hydroacetylene
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User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
7d ago
How would you explain to an autistic teenage boy the differences between boy people and girl people? In a way that provides useful guidance and doesn't make T seem like a normal thing for any boy who isn't obsessed with sports? In a way that let's them successfully navigate the differences?
The way the Masai tribesmen in What is a Woman? do. Of course progressives can't do that. I never said they could. Just that it is a solved problem. Just like 'strong female characters who actually act like women' was a solved problem... in the BC days(that is, after all, what Hera/Juno is). But woke doesn't want that. Woke is basically progressivism as a totalizing identity.
I think totalizing identity is key here. Scott touches on it a few times, where he talks about what progressive attitudes are identities or not- the post where he said something like 'John and Jane are united by their shared environmentalism, OK, pretty normal, John and Jane are united by their shared support for gun control, pretty weird'. The DR touches on it where it goes on and on about 'hollowing out your religion and wearing it as a skinsuit'. Themotte talks about it with progressivism as a religion. But I think 'gay rites are civil rites' is the most head on treatment. I think back to my childhood- we learned about Elizabeth Ann Seton and Our Lady of Guadalupe, and about how Jesus treated women equally(unlike those saracens America is at war with). In more secular contexts we learned, risibly, that native American religions were proto-Christianity- they believed in 'the great spirit' and lots of them had Jesus analogues(TTBMK, both of those claims are ludicrously false). This very much fit the needs of the church state alliance of 2002. But there is a limit to how much Christianity can accommodate. Woke doesn't have that, or at least it doesn't have to. But obviously there's no woke pope, no woke council of Nicea. There's no woke bible. In analogues to different traditions there's equally no woke Sharia law, no woke imamate, no woke talmud, no woke temples or dalai lama, no woke oracle of delphi. The civil rites religion as a state religion fits the needs of a total state very well. And when you totalize it, some of the prescriptions- like gender equality even if it entails embracing some fictions that are gonna be a rough fit- get taken too far.
People yearn for a totalizing identity. It's comforting for normies to be told what to do, how to think, what each day is for, how to interact with whom. It soothes a certain personality type to have the progressive version of apostolic Christianity instead of mere progressivism; woke has saints and a special calendar and observances of near-liturgical set rules. It has moral theology, but not in the autistic legalism of other Abrahamic religions. It has a special priest class which is made, not born. It prides itself on better treatment of women. It claims to be the one truth, and formal adherence is the lion's share of being a good person(not too long ago, I listened to a homily by an SSPX priest who explained that formally practicing traditional Catholicism was just being a good person- almost identical in mentality to 'it's called just being a decent person'. If I find it on youtube I will copy the link over.).
hydroacetylene
7d ago
That’s fine, but throwing a hissy fit about activating the national guard and then letting the feds commandeer his troops anyways makes him look like a pussy.
In the Texas border standoff Greg Abbott correctly calculated that the administration was too weak/indecisive to take over the army he’d assembled on the border and so he could continue taking over a core federal function while impeding the federal operation of the same. This made him look strong, because he got what he wanted. But Newsom won’t raise his own army, he won’t defy federalization orders, etc. He looks like he’s all bark, no bite- and already has that reputation.
hydroacetylene
7d ago
I would agree with that assessment.
hydroacetylene
7d ago
Newsom is going to avoid prosecution for siding with the protesters assaulting federal officers
I don’t think Newsom has actually done much- strongly worded notes in whatever direction are legal, and that’s basically all he did.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
Now that you mention it, the poor doing gig work(I suspect because they can't pass a drug test to obtain more stable incomes) as the private taxi for burritos is so on the nose that I wonder why the numerous and extremely loud modern-day socialists aren't loudly pointing it out.
I mean, literally I have no mental model of more than occasional doordash orderers. It's just so much cheaper to either buy groceries or, uh, go out to eat the regular way, and doordash gives a worse product due to the food being cold. With modern prepared meals you don't even have to be good at cooking, you can buy microwaveable stuff at Aldi/Walmart/Kroger. I get that sometimes you want to order lots of food instead of leaving the house, but that niche was already filled by pizza, and I guess a third party delivery app for catering orders made sense but lots of people seem to be using it for individual meals.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
Is this just an unfalsifiable assertion or is there actual evidence?
hydroacetylene
8d ago
The closest, though imperfect, metaphor for the US is actually Japan, which is significantly hampered by its public debt as a gigantic percentage of GDP. It sees inflation, stagnation, but not that bad.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
Russia is crappier than the US or Mexico, but it's not that bad as to be NK.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
Major Protests in Las Angeles
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/paramount-california-home-depot-protest-rcna211650
Earlier the LAPD had to rescue a group of federal agents surrounded by, ahem, 'boisterous' protestors.
The Los Angeles Police Department today responded to a claim by ICE acting Director Todd Lyons that officers took two hours to respond to help calls from federal agents who faced boisterous protesters yesterday.
Lyons said it took LAPD officers more than two hours to come to the aid of federal agents downtown after help was requested multiple times. He said agents were surrounded by more than 1,000 protesters following federal immigration raids on three locations in L.A.
In response, the feds are federalizing the national guard to deploy to LA:
Border czar Tom Homan said authorities are mobilizing to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles amid protests over immigration raids this weekend.
Gov. Newsom doesn't like the idea:
The federal government is "moving to take over" the California National Guard and deploy 2,000 soldiers, Gov. Gavin Newsom said today.
“That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions,” he said in a statement. “LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment’s notice.”
Of course, that last bit is patently false- see above- but the current situation on the ground is very much fog of war.
So why this protest now? As far as I can tell, this all started when federal agents arrested David Huerta for obstructing an ICE raid(https://ktla.com/news/local-news/union-president-among-44-arrested-in-los-angeles-ice-raids/). David Huerta, for those of you who don't know, is president of the SEIU, America's more aggressively left wing federation of labor unions(the AFL-CIO is moderately pro-Trump). He released the following statement:
“What happened to me is not about me; This is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”
Maybe-maybe not a call to arms, but the SEIU absolutely does not play around when it comes to protests, so put two and two together- and the union released its own statement, separately, which is more clearly combative:
In a post on X, SEIU California wrote: “ICE picked the wrong side. The wrong state. The wrong person. and the wrong union. David Huerta stood up. And 750,000 SEIU workers are standing with him.”
Again, not unlawful incitement. But most people would interpret that as mildly threatening. Newsom is maintaining that this was an arrest for 'observing'- patently a lie, given video evidence.
This has the potential to be a domestic test of Trump. I'm of the impression that the SEIU, like most unions, Does Not Play By The Rules when it would mean not getting their way, so selective prosecution under RICO is possible, but more than likely Trump will just make himself look strong and Newsom weak by cracking down on LA protestors. This is a pretty core federal power and assaulting a federal law enforcement officer is almost definitionally something with federal jurisdiction for prosecution; presumably the feds can access the database of everyone who clashed with the LAPD to charge them too.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
Exploration isn't part of the Chinese national character. Having satellites is actually beneficial; having pretty pictures of Jupiter is pure status display. China doesn't have the people to need to build on Mars, Venus, etc, either, their fertility rate is 1. Chinese space exploration exists to outcompete the west, not because the Chinese think it's valuable.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
I mean the even bigger issue with raising taxes on 'the rich' is there just aren't enough of them.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
I hate to break this too you, but Democrats-as-they-actually-exist are pretty NIMBY.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
America is long past the point at which most countries would have seen fiscal collapse, default, or otherwise serious consequences from the debt.
It's not unreasonable to note that at the moment, America(and Japan, apparently) Is Different.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
Yes, it caused the crisis of the third century. Imperial China has also bankrupted itself.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
That has not been my experience with elderly people. Many are confused by the conditions on the ground, sincerely don’t know how expensive their benefits are(after all, they’re not paying for it), and think the stock market benefits everyone.
Others feel bad for young people due to the cost of housing these days, and although they won’t sell their paid off houses that’s because they need to live somewhere. I’ve said before that among my extended family in the ArkLaTex region old people with money are expected to spend it helping out younger relatives get started, either by co-signing loans or direct gifts(or occasionally through coresidence). But more generally, I don’t get the hate over boomer consumption because it is, generally, much lower than the consumption of working people who criticize them on the basis that their resources should be reallocated. Cruises are, on the scale of vacations, pretty cheap. Retirees aren’t DoorDashing much. And boomer housing wealth isn’t actually something they can do much about.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
I mean, pro-Americanism in the third world often has a different aesthetic- cowboy hats, pickup trucks, country music…
Approximately everyone, after all, likes dancing, beer, BBQ, sports, etc. But it’s often difficult to see the appeal of socially liberal norms when you don’t already want them.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
But LGBT might be unpopular enough to push them away from the US, especially in Africa but potentially also in Latin America, where the default position is to be part of the U.S. sphere and so changes need to be weighed against the generally favorable baseline.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
The reality is that to balance the budget you have to answer- who do you want to kill? Grandma or our soldiers? And nobody willing to answer that question will ever get elected.
The political realities mean the debt will be paid for by 1) inflation and 2) lying about the debt(your social security checks will not go as far as promised, sorry). The government will bail out load bearing sectors of the economy, maybe at third remove, but the average person will see a decline in purchasing power. Maybe to Western European levels, maybe not. It’ll be a prolonged economic crisis and that will cause political instability but there’s a lot of ruin in a country.
hydroacetylene
8d ago
A superpower going bankrupt is very much précédented(Russia in the nineties).
I’d also dispute that Trump going full thug and becoming a dictator would be able to meaningfully institute fiscal sanity.
hydroacetylene
9d ago
If they actually did this, it probably would have been by declaring a European ODC the real culprit.
I am highly suspicious of such a thing in a country with jury trials, but that’s how you’d go about it.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
I mean, the last time they had an advantage in exploration they totally did.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
Far-group just means no one thinks you are able to present a threat. A mongolian goatherder is, presumably, both of our far-group. Xi Jinping is, presumably, both of our outgroup. You are far-group to everyone because libertarians lose almost all the time(sometimes they have chainsaws and cloned dogs). If Elon was actually Trump's puppetmaster you'd be lots of people's outgroups.
It's not differentness, it's unworthiness of notice.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
Maternal mortality with no medical care isn't anywhere near 10% per birth- it's 1-2% per birth in the least developed parts of subsaharan Africa and that seems to line up with historic data from Europe(granted, needs to be taken with a grain of salt).
hydroacetylene
10d ago
Man, I remember that news story. Mostly, I remember the jokes about how it was pointless to petition Taylor Swift to break up with her boyfriend when she was obviously going to anyways because Taylor Swift.
I notice that for all your discussion of how obvious it is, you did not, yourself, say what a woman is.
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