netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2mo ago
Man, I thought the immigration fraud argument was stupid when it came up years ago, and I think it’s stupid now. Are you the same guy who brought it up on Reddit? Because I’m pretty sure you’re citing the exact same tabloid. Do you have anything more credible?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5mo ago
I think showing up to a protest armed merits some increased suspicion.
When someone is killed, the more effort it took to get into that situation, the less likely it was an accident.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
That’s exactly the issue!
Why should we expect similar charges and sentences in these two scenarios?
One one hand, we have various obviously dysfunctional, obviously embattled city police departments. The bureaucrats who fund and control them are somewhere between uncooperative and actively hostile. They are pursuing chaotic, personal crimes.
On the other, we have the security apparatus of the most powerful country in the world. Its directing bureaucracy feels, for once in their lives, personally threatened. They also have a short list of high-profile suspects who carefully organized and documented their participation.
Which of these two do you think will be better at building a case?
It is unreasonable to expect a tragic accident among protestors to spawn comparable charges to a deliberate plan. It is impractical to compare the FBI’s resources and political will to those of random police departments. And it is irresponsible to insist that, when these vastly different scenarios yield any difference in outcome, it is proof of an insidious conspiracy.
Out of all these examples, the best intuition pump is the murder at CHAZ. Did Tarrio’s crime really deserve harsher sanction than an actual murder? I’m not sure. I can’t find information on his plea. His subordinates certainly didn’t earn such sentences. At best, it’s the old problem of utilitarianism, adding and distributing harms until our intuition complains.
But I think it’s telling that the murder—the most heinous crime which can be thrown at the feet of a BLM protestor—gets closest to your sharpshooter’s 15-year line.
I don’t believe for a minute that Trump supporters would be satisfied with 13-year sentences for the ringleaders. There is no line. Only the belief that there was an injustice, and a search for the facts which will best support it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
7mo ago
I argued this after the Martha’s Vineyard stunt, but it really doesn’t have to be hypocrisy.
So New York probably isn't far off from its proportional share, it's not being obviously exclusive, and it clearly has handled previous migrants well enough that residents aren’t upset.
If they’re already at equilibrium, but Abbott or DeSantis decides to put his thumb on the scales, why shouldn’t they be annoyed? The outgroup is benefiting at their expense; it doesn’t matter how much!
It’s the difference between choosing to paint your house and being compelled to do so by your neighbors.
Don't you think you're being a bit hyperbolic?
Last I checked, the Second Age wasn't a big part of American history. Casting a set of fictional characters poorly (?) is not culture erasure. Literally nothing has been changed about the existing 20+ hours of Tolkien movies, or the books, or the impact on public consciousness. The biggest harm is that a bunch of people are sitting through a shitty TV show.
As best as I can tell, there's not even any evangelizing like OP's example! The diverse casting is aggressively not important to any plot events. Galadriel isn't teaching the benighted folks of Middle-Earth about inclusivity, she's teaching them not to rely on boats if they want to make someone the Valar’s problem.
This is a far cry from the thought policing about which you are wringing your hands.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I don't follow. Hasn't this narrative already been thoroughly disseminated?
At the very least, I can think of several indignant posts from this community about how The Man was suppressing evidence of a lab leak. I assume y'all would have been less upset if the media showed any sign of taking lab leak seriously. The partisan lines were drawn on this, oh, right around the first time Fauci had a press conference. Blaming Trump for implausible things goes back way further.
So...what's so surprising about hearing Congress singing the same old tune?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4mo ago
A world in which men can fuck boys and don’t want to is such a perversion, too. Which is to say not at all. Pederasty and teen sex drive are far from the “focused drive” you’re lionizing.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5mo ago
You’re forgetting the other moderate position, “smelt him into cannons.” I guess the idea was something museum/battle memorial worthy, but not honoring the guy in particular? It strikes me as a bit odd, so I’m not surprised it didn’t satisfy either side.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6mo ago
I have to assume you mean this WaPo article.
If so, I guess I’d better head off any misunderstandings. There’s really no sense in getting heated over this long-dead loser. Even in its current state, this statue holds together better than the Lost Cause mythos. It’s more defensible than the Confederacy, too. I think Lee’s just getting caught up with what Sherman did to Georgia.
Also, it looks like the detractors are doing this legally. I don’t see why you should get the final say over whether Lee’s body parts get to remain in a Union.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Uh, what term are they supposed to use instead? Specifically serving a disfavored group, or writing letters about how dumb racists are, seems pretty anti-racist to me.
Your proposed "political and ideological ends" don't make a lot of sense, either.
1.Use "anti-racist" in the Tolkien article
2.Poor shmucks think that he's just neutral on racism
3.But those In The Know can tell he was actually supporting racial equity!
4.???
5.New era of racial equity
Not really seeing the payoff for them. Likewise for DEI--cui bono? What are those nasty CRT partisans getting from promoting a second meaning?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9mo ago
If you visit the bank, and stock your trunk with balaclavas and zip ties, and text your friends about how great it would be to have more cash on hand…maybe they should?
Jurors aren’t automatons. They are capable of judging intent, just as you are when you assume these protestors had the purest of intentions.
I notice that there are still no convictions!
Edit: whoops—a guilty plea does count. I was wrong, then.
I also notice that you’re determined to work in Ron “JEW” DeSantis’s JEWISH hate speech law signed JEWISHLY in JEWrusalem. You’re very persistent. I will stand by what I said before: that bill is a sensible modification of existing law. Hanging out on a campus was already a crime; this breaks out intimidation as a specific motivation with different charges and reporting requirements. As @Gdanning pointed out, there’s a firm constitutional basis for that regardless of Charlottesville.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10mo ago
Looks good to me.
The most invasive part is potentially deplatforming some people on Twitter. Anything which discourages treating that cesspit as a “public square” is a net good in my book.
All the rest looks like boring cultural initiatives. Business as usual for the NEA and friends! Hardly worth being a Concerned Citizen over, no?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I can't seem to report comments at the moment, but you can put in more effort than importing Twitter takes.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
10mo ago
I don’t honestly have a great handle on what constitutes CRT. I guess I’d believe that the military has picked it up; if they did, it was probably down to the executive.
In the defense industry, diversity training has remained fairly anodyne. The closest we got to Internet-activist talking points was “race-blind isn’t good enough.” I wanted to see Trump’s EO so I could tell whether that would have made it past.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Unless I’m missing something, right now the Nasdaq has four sets of financial requirements. The NYSE has two. Neither involves an ESG score, or in fact any criterion judging the ethics of their listings.
How do you go from there to banning insufficiently diverse companies?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I dunno, I think men tend to have it easier than women. Mostly due to physical strength and social dynamics. I’d pick male social drama any day, and the less said about harassment the better.
Maybe discrimination is most socially acceptable against white and Asian men. I don’t feel like that actually has much impact on how much discrimination really happens. I’m not really competing against women for my job or for marriage.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5mo ago
As far as I know, the locals got a say. They didn’t want Lee to hang around. I believe the bronze is going to be used for some sculpture or installation. While I’m sure you will find it low-effort or objectionable, it will still be public art. I think that’s a perfectly valid use of the materials. There’s no statute of statue limitations, and if the current residents (owners? Caretakers?) wanted to melt the statue, more power to them.
I do think the authorities were wary of what you describe. The article also cited a risk of “violence” if the statue were to remain on display somewhere. I imagine they were thinking of white supremacists reclaiming Mr. Lee for Stone Mountain, Dukes of Hazzarding their way over innocent museum visitors along the way. If I’m feeling charitable, they were probably also worried about attracting anti-Confederate vandals.
Your speculation, though, is off-base. Lee is just too removed to merit personal hostility. Can you think of any particularly gentlemanly myths about the guy? All I’ve got is that he joined the Confederacy out of some kind of principled stance; partial credit, but not particularly unique. And I expect my knowledge of historical trivia is a lot broader than the average statue-tipper.
No, sometimes people mean what they say. Lee represents the Confederacy more than he personifies it. Hundreds of thousands died because he, and people like him, chose to stand up for a garbage cause. Nothing personal about it.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9mo ago
Why not? It’s not like SS has the phones, either.
The defense wanted to make the seizure into a controversy, claiming that one of the phones was very cool annd very exculpatory. Since the only information we’ve been given is that one brief, we can’t assess whether that’s plausible. But the jury could.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
If I had a nickel for every time someone said trans activism was comparable to Hitler, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.
How are those at all similar? In the surreal, alternate universe where Bud Light is using Instagram to attract young Neo-Nazis, people wouldn't make that argument because Hitler was responsible for the deaths of millions!
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
It’s a free country. I’m not going to clamor for trashy editorials to get canceled. That’s a waste of time.
If you’re arguing that this particular instance deserves a twitter mob or at least a sternly worded letter to the editor—why? What’s worse about this than about anti-white hip-hop, or jokes about gringos, or the whole squabble downthread about whether or not Ukrainians are an ethnicity? I don’t care about this article for the same reasons I don’t care about those. Christ has nothing to do with it.
I can’t take people who claim to be anti-racists seriously.
Yeah, you’ve made that pretty clear. Your demands for intellectual rigor are quite specific.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
I have, and I don't think "feeling thermometers" are good enough evidence for a very, very strong claim.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1yr ago
Religion is categorically different from what we got in RoP.
It'd be just as weird if you replaced all your Islamic hypotheticals with Christian ones, even though they're more familiar to Americans and much more closely aligned to Tolkien's actual setting.
A better comparison would be...I dunno, Enlightenment democracy. Imagine every time anyone makes a decision in the show, it's a vote. Travelers, merchants, soldiers, it's just the default. When Aragorn meets the hobbits they demonstrate "consent of the governed" and at the end he renounces kingship for a new government.
That'd be a change that spits on Tolkien's original themes. (I'm pretty sure it's also what happened in the last episode of Game of Thrones?) It'd suck, but in a different sort of way than importing religious terminology and rituals from our world. I think this is more in line with the characterization and plotting messes from RoP.
I want you to know that your tireless coverage of previous issues has led me to assume, prior to reading any details:
Good.
It’s very kind of you to link your previous essays, reminding me of precisely why I was unconvinced. There exists no small injury, only existential threats to truth, justice, and the American way. Truly a terrifying place to live.
Now, reviewing the evidence rather than making a knee jerk reaction, I have to say:
Good.
It’s nice to see the jury system working as intended. Not a hung jury, no technicality. These guys obviously violated the letter and spirit of the relevant statute. A five-day sentence is appropriate for such a mild crime.
The real lesson learned? If your plans for a wholesome right-wing rally includes arming up to beat your opponents…don’t. Problem solved.
More options
Context Copy link