hydroacetylene
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User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
I know at least one AP biology teacher who gets away with teaching YEC, but overall you’re probably right that the vast majority teach to the test.
hydroacetylene
1mo ago
I think you’re leaving out that everyone wants services from a ‘big state’- stable currency, long range security, access to markets on favorable terms, etc. And America has, quite helpfully, lots of medium sized governments with major economies attached which can fill the void- bigger state level governments.
The median outcome for the federal government’s decline into irrelevance is federal assets defecting to Texas, California, etc which then become regional hegemons and solidify into major countries on their own right by cannibalizing nearby smaller communities. The ‘civil war’ then looks like conflicts defining the edge of each SOI. In the long run this is probably likely enough that it would be foolish for bigger state governments not to have specific plans to capitalize on it. But it being particularly likely in the next decade or so as opposed to the US being in for a rough couple decades? Maybe. I think we probably have enough assabiyah to pull together through another major crisis or two, and if rural areas have increasing control by non-state actors the system can deal with it in practice. I wouldn’t count out balkanization when the social security bill comes due either, but I still think you’re looking at regionally hegemonic empires which happen to be smaller than the current expanse of the USA.
hydroacetylene
4mo ago
I largely agree with you but, uh, doctors telling their patients to lose weight is, well, not covered under traditional etiquette(it is almost tautologically solicited advice), nor is it some sort of fat shaming- it’s doctors doing their jobs, which are to improve patient health and provide important advice to do so. I’m not discounting that doctors could generally improve their ability to do so, but health problems being downstream of weight issues is a real and very common thing that doctors have to recommend a course of treatment for all the time, and ‘resolve the underlying weight issue’ is in fact the most thorough treatment.
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
But realistically everyone knows that David Duke or Nick Fuentes would also not leave mass graves behind them, they’d implement outside Overton window policies that are either popular or barely underwater(like immigration restriction, or hard bans on affirmative action).
hydroacetylene
2mo ago
The undercurrents shifted right under Reagan, Clinton was so popular in large part because he moderated so much.
hydroacetylene
11mo ago
Argentina will now formally join the BRICS New Development Bank (Egypt, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabi will probably join as well).This should open up Argentina for more access to financing, mainly via China, who has come to play a larger role funding in Latin America in general. Related: “Taylor Swift Argentina Tickets Are a Bargain With Inflation Over 100%"
What will China do when Argentina defaults on its debt again and this time much of it is owed to China?
hydroacetylene
11mo ago
” There were employees who said, ‘This goes against my values, and I am upset that you would be seen as a company supporting abortion,’ ” Carter says. “A lot of clients said, ‘We thought we did the right thing. But now these people are upset.’ ”
I just want to highlight this, because it’s possibly a (partial)datapoint against the Hanania thesis that woke is just civil rights law.
The people pushing this stuff literally thought they were doing something broadly popular and were shocked when there were people upset with it. That bears repeating, because lots of us here seem to be cynical about it. This pushes towards corporate progressive platitudes originating with true believers, who might intellectually know that not everyone agrees with them but are shocked when they run into it irl.
Now obviously Hanania falls into the group of people who broadly hold progressive stances on cultural issues, he just doesn’t agree with woke, so it’s understandable that he tends towards an explanation of wokeness as realpolitik. After all, these people are his neargroup, so they must have logical reasons for doing things he disagrees with. But I think we underweight the idea that lots of corporate admin really believes in something in the general direction of this crap, doesn’t quite grok that it’s unpopular among people who aren’t literal cave trolls, and that it isn’t about a practical purpose at all.
Texas politics update: Articles of impeachment are being floated against attorney general Ken Paxton, the most important culture war figure you don't think of very often. Nearly every 5th circuit ruling that granted a conservative victory had Ken Paxton- or someone in his office- as plaintiff, although he's perhaps better known for his 11th hour attempt to change the outcome of the 2020 election.
The specific matter at hand has to do with a whistleblower settlement over a previous corruption scandal, and it's important to note that almost no one disbelieves the allegations, but also that Ken Paxton won reelection by double digits while under indictment for bribery and fraud. For some additional background-
-The first stage of trial, and the impeachment process, is initiated and takes place in the Texas house, the most liberal branch of the Texas government. It's unclear what Dade Phelan's(house speaker) game is; he's already in extreme trouble both with his base and the rest of the republican party and the odds of actually removing Paxton long term are slim. Nevertheless, it is fairly plausible that the house could impeach him; it only takes 50% +1.
-If impeached, the trial moves to the Senate, where a 2/3 majority would be required to permanently strip him of his office. This is unlikely to happen. The senate is far, far more partisan than the house, Dan Patrick(who had previously loathed Dade Phelan) now openly blames the house speaker for a disappointingly moderate session, and republicans control nearly 2/3 of the chamber. Also, Ken Paxton's wife, Angela, is a fairly high ranking member.
-Paxton is one of the few very important elected Texans left to be drawn from the Dallas elite, with Abbott, Cruz, Hegar, Patrick etc cheering on the Astros rather than the Rangers. The most prominent exception is John Cornyn, who is notably sympathetic to Ken Paxton. This is likely coincidence, but it is worth noting that among the movers and shakers in current political elites Ken Paxton generally runs in different social circles and can't expect much support from current elected officials on his comeback tour, even highly ideologically sympathetic ones.
-The day after it became clear that the house would consider drafting articles of impeachment, the dumpster outside the attorney general's office in Austin caught fire. Texas DPS has investigated the fire and declared it an accident caused by an unknown middle aged woman improperly disposing of a cigarette(Austin PD is no longer independent and not under the control of the city of Austin). Whether you believe this is up to you; certainly the people Texas DPS answers to are not very happy with Dade Phelan and the ones stationed in Austin are selected partially for their ability to handle politically sensitive assignments, because as previously noted part of their job is overruling the Austin city council.
-Just before the news broke Ken Paxton called on Dade Phelan to resign on the grounds of being drunk while presiding over the house. This allegation is probably also true and you can look up videos of Dade with his massive fivehead drunkenly calling the house to order. The Texas legislature being sloshed while in session has been an open secret for a while and no one complained until Dade Phelan seriously annoyed his own party by killing a set of conservative bills on extremely spurious procedural grounds(Paxton was not the first to call for his resignation).
-The Texas house has previously this session removed a representative(Bryan Slaton, R, from Royce city{where Dallas turns rural if you go straight east on i30}) for taking his intern's virginity. They also have an open disciplinary proceeding against rep Jolanda Jones(D, Houston) for a laundry list of rather more entertaining allegations, but this one is unlikely to go anywhere. There have been two previous impeachments of major state offices in Texas history- Governor Pa Ferguson in 1917(he successfully got his wife elected in his place and pulled the strings through her multiple terms) and a judge in the 70's.
Update: the Texas house voted to impeach 121-23 today(Saturday) at 1 pm. This points to stronger support for impeachment than I’d originally thought, but is still don’t expect the senate to remove him.
Keep an eye on who Abbott picks for acting attorney general- there could be major culture war implications.
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
They also legally suppressed the French language across the state. Cajun and Creole children were paddled for speaking it in their public schools well into the twentieth century.
This is technically true, but the dominant factor in Cajuns abandoning the French language was that their bosses were Texans who preferred English speaking workers, and Cajuns who had mostly been paddled for speaking French in school and then continued speaking it anyways stopped teaching their children French because they wanted them to make more money as adults rather than be stuck in the rice fields subsistence farming. The paddling mostly suppressed the Cajun language in a few holdouts.
The narrative that state pressure, rather than economic factors, was the main reason for the decline of the French language is mostly driven by Cajun academics trying to cast themselves as oppressed by a white anglo hegemony alongside blacks- my grandfather told me "my parents spoke French, but they never wanted to teach me". For the same reason you tend to see occasional books talking about how Cajuns were more likely to intermarry with blacks or whatever- being oppressed is fashionable, and LSU academics who got French department sinecures through nepotism and themselves speak standard, not Cajun French want in on the grift.
Actual working class(the vast majority) Cajuns are more likely to point to anti-Catholic or class biases as reasons for their poverty, and are often not shy about criticizing lazy or dysfunctional friends and relatives, with the implication that those prejudices are much reduced and so there's not a lot of excuse for not succeeding.
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
Women fantasizing about rape/= women wanting to be raped.
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
To be honest, I think you’re spot on the nose with women(or at least a subset thereof) not having any way to describe unwanted attention beyond sexual harassment. Feminism has reduced thinking about the ethics of sexual relationships to a consent binary which leads to redefining lots of things as consent issues, so women who want to complain about more typical bad behavior have to frame it as somehow leading up to rape. Which is ridiculous, obviously, for a lot of these cases.
hydroacetylene
10mo ago
I’ve posted before about this- grooming is directionally correct even if some of it is probably an exaggeration. And the only objections from the LGBT lobby are accusations of bigotry, sophistry, and lack of denial of the meat of the accusation.
So no, it’s obviously something that is at least close enough for government work. That’s why it sticks.
hydroacetylene
5mo ago
I think the whole discourse has been poisoned by Zionists who regard criticism of Israel as a state as criticism of Jews as a people, which is an absurd notion.
This is a ‘yes but…’, but ‘Jews out of occupied Palestine’ is ethnic cleansing by definition. And that is in fact the end point of ‘Israel as a state doesn’t have the right to exist’.
Yes, Israeli Jews will find someone- probably Canada, which is retarded about immigration to begin with- to take them in if they have to leave on short notice. But it’s still pretty bad to kick people out of their homes.
I believe their answer to ‘how should people meet partners’ is ‘at contexts specifically designed for that’, by which they mean nightclubs, dating apps, that sort of thing.
The fact that this idea has obvious drawbacks doesn’t mean they don’t have one.
And, tbh, ‘attempting to convince women to change their boundaries and entire lifestyle in order to sleep with you’ is maybe not the sort of thing that should be illegal, but it’s a very central example of the sort of thing that should come with the label of ‘pushy and kind of a creep’.
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
Ukraine is a 3rd world country, though.
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
Let’s be clear about what this bill is and isn’t.
What it is is an outgrowth of blue tribe hysteria which is not sufficiently well founded to justify taking actions which generate any externalities, let alone ones as major as it is generating, and with externalities that ‘don’t count’ because they rest on red tribe adjacent groups. Yes, this is a pattern with blue tribers, and they should cut it out. Yes, it makes it very difficult to share political power with them and this propensity to hysteria is a legitimate cause for concern to those who dwell in a democracy with large numbers of blue tribers.
No, this is not an attempt to go after red tribers or red tribe adjacent groups like conservative Christians. This is an outgrowth of hysteria that’s pretty clearly precipitated by the Youngkin policy that schools can’t treat kids as trans without telling the parents. Having the parents involved at all is pretty clearly plan b; the preference is to trans kids without their parents knowing(and this legislation is probably aimed at light blue tribers in wealthy suburbs, not red tribers). Will it have terrible externalities if it passes(which I doubt)? Probably. But they won’t be only or even mostly on the heads of red tribers or red tribe adjacent groups, and they won’t be aimed that way either.
hydroacetylene
3mo ago
Moving on from rhetoric, Israel is genocidal in action, blowing up an enormous amount of Gaza without regard for civilian casualties.
Civilian casualty figures for the invasion of Gaza are on par with other urban assaults by western militaries. You can contrast this with the battles in the Ukraine war, which are a lot a lot worse, and Assad’s reconquests of major Syrian cities, which are also way way worse.
So, a question I keep asking when people make this claim, and which no one has answered thus far(or even engaged with)- why is Israel’s genocide killing fewer civilians than Russia and Syria are doing on accident in campaigns with the goal of controlling the civilian population to subjugate as normal citizens of their respective regimes? While the IDF is probably more competent than the Russian army and definitely dramatically more competent than either the SAA or NDF, this shouldn’t matter that much if it’s an attempt at genocide-by-collateral damage, because after all Israel could easily get away with making Gaza look like Mariupol and then say sorry, we definitely not really regret the collateral damage, can’t make a shakshuka without breaking some eggs.
hydroacetylene
4mo ago
Who's going to pick fruit and work in slaughterhouses, hmm? I suppose you can use prison labor, but it's not like there's a bottomless well of that either and it's not well-distributed or trustworthy enough.
The poor can go back to eating rice and beans, I guess. But there isn't a scenario where meat and fruits and vegetables prices rise lower than the wages of the american poor and working class. That's assuming the wages of nativeborn workers go up very much at all; illegals mostly work in different industries(eg fruit picking) than the native poor.
hydroacetylene
4mo ago
There is something ironic about an ethicist cheating on his wife, but I do think it's mostly gossip; Peter Singer is well known, but I don't think that he's actually that influential- EA's might pay attention to him, sure, I'll buy that, but it seems like outside of that bubble, he's mostly known as one of those guys who publishes ethics papers which are straight nuts. Like Walter Block, just on the other side of the coin.
Texas Border Update
The situation I laid out in last week's culture war thread is developing(https://www.themotte.org/post/824/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/178887?context=8#context). Apologize for two top level posts in three days on the same topic, but it's a developing situation and there'll probably be a transnational thursday thread post on it as well(is it the right topic for that? Dunno but I think this is going to need regular updating).
First, rep Henry Cuellar has accused the Texas National Guard in their takeover of Shelby park of causing the deaths of three migrants. It's perhaps worth noting that Henry Cuellar is a firm blue dogger who is conventionally considered the most conservative house democrat; he doesn't support open borders.
Greg Abbott has already responded. Here is the statement from the Texas military department.
Now I have about the same attitude towards "we shouldn't have a border because then people might die trying to cross it" as our resident white nationalists do- and will also point out that there were migrant drowning deaths before the Texas military started putting up razor wire, and that hypothermia is just what happens when you try to swim across the Rio Grande in January during a cold front. But, this was clearly 100% illegal under the injunction against CBP cutting border wire, which specifically allowed CBP to dismantle state border barriers in the event of a medical emergency(which was definitely happening). The refusal to remand migrants into federal custody is also new and I think like 110% illegal.
The federal government has sent this letter. Especially relevant is this paragraph
Texas’s actions are clearly unconstitutional and are actively disrupting the federal government’s operations. We demand that Texas cease and desist its efforts to block Border Patrol’s access in and around the Shelby Park area and remove all barriers to access in the Shelby Park area. If you have not confirmed by the end of day on January 17, 2024, that Texas will cease and desist its efforts to block Border Patrol’s access in and around the Shelby Park area and remove all barriers to access to the U.S.-Mexico border, we will refer the matter to the Department of Justice for appropriate action and consider all other options available to restore Border Patrol’s access to the border.
So Texas is directly nullifying federal law and the federal government has given until EOD Wednesday to stop. My sympathies reside with the state here, but "where does it all end" is what more or less dominates my emotions- Greg Abbott is, as I said in the comments on my previous post, not someone who does things without thinking them through and he is well qualified in constitutional law. He knew this was going to happen and he has plans for what to do about it. Something tells me that plan is not "let federal officials serve a warrant", and I doubt the CBP is willing to use arms to do so- if their union's endorsement of Greg Abbott's initial actions tells me anything it's that they'll refuse orders to potentially shoot at operation lonestar or state personnel- so is the plan to put the federal government between a rock and a hard place to erode their power? If there is a state which benefits from eroding the power of the federal government it'd be Texas, but Abbott numquam iacuit aleam et habuit fidem before.
I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust. It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists. In fact, firing a Marxist for merely being Marxist would be illegal in California.
I would question Marxism being more socially acceptable than racism. Maybe in a blue tribe bubble, but there’s also bubbles which are the opposite.
I think the real question, instead, is ‘why are the blue tribe pinkos’, and that’s because 1) the Soviet Union spent decades and millions of dollars on infiltrating the western intelligentsia and 2) because Marxism is just uniquely designed to appeal to intellectuals lacking in specific knowledge, particularly intellectuals who don’t themselves work very hard. That’s what Marx was, basically, and it’s more or less an oversystematization of the view of someone in that position- workers(who produce things) work for owner-men who provide access to capital, so wouldn’t it make more sense to just do away with the owner-men and have the workers as a collective own the capital? That’s a nice idea, if you’ve never been on either side of that relationship. And if you have it’s probably tough to explain how the workers benefit from not owning their own capital. And, you know, the blue tribe mostly does things which might be valuable, but which are at remove from actual production. Hence Marxism feels true to an HR lady or a college professor or a journalist in a way it doesn’t to a mechanic or a farmer or a plumber.
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
I’m trying to parse why I have such a strong reaction towards gay men using surrogates.
I mean, obviously there’s the ‘if you want kids, there is an obvious way to do that’ factor where going for a lifestyle that excludes having children then gets corrected back. But I don’t react in the same visceral way to gay adoption, or lesbians getting pregnant through whatever method(Craigslist rando, IVF, sperm donor).
I think it’s the buying people. Child trafficking in adoption is a serious problem that all sorts of people put effort into avoiding, albeit not particularly successfully. On the other hand, the homosexual men using surrogates are blatantly buying a child.
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
This could just as easily be ‘men who participate in polls run by prostitutes have lower relationship satisfaction’.
hydroacetylene
5mo ago
Uh, what do you think happens to Israeli Jews if Israel no longer exists?
Another HBD question(the motte's favorite topic). What is the reason for higher north-east Asian IQ? Europeans and Ashkenazi Jews and Brahmins all have plausible enough explanations, but my understanding is that the hajnal line doesn't cover east Asia and that most inhabitants there were rice farmers for thousands upon thousands of years, not scholars.
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