I highly doubt Clint Eastwood was trying to hint at white replacement in Gran Turino. By reducing everything to white and not-white, I think you're missing some nuance in terms of dying urban white ethnic communities, romanticism for the glory days of blue collar Midwestern America, what the real meaning of American values is, etc etc.
It's honestly a very conservative movie and there's plenty in it that doesn't just skirt boundaries today, but outright leaps over them. For example, Clint gets out of his beat up old American truck to point a gun at a bunch of young black men -- acting like stereotypical hoods, of course -- then subsequently chastises a young white kid for acting black (although not in so many words). It's also the last movie I've seen to feature what used to be a super common phenomenon of blue collar American men calling each other very offensive slurs as a term of endearment/form of screwing around for fun. It actually is still decently common in the right circles, it would just never be portrayed positively or innocently in a movie anymore.
I guess it can be confused as a movie for Great Replacement messaging, but only because the replacement has already happened in a lot of American urban areas. Clint represents a relic of a piece of America that is already gone, it just happens to pattern match to modern fears.
Edit: To add on a bit more....
I think Gran Turino is ultimately about how the last generation of American immigrants has some important things to pass on to the current generation of American immigrants. It is absolutely positive on American values and, indeed, the thing that the movie portrays the Hmong as superior to Clint's own family at is exactly that: family. It doesn't really make Clint seem worse than the Hmong, just Clint's family, who have gotten selfish and stopped caring about their father (ignoring and dismissing him, to the degree of wanting to stick him in a home and forget about him).
It still portrays everything about those values in Clint as, if not superior to what the Hmong family has, at least having some important things to pass on to the Hmong children about being Americans. Clint's actual children have abandoned that aspect of their heritage and so he passes it on to someone who will have it, instead.
laxam
3mo ago
I do not understand the obsession with using precious metals as currency. Why is it better for the value of your currency to be at the whims of a commodity market as compared to managed by a central bank? Are the value of these coins (presumably) going to be pegged to some USD price? Free floating exchange rate? Why would anyone use these as opposed to USD?
Options are always nice. Central banks don't always do a great job managing their currencies and, while metallic standards aren't perfect, they're a workable alternative when your central bankers are having a live one.
laxam
5mo ago
This is a lot of words to write, "I don't understand why aggregate statistics don't apply to the individual".
Subsets of aggregate data can move in different directions from the summary statistics of the whole dataset. Trying to understand why people don't take selected macro statistics as gospel truth about their own lives is, to use a common phrase, extremely out of touch.
And stuff like this:
- Republicans think the economy is doing absolutely terribly, much worse than Democrats think, and 3) that most of this perception difference is because Biden, a Democrat, currently occupies the White House.
Is bordering on outright delusional. There are more Americans than just Democrats and Republicans and you don't get 55% fair/poor personal financial situation from just Republicans (no matter how much I'd love for 55% of Americans to be Republicans, alas).
What's actually going on here is that the chattering classes and the politicians and bureaucrats they support are finding, once again, that they can't actually tell people what to think about their personal lives. It's baldly obvious that this group doesn't actually know what they're talking about any functionally better than most people and that their ability to cite macro statistics is more an attempt to cast a magic spell than a real explanation of ground truth.
laxam
5mo ago
The really screwy thing about black representation in ads is that the 70% despite being only 13% elides that a huge number of these black people in ads are generic middle class black people (often, but blessedly less than in the past, light skinned). For a people who are disproportionately poor, it really seems like the TV ad execs want to ignore that most black people exist.
laxam
3mo ago
Israel was well on the way to coming to an understanding with its neighbors prior to 10/7.
The role of the global hegemon here, if we're really talking about 'just do whatever creates stability' would be take the population of Palestine, break it up into families, and scatter them around the globe, then decapitate the regime in Tehran and hand the reins over to a transitional government and leave. The Middle East would calm down very quickly.
The Trump era has been a historic disaster for the Republican Party downballot. After fighting and clawing it's way into centuriate power during the Tea Party era, reaching a peak of state and local power in 2016 unmatched since the 1920s, the anti-Trump backlash drove them out of power everywhere in 2018 and 2019.
They have the luck that the Democrats really suck at not just assuming they will hold power forever, so driving yet more backlash, but people in many places would rather have Democratic leftists over Trumpist conspiracy theorists (even if that is a near run thing).
The fact that the crazies have gained local party power in a lot of places is going to be a hobble on the party's performance for a long time. Arizona -- what is probably still a light red state in natural circumstances -- is probably going to be become blue just because the AZGOP is nuts.
My local party has stayed mostly sane, thankfully, so hopefully we can finish pushing the Democrats who won county control for the first time in half a century back into minority status. We'll see.
laxam
10mo ago
It's oppositional defiant disorder spreading to older whites. While ODD is something that is, from time to time, provided as a cause for black youth underperformance in schools, it's not something you've seen attributed to older whites. The perception of mistreatment by authority creates a permanent attitude of anger and defiance.
This can sometimes feel like just part and parcel of the way modern society seems to outright encourage mental illness in the general population. Attitudes and outlooks that, given time to fester, can develop into something almost clinical are celebrated and spread far and wide, coping mechanisms and other attempts to deal with mental health issues like this are denigrated and people are exhorted to reject them.
I don't really know what should be done about it. It has kind of metastasized into a pan-social malady that can't be addressed entirely because it's distributed and deeply entrenched.
laxam
5mo ago
I wonder if the online right intellecto-sphere will ever figure out that Trump wasn't for them.
laxam
1mo ago
Yes, we are basically hobbits, content to live in nice towns with little in the way of crime and no real desire to seek power over others.
I remember reading Lord of the Rings growing up and thinking the Shire sounded like paradise. I'm not exactly surprised to find people who don't think so exist -- I knew this, there are people who like the city --, but finding that there are people who think of the Shire as an example of a bad thing is a little funny.
I live across a river from the hospital I was born in, five miles from the house I grew up in (well, one of them, anyway -- we moved a lot when I was young, but always in the same county. My father chased the housing bubble upwards), and, while the old rural character of the place is mostly gone and paved over by suburbia, enough of it is left that I love it here and have no desire to ever leave. I've married a girl I met in college, most of my immediate family lives within a 45 minutes drive, and I pretty consciously chase stable, salaried employment that provides dependable income and doesn't ask too much as far as travel or flexibility.
The funny thing is that I'm actually from an area of the country that is otherwise very much like the 'coastal elitopia' the guy found out he prefers, just far enough out on (what used to be) the edges of the suburbs that you can still see the shimmer of the rural past in the ponds and the creeks. The small towns are still small (even if they're expensive and trendy and surrounded by miles of SFH neighborhoods), the parks are still pristine (even if the bike trails are getting more defined and nature outside those parks is disappearing, at least in this part of the county), and the job market is healthy enough that I don't think I'll ever even have to leave (even if my wife wants to move to Europe someday -- we both want something like Bavaria, which is pretty much exactly like here but with less tract housing and better beer).
laxam
5mo ago
Is it to discuss policy? Is it to discuss aggregate public perception? Averages matter.
Which averages matter a lot.
Of course, there is no real policy discussion going on with these discussions of macro statistics. It's just Lefty professionals sneering at the rest of the country and saying, "Why won't you just do what I tell you and vote for the Democrats?"
laxam
3mo ago
Dunno, but Iran has had several waves of very large scale anti-regime protests. I think you could prevent something exactly like the Mullahs taking back over if you just hand the government over to the right people. Iran isn't really like Iraq, it's a more developed place, even with the sanctions.
Hegel's whole schtick about oppressors and the oppressed is a crock that bears only a tangential resemblance to the real world
The oppressor/oppressed bit is aaaaa-bsolutely not a Hegel original. His contribution (founding contribution IMO) to the current sickness was that knowledge begins with a relation among things, which is where the idea of oppressor/oppressed ultimately comes from, but was not him. He wasn't exactly an old school conservative, but he also isn't clearly recognizable as a modern liberal or leftist in any way whatsoever.
Likewise, the entire concept of "slave-morality" is what the kids these days call "a cope" a desperate attempt by 19th century leftists to rescue their narrative from the increasingly overwhelming evidence of history.
Also, Nietzsche was also completely not a leftist. The slave morality is indeed supposed to be a cope, of a sort, not of the 19th century but of the 7th century, BC. An ideology reaction of the Jews to their conquest by virile, life affirming masters.
The Leftist affair with Nietzsche is not based upon his being in any way on their side. He wasn't. The Masters are the good guys in his telling, to the extent there are any. The horrible man-beasts whose pure will and lack of moral feeling are not Leftists. Their love of him is based on outright ignoring most of what he had to say in order to grasp at a sense of libertinism.
Zelensky has ...
His best option...
so that he can ...
so that Zelensky can...
so that Zelensky can have more...
It's astonishing the level of dishonesty that goes into writing a paragraph like this.
It's not Zelensky doing this. If Zelensky negotiated a surrender to Russia right now, the Ukrainian people would toss his ass to the curb and probably kill him for it.
laxam
5mo ago
Nope. There's too many middle-class black people where I live, way too far from the actual ghetto, for this to be a realistic concern. This isn't the 60s. Nice neighborhoods don't turn to shit overnight when blacks flood in from the ghetto. We've built an elaborate social system that pretty well precludes that particular mistake from being repeated, barring overwhelming and abrupt government action. The blacks moving in can afford the housing prices, which means they've more or less got their shit together.
FC, you're Southern, aren't you?
I've found that a lot of people have trouble conceiving of the Suburban South as anything but Bull Connor's Alabama. The idea that the modern South has a lot more black people than other parts of the country and therefore -- blacks less likely or not -- has a lot more middle class black people is just outside of most people's experience.
laxam
7mo ago
Was that before or after they were told how to think about it by the authorities and who the object of their ire should be, at times on completely false pretenses?
I don't know if you're old enough to remember that day, but...before. Absolutely 100% before.
Just because you have a nice, coherent model of how society works that fits neatly in your head, that doesn't mean your model is correct.
laxam
3mo ago
Who said anything about invading?
Kill the Guardian Council, the President, the top layer or two of the cabinet and the IRG, and tell the people who were trying to overthrow the government because of the overreach of the morality police that they're in charge now and leave the place to its own devices.
Seriously, OP talked about stabilizing the Middle East. The Oil Princes just want to make money, the military in Egypt wants more or less the same, the Turks just want to be able to play regional hegemon, and the Israelis just wanna feel like they won't all be killed for letting their guard down. It's the Iranian government that throws a wrench into the works. Get rid of them and break the back of the IRG and there's no longer going to be anyone who cares enough to spend time destabilizing other countries (and the Arab world will be all too happy to quietly wash their hands of the Palestinians).
laxam
2d ago
'Christianity' declined in America when elite institutions started getting filled up with Catholics and jews. This happened in the 1940's and by the 1960's the new 'elite' was throwing their weight around. The old WASP ideals were pushed aside. That's all there is to the story of modern America. 1,2
The Modernism versus Traditionalism split in the Presbyterian Church pre-dates the 1940's. The split between what were essentially modern professional class atheists and fundamentalist Christians who still insisted on the Westminster confession dates from then, at the latest, not from the 1960's.
The growth of socialism, progressivism, modernism, and secularism in the 19th and early 20th century elite is something you can't ignore when telling a story about American social history. The guys in the scenes at Harvard from the 1930's in The Good Shepherd were quintessential WASPs but they certainly weren't Puritans.
And, of course, the most resounding condemnation of this from the 20th century, God and Man at Yale, was written by a Catholic conservative...
laxam
1mo ago
The bill said "owned or controlled, directly or indirectly". That seems incredibly broad to be honest.
Here's the whole of the relevant section of the law, so people can judge for themselves how broad it is:
(g) Definitions
In this section:
(1) Controlled by a foreign adversary
The term controlled by a foreign adversary means, with respect to a covered company or other entity, that such company or other entity is—
(A) a foreign person that is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country;
(B) an entity with respect to which a foreign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indirectly own at least a 20 percent stake; or
(C) a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity described in subparagraph (A) or (B).
(2) Covered company
(A) In general
The term covered company means an entity that operates, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that—
(i) permits a user to create an account or profile to generate, share, and view text, images, videos, real-time communications, or similar content;
(ii) has more than 1,000,000 monthly active users with respect to at least 2 of the 3 months preceding the date on which a relevant determination of the President is made pursuant to paragraph (3)(B);
(iii) enables 1 or more users to generate or distribute content that can be viewed by other users of the website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application; and
(iv) enables 1 or more users to view content generated by other users of the website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application.
(B) Exclusion
The term covered company does not include an entity that operates a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application whose primary purpose is to allow users to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews.
(3) Foreign adversary controlled application
The term foreign adversary controlled application means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by—
(A) any of—
(i) ByteDance, Ltd.;
(ii) TikTok;
(iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or
(iv) an entity owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or
(B) a covered company that—
(i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and
(ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of—
(I) a public notice proposing such determination; and
(II) a public report to Congress, submitted not less than 30 days before such determination, describing the specific national security concern involved and containing a classified annex and a description of what assets would need to be divested to execute a qualified divestiture.
(4) Foreign adversary country
The term foreign adversary country means a country specified in section 4872(d)(2) of title 10, United States Code.
And here's the relevant, referenced section from subsection 4 above:
section 4872(d)(2):
(2) Covered nation.—The term “covered nation” means—
(A) the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea;
(B) the People’s Republic of China;
(C) the Russian Federation; and
(D) the Islamic Republic of Iran.
It's all honestly really quite narrow. It could not be applied to Twitter because Elon isn't 'domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of' 'the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea...the People's Republic of China...the Russian Federation...[or] the Islamic Republic of Iran', nor is Twitter 'directly or indirectly own[ed]' by someone with 'at least a 20 percent stake' who is domiciled, headquartered, doing business in, or organized under the laws of the preceding four countries.
If, someday, we added Saudi Arabia to that list (not something I would put past the left of the Democratic party, a portion of which will never get over Khashoggi), Twitter might be in trouble. Until then, this law would not apply.
The law is quite short. It's also pretty free of the kind of cross-references and surgical edits that make reading many other bills so confusing. Just make sure to understand that most things in the law are defined somewhere.
laxam
2mo ago
Libertarianism is incompatible with democracy. I think this is the obvious realization that people like Hoppe had.
Libertarianism + democracy is the end of libertarianism for two primary reasons.
The problem the anti-democracy crowd have is that Libertarianism is incompatible with any other alternative, too. It's always in the interest of those with power to limit the liberty of someone. This is why non-anarchist libertarians tend to like governments of 'limited and enumerated powers, with checks and balances to prevent the concentration of power in one branch'.
laxam
3mo ago
My proposal. We should solve this. My best guess is we need to add mini-legislatures somehow. Congress finds a way to delegate rule-making to smaller focused legislatures that will retain the legitimacy of congress and being Democratic.
It's called the committee system and it has existed since the first Congress.
Subject matter committees allow Congressmen to specialize and the institution to begin to develop durable, institutional knowledge. The problem is that Congress is far too small to allow Congressmen to specialize, given the size and scope of the Federal government, and they're too busy fundraising these days to do a good job of it, anyway.
Still happens, though. Mike Gallagher's China committee is a good example.
laxam
4mo ago
I have to disagree about O'Neill. SG-1 manages to pull off that rare accomplishment of sometimes being about politics without ever being political. They never say what party Kinsey is from, from what I remember, and the 1990s were a time where his type was available in both parties to be disdained.
The way in which they have Jack handle Daniel's actually peacenik attitudes (even if Daniel is right by plot fiat) is also a bit of a conservative stereotype of the gruff, worldly military man running rough shod over the lefty ivory tower type. The way they handled their relationship (where both get to be right and wrong at different times and both get to be both positive and negative portrayals of their archetypes who both grow by learning to deal and work with the other) is actually exceptionally good writing, both from a character handling perspective and from a 'keeping your show unpolitical' perspective.
The show absolutely is suffused with triumphalism post-Cold War liberalism, but that was a practically consensus point of view at the time and it was something most of both right and left could agree on.
laxam
5mo ago
The Bronze Age Middle East was dominated by organized states with professional armies (and large levies). Viking traders would have been crushed.
Bronze Age traders were legalistic extended families building kinship enterprises over large distances, like Medieval Italians.
laxam
5mo ago
The ground invasion is what Hamas wanted from the start, it's a trap. It's sad to me that so many people are so brain poisoned from watching too many Hollywood action films that they see a trap and say "Well a real hero goes in anyway and figures out a way."
Al Qaeda thought they were setting a trap for the West with 9/11. Now, Bin Laden and his contemporary lieutenants are dead and Al Qaeda is scattered and broken, fighting over scraps in sub-Saharan Africa, and the West is mostly annoyed that it had to spend the time and money to do that to them.
Sometimes, it really does work out that the 'hero' goes in anyway and figures things out just fine. Provided the Biden administration doesn't knuckle under to its Left flank and start applying real pressure to get Israel to stop, Hamas is going to be crushed in the ground invasion and Israel will re-occupy the Gaza Strip, probably eventually handing over (Non-democratic) control to the PA.
laxam
6mo ago
The small group of GOP representatives were able to get concessions which should end the Dictator Speaker Era as well as the Omnibus/Continuing Resolution Era from McCarthy in exchange for McCarthy getting the gavel. Appropriations must be passed through the normal process which means 12 appropriations bills produced by the 12 committees through the normal process and are brought to the floor before the statutory deadline which means no more omnibus bills and no more continuing resolutions. And there were many other smaller concessions. McCarthy broke his promises and used Democrats to do it. The small group revolted and that was the end of McCarthy's speakership.
It's important to note that this small group was intentionally making it impossible for McCarthy to keep his promise. He was going forward with regular order, the Appropriations committee and relevant subcommittees had reported their bills already by mid-July, but Freedom Caucus holdouts spiked rules votes to begin floor debate on those bills time and time again.
The whole situation was engineered by a group that got to get their names in the headlines off of it. They wanted him to break his promises because then they got to fundraise off of being the scrappy freedom fighters against the duplicitous Establishment. But, by forcing a delay, they put McCarthy in a situation where he had to choose between a shutdown and a CR.
Just like the Left, the Recalcitrants in Congress depend on people being underinformed about how a complex process works so they gin up a self serving narrative.
All twelve bills could have been passed by early August and a unified Republican Conference could have fought a very public and very righteous fiscally conservative battle against Democrats in the Senate and White House through the end of September, boosting their credibility as a serious party of responsible government without risking a shutdown. Instead, they're embarrassing the party and all but guaranteeing the Democrats regain the House next year, all so Matt Gaetz can send out fundraising emails while he votes to kick his own party out of power.
No shit. They need cash and weapons now, not the support of internet contrarians who will always hate them because they had the audacity to be invaded by the Russians.
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