fuckduck9000
2yr ago
The polls are contradictory, people are just saying general things that sound good, their beliefs are incoherent. Looks to me like some cosmetic adjustments would be enough to pass the muslim ban under another name. That would be the recommended strategy based on the facts of the case, from a politician's pov.
People don’t want to feel like they’re banning an entire group or religion, even if they effectively do. Of course it’s complete horseshit on principle and I despise it. Not least because making it clear exactly why they are not welcome is part of my strategy to help the muslim world (and the rest with it). This is enabling, and allows this sort of pious nonsense to fester:
And despite strong language before the election by the Trump campaign about the threat of violence from radical Islam, most Americans don’t believe that the Islamic religion as a whole is more violent than other religions.
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
OP is talking about an anti-Muslim proposal, not an anti-terrorist proposal.
Pure technicality. Trump's ban didn't ban literal practicing terrorists. If I just couch what is effectively a muslim ban in terms of an 'anti-terrorist proposal', that makes it ok?
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
An effective strategy is an effective strategy, regardless of whether the goal is conservative or liberal or something else.
Technically yes, but the strategy 'violent overthrow of the government' is rarely claimed to further conservative goals in practice. Conservatives are unusually fond of strategies that don't do that, oppose it, even. Your argument was one of those. Hence, conservative strategy.
It was a ban (actually, a partial ban) on a handful of countries associated with terrorism.
Since when is 'coming from a country associated with terrorism' a valid reason to insidiously discriminate within a progressive framework?
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
I think you would recognize it as conservative if it was applied to trans issues. Or perhaps slavery. As to the core values of the people on that particular point, 41 percent of democrats (versus 46 against) supported the muslim ban (source).
I told you what I think motivates progressives here: primarily status concerns and ideological gate-keeping ( as in, their ideology does not allow them to leave the flock on just one issue, all “enemy ideas” are “linked” ). Although the ‘correct-orthodox’ beliefs are justified further down, as you say, by their understanding of fairness.
It's just a joke based on the fact that you defended a conservative position while our overall alignments (on the progressive axis) are the opposite, I meant no insult, I did not mean to imply that you are a communist. My true objection, of course, is not that I am a revolutionary who wants to change the core values of the people in an afternoon, but that such consequentialist considerations ("what people will accept") should not intrude upon our search for the truth("let's just debate the ideas").
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
With an attitude like that, societies could never change and correct their mistakes, comrade. Anyway, I’m suspicious of the strategic advice coming from political opponents. Let's just debate the ideas and let me worry about what people will accept.
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
Then the fairness of that policy should be debated separately, not abandoned as a preemptive concession before they agree that the truth is in fact the truth on some other point("get on board with the project"). The "rhetoric" is the problem, you see, not the fact that it's wrong. His use of “linked to” and “right-wing shibboleths” strongly suggest a status/ideological purity motive. He doesn’t want to be “linked to” “right-wing shibboleths”. I mean, who are we kidding here? If even I feel the need to avoid giving off low-status right wing vibes, they assuredly experience a much stronger pull.
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
And if we cannot reconcile, what is there left to do but fight?
I’m not in principle opposed to a scuffle, but a failure to communicate on a failure of communication seems like a flimsy reason. How about we just stumble home like two deaf-mute assholes ?
I don't think you've actually demonstrated a need to restrict speech, because there never is a need to restrict speech, only a want. And it's okay to want things, and to be honest about the fact that we want them. You can, in this moment, cease from framing your desires and values as some sort of universal imperative, and admit that you want to do a thing because you think it should be done.
I think that there is a bedrock truth readily available to all men, but understand that I cannot force another to recognize that truth against his will any more than he can force me, because communication is not deterministic.
What are you even trying to achieve with all this? If you prove your thesis to my satisfaction, you will have proven that communication works, and the paradox monster will eat us both.
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
And the primary thing stopping that from happening here is folks on the right linking hatred and mockery of Islam with hatred and legal restrictions on Muslims. Elite thought-leaders, Hollywood content creators, and rabid social media teens are never going to get on board with the project as long as it's synonymous with right-wing shibboleths like that.
How does that work? “We can’t accept one true claim before you withdraw another claim that sounds low-status right-wing”? Why would I be bound by the confines of their self-imposed ideological prison? Like Harris, I think low-class christians, because they believe, have a much better understanding of why muslims do what they do than progressive elites.
They themselves hate, and support legal restrictions on, groups of people they dislike (“oppressors”, men, whites, right-wingers) . And unlike my dislike of muslims, which is rooted in a choice those believers made, some of the categories progressives dislike & want legally suppressed are biological.
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
and that my argument that no one is actually a free-speech maximalist but rather wants free speech as long as the speech isn't too objectionable is wrong, somehow?
What I object to is your argument that just because there are limits to free speech, free speech is a meaningless concept no one really believes in. Your "speech should be free as long as it's not too awful" erases all distinction. If someone argued that all christian or non-christian books should be banned, how would you describe him? “I guess he’s just like everyone else, he doesn’t really believe in free speech” ? I’m not religiously committed to 'absolute free speech', or to classical liberal ideas in general for that matter, I just think they work in almost all cases, and I explained why they don’t here.
It seems to me that your logic comes from a place where you assume the other side isn't going to actually be able to execute what they see as the righteous vengeance of God.
I don’t think they could hate jews any more than they already do. Their tremendous animosity has failed to bring about the downfall of the enemies of god so far. The schock between islam’s secular powerlessness and its religious claim of omnipotence is the entire point.
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
If bringing them capitalism and the pleasures of modernity does not innoculate against jihadi mind viruses, what would?
Blasphemy. That’s how we got the christians to calm down. Certainly not by respecting their beliefs and community, or by celebrating their historical accomplishments. Islam’s stupidity and failures should be constantly rubbed in the face of its believers. Of course all muslim immigration to the west should be stopped on purely practical grounds, the insult is just a bonus.
Usually free speech can deal with those superstitions. The problem is that Islam has a built-in counter-strategy, death for apostates and critics. As sheikh qaradawi says, if not for the death penalty for apostates, Islam would not have survived to this day. This is the mechanism islamophobes need to target first, because it’s utterly poisonous to free expression. Free speech of muslims should be curtailed on that point, anyone preaching that doctrine should be deported or imprisoned. Apostates and critics should always be protected by the full force of the state, and get into a sort of witness protection program if they so desire.
Israel should bulldoze al-aqsa on live TV while ceremoniously asking Allah to do something about it. Muslims should be given the chance to reflect more often on their impotent rage and impotent god. Spurn the symbol and spare the man.
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
It won’t stay, the trend is constantly increasing mortgage duration. People are already counting on parental help to get a 30y these days, so it will go to 60, two generations. It won’t stop until every purchase becomes an infinite payday loan. You’ll own nothing, and be happy.
Maybe we can’t get the price/income ratios down to the 19th century, but we can stop them from going up even further by lying less to the financially incontinent, by calling their cheap debt rent.
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
Defensible under what rule, exactly? The sacredness of sex and the profanity of murder? I guess the cow should have committed suicide rather than allow herself to be defiled.
When the interest rates go down again then the prices will rise at the same time.
Not at the same time, with considerable delay. We are right now in such a delayed phase, where sticky prices have not caught up to interest rates (only it’s about prices going down instead of up). I’d prefer interest levels to stay mid permanently, to stop this rollercoaster. My second choice is permanently high interest rates. Low interest rates ownership is fake, and transforms banks into landlords.
The obsession with monthly payments just strengthens the analogy to rent. If someone selling you a car or TV kept talking about your low monthly payments, you would recognize it as sleazy, would you not?
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
Mathematically the prices will go down. I’m glad it happened, this model of ‘pay almost no interest, just take on multi-generational debt you’ll unload onto the next buyer’ was getting really stupid. That sort of mortgage was really rent by another name, because they didn’t own the house and couldn’t pay it back. You dodged a bullet there, now you might actually get to own a house some day.
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
Why not? Aren’t you glad they’ll use their unstoppable ‘narrative-crafting’ powers for the good of civilization?
I don’t see why a newly discovered personal stake in a subject should make one a hypocrite for changing one’s mind (and I don’t even know if this guy changed his mind, or if you just assimilate him to a collective, jewry).
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
As late as 1793, sooo radical French revolutionaires decreed death penalty for anyone who would dare to propose "agrarian law".
Two things should be particularly noted about this decree: Firstly, that it was passed amid scenes of general and almost hysterical enthusiasm, with the only voice of caution coming from Jean-Paul Marat
That’s like saying ‘the only voice of caution coming from Vladimir Lenin’. Marat was already endorsing the execution of his fellow revolutionaries for not being radical enough, he just understandably didn’t want it done to him.
Btw, I like your comments, but in half of them it's hard to tell what your position is because there’s so much sarcasm. As in “See biblical commandments that do not make sense to you in this light, and they will fit. “ This seems like aggressive overfitting to me, but I'm going to guess 'not sarcasm'.
I have a doctor story about that. My aunt was in pain and dying of a quick cancer, and I asked a doctor why they couldn’t give her morphine, and he told me that they couldn’t because it would increase her tolerance. I give doctors some slack for their high intelligence to open-mindedness ratio because they have to deal with so many lying idiots, but I still find them insufferable. It’s like they’re not talking to you, they’re just reciting you your miranda rights.
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
Yeah this is just a factual disagreement. All the demographic extrapolators and "feminized, decadent" west folks should really look into the implied per capita power discrepancy between israel and the arab world. Moderns can always crush angry superstitious masses militarily, if they so choose.
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
I guess I stayed young at heart. Granted, even the other kindergarteners thought I hated wine and overhead too much. I’ve lived on that budget for years (I also hate work). I didn’t say 8k without roommates, for a family of four. Now that you mention it, people spending too much on their kids and their kids’ “education”(including public education) is also largely pointless and/or status signaling, and imo the main reason why they aren’t having more of them.
The poverty threshold is a relative measure, in practice if not in theory. People complaining about the working poor in the west are complaining that they don’t get to spend as much on status as others, which of course is a zero-sum game.
Very few common expenses are truly nondiscretionary. One can easily live on like 8k a year. Most students do it. It does not require one to compromise on health nor on time. Just a bit of superfluous comfort and convenience. People go camping for fun, and that’s way less comfortable. Even the middle class mostly spends money as a status signal. The explosion of the luxury goods industry in recent years reveals how hollow the reason for most purchases are. Just like cima’s million dollar handbags and gladrags, of course they’ll swear up and down that all the stuff makes a difference to their QoL, but it really doesn’t.
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
But it’s not about making a lot of money. You can just walk into a mcD’s, shuffle some fries around for a while, and they will give you the 5k. I don’t understand the drama 5k represents to these people , whether by losing it at the casino, or by having a debt. The only explanation is that their default is to always spend all their money, and therefore the sum represents a ‘deficit’, which they have to compensate by the extremely difficult and painful process of ‘saving’. Their leaky bucket is the problem, not the flow rate of the faucet.
There’s enough mra-adjacent types like me here that circumcision is sometimes denounced, but it is true that it is also often defended under the aegis of ‘religious freedom’ , the ‘value of tradition’, and what I view as a more legitimate justification, parental authority (though even granting total parental authority rights, it does not excuse their moral fault). That’s why I brought it up, two birds one stone.
And there’s an extra problem for trans supporters: They deny parental authority, so that justification collapses. It’s bad enough if your neighbours mutilate their children, but here the trans claim the right to mutilate yours (for their own good, of course).
As to the consent justification, children are somehow incapable of consenting to using their genitals once, but capable of consenting to destroying them for their whole life?
fuckduck9000
2yr ago
Uncharitably, they've been horribly mutilated with no way back, and the only way to justify what was done to them is to perpetuate it.
Like circumcision, except they don’t stop at the tip. If you have your daughter’s genitals mutilated because of your weird-ass sexual beliefs, you’re either the worst most cruel backwards reactionary or a brave progressive fighter against that same oppression.
Could you expand on why you (or people) think the trump ban is justified under 'core values' principles, but not the muslim ban using a similar loophole?
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