urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
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User ID: 226
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
5mo ago
· Edited 5mo ago
Hey, you don't have to call me out like that!
I do often feel like an odd man out on the motte sometimes in terms of my low-brow-ness; with the exception of video games, the motte seems quite opposed to geekery. (And I don't even like video games very much!)
I can certainly see the detraction of people who seem to eat up whatever they're fed by corporations with the mouth-wide-open meme face, but this just doesn't describe the fan communities I've participated in, particularly those that include a decent helping of straight men. If anything, fan communities of pop culture are more critical of bland, soulless corporate output than outsiders! If you don't believe me, go find a not-woke straight man into Dungeons and Dragons, comic books, or yes, anything owned by Disney, and ask him what he thinks about how things are going.
This is also true about theme parks. To use an SAT analogy, if you want to see the thing that is to the Disney-theme-parks what the motte's wellness wednesday thread is to dating apps, you should take a look at the WDWMagic rumors forum and bask in the straight male annoyance.
In fact, old-school Disney World fan communities have a term for people who uncritically accept every change, believe every new ride is the greatest thing ever made, worship Disney the company instead of appreciating the product for what it is -- they call them "pixie dusters." And they imbue the term with every ounce of contempt with which you use the phrase "Disney adult." (I think you both are talking about the same people!)
(And if you want to see what data nerds get up to when they like theme parks, you should look up Len Testa, who has made a ton of money selling subscriptions to his model of Disney World crowding.)
I guess I've never understood the contempt the Disney company seems to generate -- yeah, the classic movies are fairy stories, and yeah, they're watered down folklore, and yeah, that's not a real castle, and I get it, no real country looks like how it's represented in EPCOT, and absolutely, small towns don't really look like Main Street. But they're all idealized, with the goal of delighting and inspiring; they're mythical, in the positive use of the word. And we (used to) have a term for idealized depictions of things created to delight and inspire: we called it "art."
This whole line of thinking reminds me a lot of the recent discussion about McMansions -- I don't exactly find the 'mcmansion style' great, or anything, and definitely find them excessively and cheaply ornamented. But I don't know, I can't find it in my heart to get angry or contemptuous about the styles in which people build their houses. Eh, I guess, is my response.
My view is that highbrow culture abandoned normies, not the other way around -- before some fuzzy time in the 1900s, much of the literature people read were enjoyed by both the high and the low. Shakespeare once drew crowds of everyone from the groundlings to the Queen, and wrote everything from profound monologues about the human condition to sex jokes. Do you think I meant country matters? (That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.) Charles Dickens drew crowds with each chapter, yet remains studied by scholars to this day. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Bible, which (whatever your views on its divine inspiration or literary quality), has inspired intellectual reflection and interpretation by everyone from uneducated slaves to legendary philosophers.
But at some point things changed, poetry became irrelevant, literature became self-referential and obtuse, high fashion became crazy, and anyone uninterested in participating in the intense status competition of the highbrow world retreated to pop culture, because it was the only thing left that didn't have status hierarchies and impenetrable entrance requirements that make reddit gatekeeping look welcoming.
In fact, reddit gatekeeping-like things are important in this conversation: what's happened in our culture, IMO, isn't that everything's gotten so lowbrow because the people became awful, though some element of that is real. What's happened is that the middlebrow, and the on-ramps to highbrow, collapsed. If you want to start on fashion, or literature, or culture of any kind, your choices are now fast fashion/pop culture, or chasing the elusive and always-changing status hierarchies optimized for status signalling and not for human flouirishing. Your options are DeviantArt or photographed urinals; your options are Marvel or French films with no plot. There are no more coffee pots: there are Keurigs or there are artisanal espresso machines. Which way, western man?
(MaiqTheTrue had a good post on a similar topic a while back; people feel like there's no option other than perfection or avoidance, and so avoid being mediocre at things that might give them meaning. The internet and mass media has a lot of blame for this.)
Your point on things like cooking at home, healthy diets, and work attire is well-taken. But critically, these are matters of health and professional culture, not personal eccentricity or hobby. People should cook at home because it's more economically efficient and better tasting, in a sense that could gain ubiquitous agreement. People should eat a healthy diet because obesity and metabolic disease leads to a great many health problems. People should dress professionally at work because it psychologically leads to a higher regard for oneself and one's colleagues, in an environment where personal eccentricity and interest not only is but should be less important.
But I just can't make the mental leap from this to placing a great deal of moral importance on what people do in their garages or basements. Sometimes people just have interests that are obsessive or low-status -- they aren't harmful, they aren't impure, they aren't violating the law or the commandments, they're just doing their silly things at home with their spare cash. I'll agree readily that doing things like taking out a mortgage to follow Taylor Swift on tour is a bad expense, and there are more productive things that people might do with that kind of money. But ultimately, people need their weird hobbies -- even in the old days, rich people did odd things like selectively breed and arbitrarily evaluate various kinds of dogs on standards that have nothing to do with actual canine health or capability. Hobbies are odd sometimes, and that's just how it is. I suppose this is the "just let people enjoy things" argument, but... just let people enjoy things, I guess?
Most of what Freddy seems to care about doesn't strike me as central parts of social permissiveness -- in fact I would argue he focuses on the cultural elements he does because he agrees with the broader sense of permissiveness that's causing problems in society. Scratch the surface of any of his posts, and you see that he's not only not a conservative, he's an all-in progressive, with some areas of strategic disagreement with progressive politics. I would argue that, like many things, this is Mr.-Intellectual-Marxist Freddy DeBoer arguing against things that average people like to signal his great intellectualness and refined taste.
There are absolutely areas where our society has become so obsessed with non-judgment that we've permitted people to fall into deep holes from which we don't know how to rescue them. But I don't know... there's just so many things of moral relevance to critique out in the world, I don't know that pop culture hobbies that are somewhat childish or obsessive would hit my radar even if I did consider them immoral.
But that's enough on that, I have to go finish a LEGO set.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
5mo ago
Alternatively, instead of thinking about elderly women as antisocial turnstile jumpers, you could think about the reasons an elderly woman might want to have first dibs for seats on a bus — like being elderly and frail and needing to sit down.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
5mo ago
We just somehow accidentally ended up with a solution that allows hospitals and the government to heavily imply that there’s capacity in the system for everybody to get whatever they need, and very importantly to not be the people the public is mad at.
Well, we've ended up with a solution via the regulatory state and judicial activism for everyone in elected office except the President to not be the people the public is mad at, so this isn't out of character for Congress at all.
Sometimes the resource allocation decision maker is definitely hospitals or the medical system, like triage and organ donation lists. But the medical system only likes to make decisions like that when it's about scarce medical resources, like livers, lungs, or beds. It hates the idea of making decisions based on scarce monetary resources -- that's not their side of the counter.
I recall during the Obamacare debates, much hay was made over "government death panels," the scary spooky term for making decisions about limited resources using government authority in some cases. My personal view on this has always been that someone has to make these difficult decisions. The medical system doesn't want, and probably shouldn't want, to make monetary decisions for patients. So someone has to do it, and either it's got to be the patient/patient's family (who is rarely a rational economic actor because the most expensive decisions involve literal life or death), or it's got to be the government, or it's got to be some non-governmental organization with fat pockets, usually a corporation.
There's a throughline in American politics where either you end up believing corporations are worse than government, or you believe government is worse than corporations. Everyone instantly knows which political party is associated with which. And for what it's worth, the US's third parties are essentially just more intense versions of the corresponding mainstream party on this measure! (With the Trumpian realignment, we may be creeping towards a point where the parties swap places here.)
I guess if you decide both are bad you end up an anarchist. But I have no idea what you become if you decide both government and corporations aren't that bad. Is this neoliberalism?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
5mo ago
Full agreement. I didn't know that keeping daylight saving time had a constituency -- every time I've heard DST discussed, both in person and online, in the past several years it's always been mildly-to-highly negative. And I don't live in some kind of crazy bubble, actually I'm from a conservative area.
My guess is that this is just the motte's reflexive contrarianism, combined with a high percentage of temperamental conservatives for whom it's an uphill battle to argue for any change. It's safe to say that most opinions you see on the motte are going to be unpopular ones (even mine!): if people had a popular idea to argue for they could do it somewhere else.
I strongly disagree that you were mod-warned over this comment, and I find it bizarre that the very pragmatic reasons for removing DST would ever be described as "ideological". "Let's keep time consistent over the year and not have to change clocks and sleep schedules" is a very down-to-earth and pragmatic change, and I don't see what 'ideology' it could be said to forward.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
5mo ago
US boomers smoked more than European boomers, particularly women
Really? I guess it shouldn't surprise me, but it does. It's startling how quickly the cultural changes happened in the United States, nowadays smoking tobacco is rare and even vaping is uncommon. Although I do notice a much higher rate when I visit the south. The US went from a smoking society to a smoke-free society; I'm old enough to remember when restaurants had smoking sections, but in hindsight I'm astounded they ever did.
I don't have anyone in my extended family who smokes, but I do have several who used to, including my father, grandfather, great grandfather, etc. Getting people to quit smoking is possibly the greatest public health triumph of the late 20th century.
At the margin, Medicare is more likely to pay for advanced cancer treatments or open heart surgery for older patients who a European system would send to palliative care. [As someone who is involved in UK politics, I can confirm that the NHS does discriminate by age making resource allocation decisions, and that a 65-year old is much more likely to get their cancer treated aggressively then an octogenarian]
I get why saying this out loud is bad politics, but this approach is the only sane way to deal with terminal illness. In general, I seriously question the value of non-palliative treatments for advanced or aggressive cancer and I worry we put people through unnecessary suffering to prolong their life for miniscule amounts of time. I've seen too many family members go under the knife and come out butchered, only to suffer for a few more months and die anyway. We place so much value on life extension and so little on life enrichment.
Very good post. There's a lot of detail here and I appreciate the inside baseball.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
5mo ago
Men who orbit women get used as objects of emotional labor, women who orbit men get used as objects of sexual labor. Says something about people, doesn't it?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
5mo ago
It's allegedly no.3 on the list of the most psychopath-overrepresented professions.
Your formatting got messed up there, all of your list items are listed as #1. Which is actually hilarious, you shouldn't change it.
Was "politician" not included, or did it not make the top 10?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
5mo ago
· Edited 5mo ago
Are Christians morally obligated to forgive someone if God has forgiven them?
For one thing, it's hard to know if God has forgiven them when all you've got is a public claim of religious conversion. But the second part is that there's nothing for you to forgive here: the sin was against herself, and against the men she involved in it, and against God, not against you.
But if someone has directly sinned against you and comes to you with deep remorse combined with restorative action, then the number of times you should forgive them is seventy times seven.
Am I supposed to treat her like she's a completely fresh, clean bowl of cheerios? Would it be wrong of me to refuse to marry/date her because of her past?
No, not at all.
Like I said, forgiveness is different from the natural consequences of your actions. If someone along these lines expresses genuine remorse and is part of, say, your local church community, while showing evidence of repentance (which involves actions as well as words), then you should treat them with the respect owed to someone in the community. That means not spreading gossip or being harsh or critical, it means loving them as you love yourself. (Some acts rise to the level of crimes, of course, and that's a different situation: Christian repentance doesn't erase the consequences of sin, like prison sentences.) But this is dependent upon true absolution and penitence, which in ancient Christianity could sometimes involve years of formal ostracization (i.e. temporary excommunication). This is a "be nice until you can coordinate meanness" situation. It's God, through the ordained ministry, that gets to make these decisions, not you or me.
But that doesn't mean you can't make a judgment about their behavior in terms of your temporal choices or choices that entangle you with them, like choosing not to marry them because you believe their particular inclinations might make them a poor spouse. You're under no obligation to marry anyone in particular, and choosing not to date/marry someone is not equivalent to social ostracization (one of my disagreements with trans activists). The natural consequence of poor sexual behavior is poor sexual prospects, and God doesn't remove those unless he has a particular plan for you -- which, of course, he might.
Christians are called to be innocent as doves but wise as serpents, to forgive and have compassion but also to be judicious and not naive.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
5mo ago
· Edited 5mo ago
Do religious people actually genuinely believe that those who willingly perform such stunts are capable of having all their sins washed away?
I'm copying this from other comments because you removed it. I don't think this was in bad faith at all, it's a very good question.
And yes. But the form of Christianity I believe in also holds that, while God forgives all things because of genuine repentance, he doesn't remove the natural consequences of sin, and he doesn't remove the requirement for intense, even painful, spiritual growth and purification after partaking in sin. In this sense, yes, some sins are worse than others, and more sins are worse than fewer sins.
The closest person to Lily in the Christian tradition is probably St. Mary of Egypt, who was a prostitute who often refused payment for her services because she just loved sex, and even went on a pilgrimage to try and bang pilgrims. According to the hagiography, she tried to enter a church and could not, and was struck with remorse, pledging to become an aescetic if God would forgive her. After receiving absolution, she fled into the desert and lived as a hermit.
I don't see it in your comment -- did this woman repent? Did she publicly say that she's ashamed of her actions and she believes God has given her grace to overcome them? Has she been baptized? If not, will she?
If yes, my response to her is the same as to Russell Brand: I trust in God to judge you spiritually, but to earn my temporal respect you must prove your amendment over a long period of time, and that starts with shutting up.
Stop trying to be a celebrity. Don't go on shows to talk about how great your conversion is and how much of a degenerate you were and how much of a good Christian you are now -- just stop. Go into the desert. Become an aescetic. For someone whose sins are so public and attention-seeking, repentance must inevitably involve privacy and humility. And that path may be painful, involving great sacrifice -- it may indeed include religious vows someday. But no one said the Christian life was easy, least of all the man nailed to the cross.
When St. Paul became a Christian, he did not immediately set out to preach to the world, but fled to Arabia for three years. If your goal is truly to make yourself right with God, and not to win the favor of men, you should treasure this opportunity as a pearl of great price. Christianity is not a get-out-of-consequences-free-card, but the Way that leads to life.
But if your goal is merely to resurrect your temporal reputation and not to resurrect your soul, then you will be numbered among the goats and there can be no redemption for you.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
5mo ago
If you find yourself in a room with 11 people who are voting to convict after several days of deliberation, then it's unlikely that they're doing so purely for political reasons. If you haven't turned at least a few members around in that time, then you're probably wrong, and unless you're a total moron, you'll probably come around yourself. In a high-profile case such as this, there is going to be a lot of pressure for a verdict, and the judge isn't going to send everyone home just because you say you're deadlocked; the system is willing to keep you there a lot longer than you think they will.
How democratic!
You can make any choice as a juror, so long as you make the one everyone else is making. And if you don’t make the decision everyone else wants you to, the state will use force to intimidate you into changing your mind.
We might as well just use Nazi ballots, if the whole point of juries is to use social and economic pressure to force people to vote the same way, and using confinement and isolation to overcome conscientious disagreement. These are totalitarian tactics, incompatible with freedom.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
5mo ago
obviously lying about strong political opinions
As someone who has strong political opinions about criminal justice, I have no idea what I’d do if I were picked for jury duty. Either I’m honest about my very strong views and I look like a crazy liar, or I lie about them and perjure myself. It’s a tough break.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
· Edited 6mo ago
When I looked it up, SCOTUS had said presidential pardons must be accepted by the recipient to go into effect, so if any member of his staff believed this was the likely outcome they could choose to roll the dice and reject the pardon. Actually, given that ruling, what if a person pardoned for multiple crimes chose to introduce a pardon into the proceedings for one crime and not another? Could someone 'selectively' accept a pardon?
Further, going along with the irrevocability of pardons we were talking about the other day, I wonder how the court would rule on the idea of withholding, and not rejecting, acceptance of a pardon for an indefinite period of time. Could Biden pardon a large set of people who then withhold acceptance of the pardon into the next administration, only accepting the already-existent and irrevocable pardon if and when it becomes expedient to do so?
A lot of our precedent on pardon powers comes from custom and tradition rather than law, like prosecutors just dropping a case after a pardon is issued rather than fighting to see if the pardon will be accepted. I Am Not A Lawyer, so maybe there's a lot of scholarship on the subject I'm not familiar with. But there's a lot of fascinating questions about how pardons are supposed to interact with the court system.
For instance, it's not at all obvious to me as a layperson why accepting a pardon would or should invalidate someone's right against self-incrimination; as I understand it, accepting a pardon is not an admission of guilt, and a person may have perfectly reasonable opposition to testifying as to their factual guilt. If a pardon doesn't stop a pardoned murderer from being compelled to state under oath and before the whole community that they murdered their housekeeper, or something, well... seems like it's a blessing with a curse.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
· Edited 6mo ago
Let me apologize for the tone of my recent posts on this topic, which were really dumb Twitter-tier reactions and don't reflect either my values or the standards of this place.
the only reason for affordability is due to the taxpayer shouldering the costs
Yes, and I'm saying this is a good thing, and the percentage should be higher. It's a fair point that the public option is unlikely to increase efficiency, but increasing efficiency isn't really the goal for me. I like the idea of a public option because it means giving money to the government that is constrained by the Constitution, the courts, administrative procedure, etc... while giving money to a private insurer, while they absolutely are regulated to death, means giving money to a party whose entire purpose is to take as much of your money as it can legally get away with while giving you as little in return as they can legally get away with. It's the alignment of incentives I find disconcerting, not the level of efficiency.
I don't agree with the "healthcare is a human right" thing, but I do believe that it's right for society as a whole to shoulder the burden to take care of people who are vulnerable, struggling, chronically ill, etc. I put social welfare policies, particularly surrounding healthcare, in the same basket of public goods as roads, bridges, police officers, defense -- it's part of the fundamental social fabric that enables people to live at all, and shouldn't be subject to the whims of the market.
To be clear, my view on the Republican party on this issue is not that conservative voters examined the evidence closely and made a cost-benefit analysis, it's that conservative voters hate the idea of the public option because it's the government doing stuff, and there's an axiomatic belief among Republicans that the public sector is inherently inferior that is just as dogmatic as the belief among Democrats that the private sector is always exploitative.
Despite what my strong feelings on healthcare may suggest, I'm not actually particularly dogmatic on economic issues: except to say that I believe what should be done is the option that empowers ordinary people to live the best and most fulfilling lives as is possible. There are some areas where giving people more choices and the freedom to make decisions in a free market gives them the most power -- but likewise there are other areas where the amount of knowledge and wisdom a person would have to accumulate to make a judicious choice is so ludicrously high that people do need government officials to regulate away bad choices and build a system where people have the legal right to be treated fairly.
If that means trickle-down in one case, fine, if that means government monopoly in another, great, if that means single payer in one context, sure, if that means tax breaks at one point, I'm all for it. I'm apparently being an economic progressive today, so I'll throw some meat to the fiscal conservatives in the audience and say I think most concerns about corporate greed are silly, and price increases usually reflect underlying economic variables. Price fixing in particular is the worst possible solution to any economic problem.
I'm happy to agree with the more libertarian side of the fence that our current system is regulated to death and has the worst aspects of both private and government-run healthcare, but I don't see the solution being deregulation and turning healthcare into a McDonald's menu where people have to price-match and pay for add-ons in times of extreme time-pressure, information asymmetry, and profound emotional and physical stress. If there's any time whatsoever where we can be absolutely sure people aren't Homo economicus, it's when they have to make serious decisions that affect the life, death, and serious suffering of themselves or a loved one.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
· Edited 6mo ago
Honestly, fuck this sentiment and this expression of it. I’d be fine if this one joined your mountain of deleted comments.
Fair enough. I regretted posting it any way, the sentiment was unacceptable. We have profound disagreements as to the problems with the healthcare system, but I should have expressed them more constructively.
Glad to see you acknowledge the utility of deleting regrettable comments, even if just this one time.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
IMO, I believe the most likely reasons women become porn models are being the victim of childhood sexual abuse, or having severe problems with depression, anxiety, and self-esteem, which is satiated by having so much attention by people who think you’re hot that they’re willing to pay you. Both conditions are heavily associated with suicidality.
Typically there’s a period of just promiscuity first, followed by exhibitionism, and then monetization of that exhibitionism. The depressed-pick-me-to-OF-model pathway is well-trod.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
Yes, and I think that aligns with the point @TitaniumButterfly was making.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
That was actually a serious question!
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
Sure, I don't doubt that there are a lot of Jews in powerful positions who agree with the point of view and have pushed it along. But my belief is this is due to their eliteness, not their Jewishness.
And I believe the same thing would be happening if there were no Jews in positions of power whatsoever. I believe elite Jews are mostly indistinguishable from elite gentiles in the west in terms of their worldview; they're mostly atheists with vaguely-to-decidedly progressive beliefs, just with a somewhat more intense radar for antisemitism.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
· Edited 6mo ago
IMO, what changed is anti-colonialism, enabled by increased European weakness after they got themselves into two unnecessary massive wars from which the Americans had to rescue them and into which they dragged, well, the world.
Europe basically destroyed itself, and because it became weak, it was unable to culturally or militarily resist anti-colonial actions. The US pushed that process along by endorsing anti-colonialism.
To maintain relations with the now fracturing empires, upon which they were economically dependent, Europeans were forced to become apologetic and humble. And like the Japanese after WWII, they complied with this necessity.
So then generations of European elites were raised in a milleu of anti-colonial apology, which destroyed any sense among Europeans that they were good, or moral, or valuable, or net-positive in the world, unless they were steadfastly repentant and self-abnegating.
And because American elites have always obsessed with being accepted by Europeans (who look down on them), where European elites go, American elites follow. This has only somewhat reversed with American social leftism being exported to Europe, but Europe was already fertile ground for such things and the critical and postmodern theories that enabled their rise in the academy originated in continental philosophy. People, including themselves, like to see the postmodernists as these great contrarian rebels, but really they were just providing intellectual explanations of the prevailing social winds on the continent the same way medieval theologians were providing intellectual explanations of the teachings of the Church.
I'm of the opinion that Adolf Hitler was the worst thing to happen to Europe since the plague. The death of half the population would have been less terrible than the humiliation they've undergone.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
Seems to me you have allergies. I would book an appointment with an allergist and have them test you. You can get allergy shots which can make a big difference. (And it will help you get over a fear of needles if you have one.)
Have you tried actual decongestants, i.e. pseudoephedrine? When I have sinus congestion it's the only thing that makes a difference.
I understand you're trying the things that have come to mind, but your post is kind of funny to me. "I seem to have allergies. I've tried bloodletting, trepanning, nightshade, and drinking my own urine. I've considered drinking alcohol, but I understand it's dangerous to do it every day. Is there anything else I should try?"
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
The solution is deregulation. Medical treatments that were perfected 40 years ago should be basically free, and administered (if that’s even necessary) by a low wage technician.
Most of medicine is based on prescribing drugs, for which a person needs to understand drug interactions, risk-benefit ratios, and basic biochemistry. And most of the other part is surgery, which requires an experienced hand. You know, like a doctor.
So who's going to pay for the drugs people need? And who's going to pay for the drug development? And who's going to cut your appendix out when you have appendicitis? A "low wage technician"?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
Which are the not-scummy ones?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
If the profit motive is the problem, a public option is a solution, but American voters (especially right-leaning ones) have been pretty emphatic about refusing it.
Yeah, and they're dumbasses for doing that, which is my biggest disagreement with the Republican party. I was a single-issue on this for several years in the 2010s before I realized the Democratic party would never spend political capital on solving the problem -- which they do, largely, because of lobbying by the health insurance companies, for which reason I hate them.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
Yeah. Going mainstream as a part of the platform of people devoted to preserving American power so it can protect Israeli interests.
Which is only a problem if you explicitly believe the replacement and opposition to whites is happening because of Jewish influence, instead of being done by elite progressive white people who hate their co-ethnics.
I suppose hipsters could be said to be middlebrow, but not in a way that is ideal; they established all sorts of arbitrary status hierarchies and positioned themselves as better than others because of their tastes. The point of a real middlebrow is that it's confident in itself, realistic, and for the many people: it needs to be accessible and yet thought-provoking, like an iceburg that invites participation but also offers deeper exploration to those who are interested. My point is that these two elements, once united, have been separated; you either get something designed with "enigmas and puzzles" to keep people lost in a maze, or you get something accessible but shallow. It's hard to blame people for reading all sorts of depth into pop culture, when their alternative is things that are designed to be impenetrable.
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