Like, Luke is never actually tempted by the dark side. There is nothing the dark side ever has to offer him that he wants
It's not much, but he does show a lot of curiosity with Obi Wan about his father. I imagine that's the tentation, to get to know about his father. The movie doesn't do a good job of showing the internal struggle, but when he confronts Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, at that point, he has lost his uncle and aunt, he has lost Obi Wan and the closest to a father figure he has left is a tiny green puppet who talks funny with the same voice actor as Miss Piggy.
Even if he did obey the Emperor and strike down Darth Vader in anger, there's no plausible reason he would switch sides, he'd just strike down the Emperor too.
I think the point is a variant of the idea of "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house". It could be taken in a philosophical sense, that if Luke strikes down Darth Vader in anger, he'll probably strike down the Emperor in anger too, and will be going down the path of normalizing striking down his enemies in anger, which will eventually lead to him becoming just as bad as Darth Vader and the Emperor. Letting the anger drive + the overwhelming power of being a trained force user = bad times for everyone. This is the what the prequels show with Anakin, the turning point that sets him down a dark path is getting revenge on sand people (who most likely had it coming, this is before primary canon had shown the sand people to be anything but murderous barbarian raiders). It also makes the "Only Siths deal in absolutes" quote stupid because Jedi deal in absolutes all the freaking time; it's their commitment to absolutist ethics that seemingly keeps them from turning into power-hungry murder machines.
Then there's the more literal sense of it, that if Luke had stricken down Darth Vader in anger, that this anger through some force bullshit would somehow literally feed the Emperor's power and Luke would then lose the ensuing battle. Maybe it'd give the Emperor a hold to Force Mind Break him or something.
The trend has been going for a little while, 2069 years and a day at least to my estimation.
I don't know if there's an earlier example of an event referred to by when it happened instead of what happened that stuck to popular culture, but yesterday was the Ides of March, infamously the day of Julius Caesar's assassination.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
My (nominally) fellow Canadians' response to this is possibly the stupidest thing I've seen them do in recent years. Clearly the 51th state ribs are a joke, but in the case they were not and there was a clear intent to annex then the answer is not to act defiant. Canada has no power, no military, no economic leverage on America.
If I were named Canada's Trump wrangler, I'd call him up and have frank negociations on what he really wants (as opposed to the excuse to give him the power to do it, Fentanyl). What he wants and expects tariffs to do is reshoring, right? Canada can help! Canada could offer to match US tariffs on China; we've been having a tense relationship with China in recent years anyway, and it would increase the market for american manufactured goods. If necessary get some Canadian companies to sweeten the pot by promising some investments or partnerships with the US.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
It conflates them for good reason, because what was being suggested is tariffs instead of taxes. Removing corporate taxes would lower the price of domestically produced goods. In a context where they benefit from government provided services (roads, law enforcement, the stability of being protected by the army, courts that parse and enforce contracts), being exempt of taxes for it does amount to a subsidy. Of course, it's not the tariffs part that reduces the cost, but it offers an alternative to taxes for funding the government.
Personally I'm doubtful that the Trump administration will manage to get enough cuts, enough tariffs, enough deregulation-fuelled growth to actually balance the budget, but getting at least part of the way is an improvement.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
My impression is that Donald Trump wants to win, to be the greatest, better than anyone has been before, and that his affinity for Putin is because he looks like someone who is winning.
I don't think it's so much an obsession with winning. Putin looks like someone who would like to make a deal.
Members of the atlanticist world order (NATO, Europe) seems to want to the world to just magically be different than what it is and the unstable post Cold War world to be maintained forever, even as they mortgage increasingly large chunks of their population's future for diminishing returns. They do not want to make deals with Trump; they don't think he's serious, they want him to disappear and the world to just go back the way it was. Both of these are non-starters for Trump. They don't call him to negociate their place in the next world order, they act outraged that Trump is not bound by the imperative of keeping the atlanticist world order intact. Putin at least takes those negociations seriously. Of course, Russia didn't have much of a place after the end of the Cold War so it's no wonder that they are open to discussions.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
Ultimately I think you're right, but it hardly reflects well on the people of these countries that they would reverse their positions on domestic and international issues entirely to maintain their self-image of being better and more enlightened than americans. It really shames me that I see this exact train of throught so clearly in my compatriots (Canadians). Our entire country's identity is just this.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
Oh, okay, yeah that makes more sense.
I don't think anyone would need to stop at considering the specific goal achieved; the healthcare that the absolutely poorest westerners can get by showing up to a hospital today, even americans, is orders of magnitude better than that which kings and emperors could get only a few centuries ago. We all want to see that trend continuing, and it will continue to be a treadmill, one on which I hope everyone agrees on the direction, even if they disagree on speed, technique, etc...
pigeonburger
3mo ago
If we have decades of it being legal, will weed culture disappear?
With less than a decade of it being legal in Canada, yes, I believe so to some extent. It took some time because of the "exhuberant release" of legalization lasted a little while, but I rarely smell it in public anymore. In the first year of so, stoners would just smoke anywhere, including places that explicitly disallowed cigarettes, but now I rarely smell it in public. Once in a while you see some guy who thinks he's being super stealthy at a show/event with his THC vape, but you also see that with nicotine vapes.
Of course, I never claimed there was such a thing, or that it was relevant to my argument that there is only a single level of healthcare.
Is your point that since caviar is expensive, poor people should starve? Or that you don't want caviar to become cheap because then poor people could eat it and somehow that makes you lose? Because otherwise I don't see how it relates to mine.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
It took 7 years, but it's finally starting to feel normal again here since legalisation. I think it helps that it was the whole country at once, so there was no effect of attracting all the stoners to one area, but I rarely smell weed anymore in the streets or parks, it no longer feels transgressive to just be able to smoke weed so people seem to know to keep it to themselves now. As for the commercialization, I guess the government taking care of the sales has the benefit of the stores looking nice and neat, rather than like head shops.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
Healthcare price is not just a fixed amount that has to be paid, it's reactive to policy and social factors, to policies influencing supply and demand of healthcare, to the legal environment around it, to the general health of the population, to the hygenic habits of the population, to socioeconomical factors, to genetics, to economies of scale, etc...
I think everyone, left and right, would be satisfied with the outcome of "healthcare is very available and almost everyone can afford it with the few remaining edge cases unable to pay being either taken care of by the government or by charity".
Whether you get there by single payer or not is a huge part of the question, but it's not a zero sum game.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
Broadly speaking, "you can get healthcare if you work/pay for it." already is the selfish position
I would formulate it more like "I want good healthcare to be available and affordable to everyone". Seems unselfish, and a rather universal proposition. I don't think it's altruism necessarily, people want to live in a place where they don't have to be driven in armored cars from gated enclave to gated enclave through a wasteland filled with roving gangs of dying sick panhandlers. Seeing only healthy people around me has value not because I'm altruistic, but cause it's more pleasant than the alternative, and for that I'm willing to compromise on maybe the speed or the cost of my care.
And Im not sure in what sense you think people dont have access to jobs, unless its an immigration thing.
I think they do too in the west, broadly speaking, but it's something that good or bad policy can influence (by running employers out of town, for instance), and that a vast majority would probably agree they want everyone to have.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
You're absolutely right! *slaps forehead*
pigeonburger
3mo ago
The meaning is altered in that a very salient objection can be raised that these things should not be given to those who don't work for them. But that's not different groups' interest competing, it's still mistake theory. It hits a crucial mistake people believe others are making; everyone should be in a nice part of town, but how many ressources should be allocated to helping people who don't help themselves (and their community), even if just to keep all parts of town nice? At what point does those ressources create incentives for freeloading and ruin that part of town?
The interests of the person who wants a cheap employee or servant and the person trying to get an entry level job are not the same. The interests of the person who wants government housing in a nice part of town, and the person who already owns a house in the nice part of town are not the same. Many people also have bad ideas about how to get where they're trying to go.
I agree with you in general, but I need to nuance on this point. At that specific level of politics, their interests are perhaps not the same, but in the grand scheme of things, I think a critical mass, regardless of social class, race, gender differences, would agree to make some compromises in the optimal assignment of resources for them or the groups they associate with to live in a country where everyone can have decent access to jobs, reasonable housing, education, healthcare, etc... What objection would anyone have to everywhere being the nice part of town? So when you zoom out to that level, I think it is truly mistake theory. And that really is I think the distinction between high trust and low trust societies. Mutual trust in strangers is really a self sustaining miracle; when enough people believe that this critical mass exists, then it does. When not enough people do, when you stop believing that the other guy is willing to make compromises in your favor so that we can all live in a nice place, then suddenly you must start strategically defecting on the arrangement to make sure you and your family are not the ones to be dumped on constantly.
Hence why western remote work expats living like kings in gated enclaves in poor countries is a relatively new and marginal phenomenon; because maximizing your own resources when you're surrounded by violence and poverty still sucks, and it takes a special kind of sociopath to just shut themselves off to all of it around them. And why high class, high education people in dysfunctional countries still often want to move to functional countries when they have the opportunity, even if it means their education is not going to recognized and they will be relegated to unskilled work. While you have more stuff, maybe some servants, being rich in a low trust society is not as fulfilling as being average in a high trust society.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
And no the left did not completely dominate the media landscape back then.
They wrote the movies, tv shows, books, music and ran the schools. Has there ever been a time in a millenial's life where popular Western media depicted someone who thinks there should be less immigrants in his Western country in a positive light?
pigeonburger
3mo ago
I've always had a sense that "stop illegal immigration" is the bailey while "stop all immigration" is the motte.
The left has been kept in control of the culture so long they've torched and salted the immigration motte so hard that for the longest time even just very moderate positions like "reduce immigration" made right wingers sound racist to even their own side. The bailey is all that was left, because of its almost tautological nature (you can't really formulate many good arguments against the government stopping the immigration that the government decided wasn't allowed to legally happen).
Now the right are timidly coming out of the bailey, seeing the invading army mostly gone with only a skeleton garrison and cardboard cutouts in their place. And they're seeing some sprouts in the motte, give them time.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
I don't know where he picks up that the conservatives think the women are blameless. I think the reason the laws tend to target doctors rather than pregnant women is that the latter are in a situation where they are unlikely to be receptive to the disincentive of punishment, as they would usually percieve being forced to carry to term as an event on the same scale as the end of their current life, as enslavement to a burden they didn't want, etc... As such if you want the laws to actually dissuade the act, targetting the doctors seem like a more efficient path. The doctor has less to gain and more to lose.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
Maybe, but on the other hand it might give the next agencies in line some time to prepare their resistance. It's quite clear that this is not and was never going to be a cooperative effort, the agencies involved, at the levels below the president selected heads, were going to fight tooth and nail. In that context, keeping ambiguity as to who is going to be "attacked" has value.
pigeonburger
3mo ago
I don't know about the US, but the toughest stores here are dollar stores. I don't think I've ever seen one die.
pigeonburger
4mo ago
no-het-would-stick-their-dick-in-a-dude
I mean, I'm 0% aroused by the idea of having sex with men, but it's also not the thing you would have to pay me most to do either. I can easily imagine there are some guys who don't like it, but also don't mind it, and would be fine with doing it as just another job.
pigeonburger
4mo ago
I imagine it also includes straight men who work as gay porn stars.
pigeonburger
4mo ago
Only if you make eye contact
The closest recent example I can think of is that FEMA worker who was fired for giving instructions not to go to Trump supporting houses during hurricane Helene disaster relief. It's not exactly the same though, because what that person did was in an official capacity I think? Though being charitable maybe it was really said in jest.
Also, it was not done in a vacuum with the Democrats in full control, it was done after the election, when it was made abundantly clear a large part of the american electorate had beef with the administration, so making a few public sacrifices probably seemed wise. So it's not the same as the Republicans handing over scalps of their own when they have a trifecta, the SC and >50% public approval (at least for the WH).
Whether it wins or lose, at the very least it'll force out in the open discussion of just how incapacitated Joe Biden was at the end of his term, which is likely to be very damaging to Democracts and to the Biden admin people involved, so good for Trump. As for whether it wins, there's rumors that an aide was just running the show with no input from Biden, not just using an autopen; if that's true, and Biden is not willing to lie to cover it up, who knows how that ends?
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