as a source of discomfort.
I also think that women, in particular, when they've grown up being showered with male attention, and the had their pick of suitors, they expect that they'll still be a hot commodity once they're out of their marriage. They have been out of the game so long that they don't realize that a 30+ woman, possibly with kids, is simply not going to command the same sort of attention, especially with newer models on the showroom floor.
I don't know how to get across to a woman whose recollection of the dating world is "I went on fun dates with hot guys who paid for everything" that if she tries that now she'll find herself rejected more often and her pickings will be much slimmer.
(This doesn't explain why college educated women are more likely to initiate divorce, I suspect that has more to do with sheer social status)
IMPORTANT EDIT: college educated women are not 'more likely' to initiate divorce than other groups, only that college educated women who get a divorce are the ones initiating it 90% of the time, and husbands 10%. College educated women are less likely to be involved in a divorce either way.
This is not to say that no women end up happy after initiating divorce. My own mother seems to have ended up being quite happy after divorcing and remarrying (my dad is doing alright too). Just that you would have to take claims that they're happy with a grain of salt because they will be VERY vested in projecting the appearance of happiness and retroactively justifying their decision even if from the financial side of it they are OBJECTIVELY worse off.
Like seriously, how many people would you expect to pull the divorce rip cord, find themselves alone and relatively poor (compared to their previous status) and just as unhappy as before, and would then openly proclaim "I made a big mistake, it was all my own doing, and I have irretrievably worsened my quality of life!"
Does the ego even permit that sort of open admission?
Excellent post, I'll just add my 2 cents (earned from my legal career) on this question:
But if you can swap in virtually any attorney into the slot without affecting the outcome, how would any individual attorney stand out from the rest?
I have been on both sides of the equation at this point. Both a public defender and handling private crim defense for, among others, DUI cases. My experience may not be particularly applicable outside of my state or even county, but I think there's a lot of basic ideas that are near-universal.
The one factor that can actually allow you to 'stand out' is earning the reputation as the guy who absolutely can and will go to trial and give the prosecutor a run for their money regardless of the true merits of the underlying case. Who is never afraid of the hard work and showmanship required in jury trials.
Because when so much of the job of criminal defense is just keeping the client calm (and out of custody) and negotiating a plea deal, the attorneys can reliably coast for years without ever being forced to pick a jury and try a case. They get in a mode in which trials are a serious inconvenience and this effects how they handle clients, indeed they may even try to persuade them to take plea deals to AVOID trial risks, even on very winnable cases!
And those who haven't flexed that muscle in a while are generally KNOWN to be less likely to push a case all the way through to trial. Maybe it's even rumored that they're scared of actual trials, where the consequences can be unpredictable.
And I genuinely think that's the factor that makes any meaningful difference. All attorneys have access to the same legal databases, they attend the same CLE classes and seminars, and generally speaking every new development in the law is easy to locate and digest. Some attorneys may be more... creative about how they apply a new development (think Saul Goodman-esque arguments, but dialed back a bit to pass the sniff test) or be able to present their arguments in a more majestic style. Some may excel at motion practice and have top notch paralegals prepping their filings.
But end of the day, the one thing that the prosecutor doesn't want to do is work. And trials mean LOTS and LOTS of work.
And it means the possibility of a hung jury (MORE WORK) or a not guilty. So this means rather than take the first plea offer that comes along, a lawyer with established trial rep can play the game of chicken with the prosecutor as the trial date looms nearer and nearer and suddenly some truly generous offers come on the table, which might not be easily obtainable if there wasn't a credible threat of forcing a trial.
Incidentally, as a Public Defender I once took three separate cases to trial over the course of three consecutive days, mostly just to show the prosecutor that I would. I called it my 'trialathalon.' Unfortunately that reputation doesn't persist much outside of the county in which the cases occurred.
Yeah, there's a particularly nasty tendency recently for these videos that kick off rage mobs to involve people who are literally just trying to live their lives and suddenly they find themselves in a forced dilemma with a camera shoved in their face with no warning or prep.
For instance, some guy on the NY subway who is just trying to get to a destination unscathed.
At least in the situations with, e.g. Kyle Rittenhouse or George Zimmerman (remember him? over ten years ago!) they were arguably inserting themselves into situations where a conflict and confrontation were likely, so there's a certain amount of risk assumption there.
But this trend of depicting ordinary people, probably dealing with various other stressors, just trying to go about their normal days and not intentionally interfering with others, forced into a standoff where they either back down and allow themselves to be trod upon, or they stand their ground and get mobbed by an uncaring internet posse for their 'racism'... it is antisocial in the extreme, if you ask me.
And there's no obvious way to restrict it other than, perhaps make it broadly illegal to publish videos taken of other people in public places, which is surely going to be impossible to enforce at the end of the day.
faceh
1yr ago
The right isn't gonna accept trans people no matter what at this point, when you start calling people pedophiles the conversation is kind of over.
When you openly and blatantly state your intent to convert people's children to an ideologically driven belief system backed by the power of the state, then no conversation is possible. Arguably it never started.
"We don't have to convince YOU of anything, we'll just teach your kids to hate your beliefs and we may convince a few of them to undergo invasive surgery to alter their very personal identity, against YOUR wishes."
Explain to me how there's any room for negotiation when such a position has been moved to the forefront of one side's platform?
I don't have well-articulated thoughts on it yet, but the entire industry of golf, even outside the professional players, is maybe one of the last vestiges of 'elite' culture which hasn't been commodified down to a complete premium mediocre experience. Okay, we have to acknowledge that places like Topgolf attempt to distill the experience down to a mere amusement in the vein of bowling, but nobody, I wager, would consider it a substitute for actual golfing.
As you indicate, the lack of profit motive is obvious because the core of the industry is supported by the wealth of it's patrons, it has no need to scramble for peasant dollars. It stands to gain far more by catering to whales than relative minnows.
It is accessible to the common man in a way that, e.g. polo or downhill skiing (or on the extreme high end, Formula One Racing) certainly are not. You can practice the skills for <$20 a day at your local driving range. But it also has a near infinite cap on how much you could spend on the hobby, from top-of-the-line clubs made of exotic alloys and carbon fiber, to customized golf carts, to weekly lessons with top-skill experts. Somehow both the image of beer-chugging frat boys tooling drunkenly around the course in carts and the image of staid professionals, including CEOs of billion dollar companies and heads of state hashing out the details of vital financial/political matters between strokes can coexist here without contradiction.
And yet, AND YET, a guy who puts in the hours of practice using thrift-store clubs (that's where mine came from, growing up) will almost always win over the player who merely spent the first guy's yearly salary on equipment.
The very existence of golf courses are effectively a huge signal of the excess wealth your country produces. "We spend exorbitant amounts of money on meticulously maintaining 150+ acres of land not for growing crops, or industrial purposes, or even mass recreational games, but rather to let people wack tiny balls around in groups of 4." When you can literally devote huge swaths of prime real estate to 'nonproductive' use, you are flexing quite the surplus of capital.
It is also one of the few sports where traveling around to play at different facilities really means something as each one is designed to have unique features that will actually challenge you to adapt, rather than rigid uniformity.
There's also a delightfully nerdy aspect to it, given how many independent variables one encounters during the course of play, and slight alterations in any one of those variables (wind speed, the deflection angle of your wrist upon impact with the ball, the slope of the green, to say nothing of which club you select) can have outsized influence on the result.
And I'm not even a golf aficionado. I prefer Disc Golf as an actual hobby. But as hobbies go, there's virtually no downside, in our current culture, to being moderately competent at golfing and at least minimally conversant in the current professional scene (i.e. be able to name a few top players other than Tiger Woods, and their recent performance), since the interest can cross so many other cultural barriers, and you genuinely never know when you might get invited on a golf outing by someone influential whom you might want to make inroads with.
faceh
1yr ago
I feel like it should be utterly self-evident why a class of aspiring lawyers should be capable of listening to the words of a party they oppose with enough respect to let them give their whole argument in peace, and then responding in kind, without resorting to shouting them down or implicitly threatening their safety.
And that's before accounting for the fact that it's a Federal Judge doing the speaking.
Literally the whole point of having a legal system is to allow civil dispute resolution where each party is heard and the winning party determined according to set rules which usually don't account for "we'll be really angry at you if you don't decide in our favor."
This is largely the reason why Judges sitting on the Bench are kept completely separate from the public, don't walk through the public hallways, and generally have their personal information kept confidential and not publicly available. Because miscreants would use implied or explicit threats to get them to change their rulings.
Of course we've got law grads who are full attorneys throwing molotovs and attending active riots (HOPEFULLY in observer capacity) so I dunno, seems like this is just going to get worse when these guys graduate.
I'll say, I honestly don't know what these students expect will happen when they get into actual legal practice and it turns out ambush tactics and mass social shaming not only won't work but it'll lead to bar complaints and possible license suspension very quickly.
And finally, I flip my lid over the "counter-protesting is free speech" and justifying the heckler's veto logic. Free speech implies reciprocal obligations. You don't shout over somebody else when they're given a platform then claim that because you're louder your speech means more.
Or more simply put, knowingly interfering with another person's speech (especially when they have a willing audience) implicitly forfeits whatever claim you had to being permitted to speak freely. If you're in a court hearing and you loudly scream every time the other attorney is presenting arguments... you don't win the case by default, surprisingly enough.
Not the first time The Federalist Society has caused a kerfuffle at Stanford:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/06/federalist-society-stanford.html
In a sense, I have to applaud those FedSoc students for continuing to position themselves outside the local Overton Window.
These charges were patently frivolous from the very start but setting that aside they don't even make sense from the political grandstanding perspective. Bewildering.
Think on the meta level just a bit. As in, not about whether these twenty people themselves were or were not intentionally trying to commit a crime, and catching them is proof of anything.
From a pure signalling standpoint, if you want to prevent people from knowingly casting illegal votes and demonstrate that you are capable of enforcing this rule (i.e. detecting illegal votes), then yes, you have to arrest people who do cast illegal votes, even if they possess a defense for the action.
Especially since "I was told it was legal to cast my vote" is such an easy defense to invoke and hard to disprove otherwise. You show that you will STILL investigate such situations and try to verify the defense as valid.
Do you think that this action will, on the margins, increase or decrease the chances of someone attempting actual voter fraud in the 2022 elections in Florida?
Or would the effect be entirely minimal and worth disregarding?
It definitely annoys me that "access to the financial system writ large" has become so utterly critical to doing anything useful that it immediately has a totalizing effect on what anybody can do, anywhere in the world, even on the internet.
Maybe there's one bank/payment processor that holds out and willingly acts to handle the 'controversial' transactions, but that just removes things one layer back, as other banks and processors will eventually blacklist that bank. And thus rendering that bank mostly useless for any other purpose. If it doesn't shut down it'll struggle to remain solvent.
Lets say that some pornography company was wealthy enough it could 'become its own bank' and processes payments on behalf of users and extends credit and otherwise runs all its own transactions and only has to interface with the financial system to purchase the services it needs to operate. Once it is known as the 'porn bank' it'll probably be impossible to find any other financial services willing to interface with them unless they comply with all the sames restrictions the other banks are working under... which defeats the purpose of 'self banking' to begin with.
It comes down to the fact that the financial system is a tightly connected web, and the main value any bank or payment process can provide is access to the network, so maintaining that access is their primary concern.
From the moral standpoint, it bugs me when there's very little evidence(indeed, I've seen none) that digital artwork depicting heinous, illegal, or otherwise disgusting acts is actually causing harm to nonconsenting parties. The reasons we find CSAM objectionable and worthy of legally crushing are generally not present when it comes to digital art. One party or group wants some art, the artist produces it and gets paid, nobody else even need be aware of what it contains!
It'd be nice to think of our financial system as mostly as set of dumb tubes that transmit the data representing our money around without caring much about the start and endpoint... with a lot of protections in place to mitigate fraud, theft, and user error. But ultimately a financial company is operated by humans who are subject to legal jurisdiction of some country or other, and have to maintain access to the global finance system if they want to take that money to any other jurisdiction, so in reality the 'rules' are set based on what all participants are willing to tolerate.
Anyhow, this is ultimately the impetus for the protagonists in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon to create a private, heavily anonymized bank/data haven in a location outside of the U.S.' sphere of influence. And in order for them to pull it off it required a chain of events that seems even more fantastical now than it did then, such as finding an island nation that is independently wealthy yet also politically stable enough to act as a headquarters for such an endeavor.
I have chosen to make this the drum I'm beating every time I see institutional failure raise it's head. Which is near-daily.
The people who have been appointed to make the decisions are insulated from any negative consequences for policy failure (here defining failure as "not achieving purported objectives") but are allowed to reap benefits of their decisions. Hell they often get to reap benefits even if there's a failure. Lori Lightfoot leaves Chicago worse off than when she found it (quite a feat!) and immediately gets a cushy job at Harvard teaching leadership. It's like they're intentionally mocking the idea that rewards go to those with merit and that outcomes matter when judging a person's competence.
Chesa Boudin allows crime to run rampant in San Fran to the point it becomes a national embarrassment. He gets FUCKING RECALLED BY VOTERS because it was too much for even SF libs to stomach... and he lands a teaching job at Berkeley "Failing upward" doesn't even begin to describe it.
And the Biden family, especially Hunter. ye Gods.
When the rewards the elites reap are completely uncorrelated with the impact their decisions have on the rest of us proles then you simply can't expect them to make good decisions, to implement functional policies, or to listen to feedback from constituents. Quite the opposite, you'd expect them to exploit the system for personal benefit at every chance, given that they know that the institutions that are supposed to be holding them accountable are just as compromised and ineffectual.
They've gotten so far entrenched that it is impossible to even discuss consequences for them. Post-Covid it's becoming clear just how many ways various institutions failed, and not just missing goals, but straight up making the situation worse through their action or inaction. And not a single person who had decision-making authority will be taken to task or suffer any lick of punishment.
EDIT: I revise the previous statement to point out that Andrew Cuomo did in fact get punished. But this ends up being the exception that proves the rule because his removal from office had NOTHING TO DO WITH HIS BUNGLING OF COVID and of course he was still hailed as a shining beacon of competence for his handling of Covid.
Just farcical.
Eventually the proles will start to conclude that the system is in fact SET UP so as to ensure elites are guaranteed to thrive regardless of the state of the country and that perhaps the only way skin gets re-inserted to the game is if the proles taken action themselves.
More options
Context Copy link