naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
In some cases--but substantial migration doesn't appear to have happened immediately, and not every state was majority black. South Carolina was 57% black at the outbreak of the Civil War, and is 27% black today. Mississippi has similar numbers. Georgia was about 44% black at the outbreak of the Civil War, and is today about 30% black. Florida was also 44% black in 1860, but is just 17% black today.
Today the states with the highest absolute number of black residents are Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York, and California; four of those five are also in the top four most populous states (Georgia is #8 on that metric). The so-called First Great Migration of black Americans north and west is commonly held to have begun some 45 years after the end of the Civil War; I guess if you really wanted to know the precise year when South Carolina or Mississippi became more white than black, you'd have to do a deep dive into the census numbers.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
I don't have any special or serious insights to add to this discussion.
But it does seem like one hypothesis you can't eliminate is that /r/themotte was overrun by bots, to which your thinking calibrated, and when we moved the bots all stayed behind on reddit and what you're complaining about is just what talking to regular people looks like...
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
This is the equivalent of wokes using “white supremacy” to include timeliness, dress codes and objectivity.
False equivalency. Wokes using "white supremacy" to include anything they don't like about Red Tribe values is qualitatively distinct from using "groomer" to include behaviors that are, in fact, preparing children to be exploited or abused, and then exploiting or abusing them.
Here's how: "white supremacy" is fundamentally the idea that white groups or individuals are inherently superior to (at least some) non-white groups. To call, say, expectations of timeliness "white supremacy" is gobbledygook. If the claim is that non-whites can't be timely, then that claim is itself an assertion of white supremacy. If the claim is that timeliness is a "white value" but not a superior value, and that non-whites can be timely but rewarding timeliness or punish tardiness unfairly discounts non-white values, then it is also a claim that not rewarding timeliness, or even rewarding tardiness, unfairly discounts white values. You can't reasonably hold that timeliness is "white supremacy" without holding inconsistent ideas. (This is a frequent pattern in identitarian thinking: it is very often just self-refuting nonsense.)
By contrast, "grooming" describes the act of preparing a child to be abused or exploited, and some common known approaches to grooming are: asking children explicit questions about their sex and sexuality, exposing children to sexually explicit materials, and encouraging children to keep secrets or distance themselves from their parents. These are all things that wokes have demonstrably advocated for, from arguing for the inclusion of sexually explicit material in children's libraries, to keeping secrets from parents, to refusing to return runaway children to their parents. You might ask whether it counts as "grooming" if Party A is doing the grooming but Party B does the abuse, and whether it's still grooming if Party B never shows up to accomplish the abuse. I myself am comfortable with the idea that abusers can and do sometimes employ accomplices as groomers, as well as with the idea that a groomer who fails to follow through on abuse is still a groomer. This is not self-refuting, and so cannot be aptly compared with treating timeliness or objectivity as white supremacy.
And yes--you could certainly argue that the real abuse was families all along! Many on the left do believe this, and it is a genuine values dispute. Even DeBoer doesn't actually come out and say "families are good, actually"--his position appears to be something like "stop saying they're bad so we can win, maybe then we can actually abolish the horrid institution." But when the wokes are out there actually engaged in textbook grooming behaviors and passing laws to enable those behaviors, it's hardly a "dishonest" or "transparent attempt to leverage conditioned emotional reactions." It's more like calling a spade a spade. As I said in the linked discussion last time--if tabooing "groomer" seemed likely to reduce cases of actual abuse, I'd be all for it. But in the current debate, it seems like the desire to taboo "groomer" is just deliberate obfuscation of a real and serious political problem.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Those are people who should not be labeled groomers even if they vote for...inclusion in sports, or discrimination protection.
Okay, but no one in this thread has labeled people groomers on that basis.
So I will do that now!
Both of those view characterizations obfuscate real issues, some of which are also potentially connected with grooming. For example, "discrimination protection" to the extent of allowing this kind of thing looks to me like just another way of shielding a paradigmatically grooming behavior (an adult presenting to children in an indecent, hypersexualized way). Even the inclusion of males in female-only competitions can put young girls in situations where their self-protective instincts toward e.g. modesty get treated by adults as essentially pathological. Finding ways to erode those instincts is also textbook grooming (in the vein of "let's play silly naked games"). So, yeah, even those people have subjected themselves to the label of "groomer," though they may be sad to hear it.
Now, there are surely many people (including many non-Democrats!) who want to make sure that transsexuals aren't being assaulted for it, or losing their job over it, or getting poor healthcare because of it. I, too, believe that transsexuals should enjoy the same legal protections as everyone else! But by and large those are not the issues Democrats are proposing laws about--and certainly those are not the issues addressed by the law proposed in the OP. When someone points out that Democrats are in fact proposing legislation to protect plainly grooming behaviors, it is no answer at all to say "but you have to admit that some Democrats just want rights for transsexuals!"
If you want "groomer" to apply more selectively, start by convincing Democrat politicians to stop legislating the grooming of schoolchildren against their parents' wishes at every opportunity they get.
The right would very much like to have a weapon remotely comparable to accusations of white supremacy.
Looking at the poll numbers, the right may have gotten exactly that.
Trans activists—especially the vast majority who aren’t pedophiles—would quite prefer to avoid this.
I have seen some trans activists publicly support Republican efforts to prevent Democrats from legislating the grooming of schoolchildren against their parents' wishes, so good on them. But it is not at all my impression that they form any kind of majority; certainly they are not a vast one. What their actual sexual preferences are is irrelevant. As far as I can tell, trans activists are overwhelmingly in favor of empowering public schools to groom children against their parents' wishes. This aligns completely with my broader experience of leftist politics as explicitly anti-family.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
This seems unnecessarily antagonistic, please don't do this.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
You've brought too much heat and too little light, here. You're also not writing to include everyone in the conversation. To refer to an entire group, the majority of whom are not criminals, as a "criminal underclass" is clearly inflammatory. The rules do not forbid inflammatory claims; what they forbid is claims that are not also proportionally effortful, bringing argument and evidence (and kindness and charity!) to bear.
And I'd leave it at that, but in the short time we've been on this site, you've managed to accumulate a ban from Zorba, a ban from Amadanb, and five other warnings besides! Take two weeks off this time. You do not seem interested, at present, in the project of making this place a fruitful discussion ground. If you continue to show that unwillingness, your bans will only continue to grow.
Not only did he never say "families are good," he said
I understand that there are cogent critiques of the nuclear family or the traditional family or similar.
Furthermore, from Freddie's linked article, immediately following the bits you quoted:
To be anti-family really does strike me as looking for the thing that will piss the most people off, for the least possible political gain. I would prefer it if the most influential socialist press would not casually engage in this kind of useless leftist posturing, when we have so many more important and realistic goals.
His clearest concern is certainly not, "families are essential ingredients of a functioning society." His clearest concern is, "this argument makes the glorious revolution look bad." Furthermore, the "when we have..." is a really interesting qualifier. If he did not have so many more important and realistic goals, would he still regard these arguments as useless posturing? I don't get the impression, at all, that Freddie would stand up for families at that point--in part, because he gives no particular defense of them here. His point is never, "families are good." His point is always, "abolishing the family is, for now, a losing issue."
I will grant that he notices, for example, that
Shulamith Firestone . . . suffered from schizophrenia and likely starved to death in her apartment. Her body wasn’t found for a week. She was a giant of second-wave feminism but she died completely alone. I would suggest that this was a person who could have used more family.
But not, apparently, a nuclear or traditional family? His position is clearly underspecified, but I don't think it is a misrepresentation to observe that nuclear and traditional families, at least, are on the chopping block from Freddie's perspective. But--those are the kinds of family that matter most, on my view! All other arrangements are (deliberate--and often important!) imitations of the traditional/nuclear family, imitations so close we even call them "family," but they seem to just be less stable over a lifetime--so giants of second-wave feminism die alone and unnoticed and icons of gay rights can't even get burial costs covered by the law firm that used them to change the nation.
What you and /u/FCfromSSC both dance around here ...
The only person dancing around anything here is you.
Should the law require have required my teacher to tell this parent that his son was gay, thus subjecting the kid to homelessness?
Too fucking right it should. It's not the teacher's place to manipulate families based on her own personal values. Schoolteachers are public employees and ultimately answerable to parents. Concealing material information from parents is pedagogical malpractice.
Laws saying teachers don't have to disclose aren't there so that teachers can keep secrets to groom children. They're there so that teachers can use discretion and judgement to figure out what the right course of action is.
That's not a level of discretion government employees get to have over families, not in any sane system. If a child is being physically abused, malnourished, etc. then the law might get involved, and it's tragic and messy but sometimes understandable. If a child is confused about sex or sexuality, that is not the government's business to decide how to address that. By making it the government's business, Democrats are actively grooming children.
If you think it's "abuse" to tell a child that they don't get to date or have sex or wear inappropriate clothing, like, we just have a clear values disagreement. I do think many "transgendered" children are actually victims of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which is enough like sexual abuse that I might be persuaded that child protective services should also be allowed to intervene in such cases... but even then, absent any other concerns I'm reluctant to get the government involved. I don't know--do you think I should be more willing to get the government involved in such cases?
Show me what's objectionable in these books, and tell me what age you think you should be in order to access this material, and why.
I mean, for starters. Children's libraries are no place for these materials. Making such materials available to children is textbook grooming. Do you honestly advocate for distributing such things to children? If so, you're a groomer, too, by every definition offered in the thread thus far.
What in the fresh hell, Pennsylvania?
Has the Motte discussed John Fetterman? If so, I missed it... I admit there are enough races I'm watching across the country that it is hard to keep track of them all. But in case you, too, have missed it, John Fetterman is the Democratic candidate for the seat of outgoing Senator Pat Toomey, one of 7 Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump in his second impeachment circus. Seven days before winning the Primary, John Fetterman had a stroke.
I am not a medical doctor. For all I know, Fetterman will make a full recovery, eventually. But as of right now, the guy is one step above monosyllabic. Which made tonight's debate absolutely excruciating to watch. Over the course of the night, PredictIt shifted ten cents in favor of Fetterman's opponent, the Wizard of Mehmet Oz. And yet most media accounts of the debate are steadfastly reporting only the substance, such as it was. No surprise--the media has been carrying water for Fetterman for weeks. But like... really? You can't report a single sentence saying, "Fetterman was clearly not up to the task." Watching people hit Twitter to unironically praise him for "doing really well, for a stroke victim!" is shocking. The level of partisanship required to vote for Fetterman at this point simply boggles the mind. On the flip side, #Festerman was briefly trending on Twitter before (I presume) someone elbowed their censors.
Of course, we can trust our outspoken President to just tell it like it is. Perhaps President Biden understands better than anyone, given the possibility that he, too, might simply be functioning as a sock puppet for the Democratic establishment. The counterargument that criticizing Fetterman's cognition is some kind of "ableism" is just hollow. This is not a man who can do the job of Senator, at least not right now, and to pretend otherwise just seems exploitative to me. (And calling that a "bad faith" argument seems willfully ignorant. The man can barely speak, that's much more than an "auditory processing" problem.)
Of course, voting has been open for a month in Pennsylvania, and the state has already declared its intention to turn a blind eye to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling as it counts undated ballots. So in addition to potentially electing someone with the mental faculties of a young child to high federal office, Pennsylvania is also setting up a judicial crisis for its election process.
And all because Oz is, well, a Trumpist. If this is what midterms look like, 2024 is going to be... just something else. I can't even imagine. It's simply too much.
You're seriously trying to say
No, I'm saying only what I'm saying--not trying to say other things.
Do you think teachers who suspect parents of hitting children for receiving school discipline should conceal the administration of school discipline?
Do you think teachers who suspect parents of requiring children to be vegan should be permitted to secretly provide the child with meat?
Children who confide in teachers are placing themselves in an exploitable position. Often it is merely political indoctrination to which those children have unwittingly exposed themselves. Sometimes it is abuse. Parents are the legal and moral guardians of their children. Temporary custodians (like teachers) who withhold material information about those children from parents, on grounds that the custodian doesn't like the things the parent has said about a particular subject (like homosexuality and the likely consequences of coming out), are not helping children. They are imposing their own outsider judgments on the operations of a family they have no business manipulating.
The government is not "deliberately trying to make it easier for someone to sexually abuse" kids. The government is deliberately abusing kids (in the form of exposing them to inappropriate materials), and deliberately doing things that make it easier for someone to abuse kids (like requiring teachers to conceal material information from parents). It's an easy conflation to make, but I encourage you to engage more closely with the facts about what is being said or done, without (twice in one comment) making misleading loaded claims about what I or others are "trying" to do.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
What externalities have I avoided engaging on?
This wasn't a discussion about externalities, but a discussion about direct costs. By moving to hypothetical "externalities" you simply sidestepped the conversation altogether.
Do parents have an absolute right to know 100% of their teenagers mental contents at all times?
Nobody said anything like that. Your strawmen have no power here.
Should you read your daughter's diary entries?
If you think there is cause for concern, damn straight you should read your daughter's diary entries. Monitor her internet use, too. Kids don't generally need to live in a panopticon but sometimes it makes sense to take that approach. I'd rather my children be upset about an occasional "invasion of privacy" than be confident in the sanctity of their phones or diaries and run off with an internet boyfriend, and that's not a hypothetical example. I had a neighbor whose 12-year-old daughter snuck away with a 23-year-old "boyfriend" she met online. That sort of thing is terrifying. Privacy is just not a very important thing for children to get from their parents.
You want to turn teachers into a Stasi.
Not at all. To the contrary--you want to turn teachers into parents. I want teachers to share material information with parents, because they work for the parents, literally on the parents' dime. If that information does result in abuse, there are legal protections in place for that sort of thing. If a teacher merely believes that information will result in abuse, that's in many cases just the teacher being bigoted, which is also material information a teacher should share. "I hate your kind so much that I will actively undermine your parenting" is the kind of warning teachers really ought to give to parents, so parents can make an informed choice about where to send their children to be educated. (Wishful thinking, I know.)
your current position is that the state shouldn't punish parents who deprive their children of healthcare
I don't think that at all. "Gender-affirming" treatments are not healthcare any more than a nose job is. We do clearly have a straight values disagreement here--you think that mutilating people is "health care," and I don't.
I don't really give a shit if they're in a high school though, because kids find worse on the internet.
Yeah, see above I guess. "The internet is worse, so it's fine if my kid's library peddles porn" is certainly a take, I'll give you that.
Very funny. You're a child molestor. There are gay and trans children out there, and you think they should be molested* by their teachers. You even suggested their parents should be molested* by the state for allowing their child to access gender affirming care.
Well, this is the values disagreement though, isn't it? It boils down to you thinking it's healthy for teachers to talk to kids about sex and sexuality without their parents' knowledge, because some parents might do objectionable things as a result, and I think it's not healthy for teachers to talk to kids about sex and sexuality without their parents' knowledge, because some teachers might do objectionable things as a result. You want teachers to make judgment calls at the expense of the parent-child relationship, and I want parents to be the ones making maximally-informed judgment calls, both because parents are generally in a better position to make those calls, and because I think parents have some right to make those calls. Or in other words:
government employees exist to serve the societal good at large, not your personal whims.
I think this is perhaps the real site of our disagreement. You don't think schools exist to help parents, except accidentally. You think they exist "to serve the societal good at large." But if that's the case, sending children to public school is a horrible choice and no parent should make it. They're just sending raw materials to the collective culture-factory, which will do with those children as it sees fit. I'm sure most public educators would want to walk you back, a lot. Your reference to "personal whims" is of course pure rhetorical bullshit: every school my children have ever attended has been explicit, nay anxious, about ensuring good school-parent partnerships, finding ways for teachers and parents to cooperate, collaborate, and coordinate. Open sharing of concerns and information is central to the proper functioning of a school. Getting lost in value conflicts about the sexuality of children is not only kinda creepy (yes, even in high school), it's detrimental to the whole damn enterprise. It allows identity politics to interfere with what is actually best for the child: well-supported parenting.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
This forum is an offshoot of rationalism but it's a pretty distant offshoot. Yud-Scott-motte and now motte.org... I think this is a rightist forum.
It's probably worth noting that the people who make a habit of publicly sneering at rationalism have been accusing Yud-Scott-motte and now motte.org of being rightists, or at least crytpo-rightists, for years. The "rationalists" are furthermore in many ways the cultural inheritors of the cypherpunks--the community is overwhelmingly IT-adjacent by profession, or was last time we checked. The cypherpunk culture, in turn, was heavily libertarian, which is not the same as "rightist" even though libertarians in U.S. politics tend to get lumped in with Republicans more often than Democrats. The meme of libertarians who want gay marijuana farmers defending their private crops with automatic weapons is a much better description of the "tendencies" I see in this space than "rightist."
By curating a space where people can test their ideas in a broad Overton window, I do think we tend to encourage the discussion of political heresies, and since our U.S. cultural institutions are dominated by the left and/or the extreme left, the discussions here tend to be about things the left and/or extreme left would prefer to taboo--for the simple reason that other things can be discussed elsewhere, but many of these things can not. And I've gotten many great responses to my Fetterman thread that are clearly not pro-Republican, and I've gotten clear leftist pushback on the "groomer" discussion, too. That's a long way from what I see on genuinely "rightist" spaces.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
You can watch the full debate here.
Fetterman often appears to be working (or even reading) from a script, and when he gets off script it's extremely glaring. And yeah, the cut-and-paste jobs I'm seeing this morning on YouTube and news websites are Hollywood-tier movie magic.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
In general Congressional elections, most people don't vote for candidates.
I'm sure many people do not vote for candidates, but I'm not sure "most" holds up in this case. Remember that about 25% of voters haven't got a party at all, and many partisan voters do not vote straight-ticket. It's not unusual for states to elect, say, a Republican governor and a Democratic senator. So even if most people do vote straight-ticket, enough people don't that the qualifications of individual candidates, beyond partisan affiliation, clearly makes a difference.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Yeah... and as others have pointed out, Shapiro would then be in a position to appoint Fetterman's replacement (until the next general election) should Fetterman win and opt out. We live in interesting times.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
you've just dropped essentially every single one of those argumentative threads with no reply
I skipped all the parts where you put words in my mouth; I don't see much use in responding to outrageous strawmen and maximally-uncharitable takes where you impose an invented narrative on me and then castigate me for it. Attributing to me views I do not hold, and conclusions I have not endorsed, is not helpful and clarifies nothing.
Just to furnish one ready example, I have absolutely never called Democrats "pedophiles," nor ever implied that you were yourself one; I never even used that word. Please CTRL-F if you don't believe me! Coming back with "well you obviously meant the word groomer to imply--" No. I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. I rather specifically distinguished accomplice-groomers from groomers-who-go-on-to-abuse; if you missed that explanation, all I can do is ask you to read it again and try to think with nuance instead of rage. I am sorry that this was upsetting to you, but it was your own bad reading that appears to have upset you--not the words I actually wrote.
Since I am apparently not a party to the conversation happening in your head, I will also now excuse myself from the conversation happening here.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
This implies either
No, I didn't put those two sentences together, and neither should you.
Yes, speaking is an important part of a Senator's job; I additionally regard comprehension as an important part of a Senator's job, and the debate shows Fetterman sorely lacking in that department even with transcripting aids. But I would more vehemently disagree with this:
perhaps more important is that the number one job of a Senator is to represent his constituents
I regard political leadership as subtantially more important than political representation. The Framers of the Constitution clearly agreed with me, at least in connection with the Senate; the House is where "representation" was supposed to take place (hence, "House of Representatives") while the Senate was supposed to be a more aristocratic institution. Essentially, I regard the 17th Amendment as a horrible mistake.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Trad macho posturing bullshit like this is always so laughable being posted on a community that is an even less productive use of time than some Minecraft open source project.
This antagonism gets you banned for a week. Please think of it as my personal contribution to the productive use of your time.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Where is it thar you read that you're seeing the media only cover substance?
Everything I could find last night. There is a lot more developed coverage this morning. In the moment, reporters seemed to be avoiding the issue.
If you think that the primary job of a Senator back then was not to represent the interests of those constituents, you are mistaken
I'm not, though. If you think the primary job of a Senator was supposed to be representing the interests of their "constituents," you are cynical and reductionist. The primary job of a Senator was, and is, to lead. I appreciate a good realpolitik as much as the next Mottizen, but venal oligarch-wrangling (or similar) is not the job of Senators, even if it is too often how they get the job. Physicians must somehow collect payment from their patients, but it would be totally mistaken to say that it is the primary job of a physician to collect payment from their patients.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Can we do without the dog and pony show? Oz votes the way you like. Fetterman votes the way I like. The stroke is irrelevant to both of us.
I'm sorry you feel this way--indeed, I think it is corrosive to society that you feel this way--but I certainly do not feel this way. I'm also the kind of person who tends to vote for third party candidates, so you've furthermore misread me even to that extent (and I don't think there is anything in my post to suggest that I endorse Oz!). If you're going to insist that others are dealing in bad faith simply because you yourself are an unprincipled partisan, that's a you problem.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1yr ago
Can you point to a Red Tribe leader that became incapable on the job, where you supported their removal? Ideally one where the removal actually occurred? Should Reagan have gotten the 25th amendment? Trump?
At the time, I was skeptical that Reagan should be removed, but some of the stories I have heard since his death suggest to me that the people closest to him did know that he was incapable of functioning as POTUS. Had those stories been publicly available (pre-Internet was a very different time!) I would likely have favored his resignation. Certainly I am fascinated by the legacy of Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, whose husband should probably have just resigned. We don't elect couples to serve as POTUS (maybe we should!). But somehow we now celebrate a woman who essentially held herself a bloodless little coup.
In an ideal world, I would agree with you, and I think most everyone here would as well. This is very explicitly not an ideal world.
One of the reasons I left law practice behind is that I am simply not moved by this kind of reasoning. I don't see any reason to compromise on my ideals, or to make allowances for the difficulty others have living up to theirs. My voting record is a shambles of support for non-viable candidates. My personal wealth is a fraction of what it could be if I refused to bear the costs of unilateral defections from undesirable status quos. But I don't know any other way to make the world a better place, than to refuse to choose evil simply because it is the lesser of available evils. I consider myself well-versed in the many arguments for not allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, but it's not perfection I'm after. I just refuse to concede ground to idiots, and if they burn me at the stake for it, then I'm well rid of them.
I am certainly not arguing that "this is a problem Blues caused." But I do think it's exploitative and wrong to use mentally handicapped people as partisan props. Calling that a "dog and pony show" or accusing me of bad faith or saying these kinds of arguments "go nowhere" is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's wrong to treat people this way. Once you acknowledge that this is not the way things ought to be done, then you should say and do what you can to stop it happening. Often, you will not be able to say or do anything to stop it happening! But here I am, doing my small part by raising the argument. If others have made similar arguments in bad faith, and you pattern match them to me, and thereby dismiss me as just another partisan hack, well--what can I say? I tried, and will continue to try.
Thanks for letting us know. Stay safe out there!
More options
Context Copy link