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.
6mo ago
Well, do these stats break out into Munchausens and Munchausen's by proxy? Because you might have it exactly backwards, and the reason it's so common in these groups is that they're doing it to their children.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
Yes, precisely this. Anyone who doesn’t think there’s already a large cohort of late millennial and gen-Z women with no interest in realistic romantic relationships is either wildly out of touch or willfully blind.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
I nominated you. While I disagreed with some of the intensity of your comment, I felt that you demonstrated the authentic horror and moral feelings of the pro-life movement in a way that is often hidden behind political expediency and tribalism. Pro-choicers often believe pro-lifers aren't authentic in their convictions, and you presented a worldview that shone through as authentic. That's valuable.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
I believe people are most persuasive when they're passionate and authentic. That doesn't mean every nutter shouting in the street is convincing, but there's something about a true believer that compels acknowledgement. The best reasons to believe in something are the reasons why the people who actually believe it, believe it.
Also, and this is just an aside... but is the best line of my comment here really the part where I'm qualifying my point?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
Yep, one of the big reasons I'm so angry about our COVID response is it absolutely slaughtered trust in public health for nothing. They cried wolf, and now if a wolf comes, we will be utterly unable to strike at it.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
I certainly heard a lot of people speculate Fuentes was gay, this would certainly provide evidence for it.
Why is there such a high number of far-right figures who turn out to be homosexual? Is it something about not being interested in women freeing them up to say things wildly outside of the overton window without worrying about, as the kids say, 'scaring the hoes'?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
I believe the Democrats also lost because they didn't have a competitive primary in 2020. Or 2016. Actually, the last time the Democratic party had an actual competitive primary where they truly let the party membership decide who they should nominate, the people went against the Clinton machine and picked Obama, who won in a landslide and then won again, despite intense oppositon.
And when the Republicans last had an open primary, they picked Trump, who won in 2016 in a surprise victory and then won the popular vote in 2024.
Open primaries win elections. Machine politics loses them. 2020 was the singular exception, and it was all due to COVID, an unprecedented social disruption.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
I agree with you. IMO both Biden and Trump are in the bottom 25% of presidents generally, they're dysfunctional people who made it to office because of how awful the rest of our political class has been for the past 20-30 years at responding to real economic and social problems in society. Personally I think our politics are just generally degrading, our whole society is degraded now and thus so are our leaders.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
I could see that it could cause anyone to have additional layers of self loathing and feelings of inadequacy to be told that they come from someone that is deemed as not worthy to participate in society.
He has already been deemed not worthy to participate in society -- that's what the pardon is for!
If the Bidens want to protect their young'uns from emotional harm, Hunter should have made better choices. He should have thought about the impact of his actions on his family. Hell, he impregnated a stripper and then rejected paternity until it was proven; maybe he should have thought of his youngest when his then-youngest's mother was asking him to pay for his daughter's upkeep.
I'm sorry, but I'm entirely unwilling to base my concept of justice on not hurting the feelings of the children of criminals. It's not the job of the state to make sure no children ever feel sad. It's the job of the state to enforce the law.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
In my decades in politics there are perhaps a handful I would say were actual decent people.
Could you share?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
But neither Red nor Blue can be rightly deemed the tribe of individualists, per se.
I would argue that they are both quite individualist, but don't get marked as individualist because invididualism is so baked into American society that it's invisible to Americans. Both Republicans and Democrats discuss their ideas in terms of individual rights ("2A! Religious freedom! Freedom of speech! Right to life! My body, my choice! Constitutional right to an abortion, that SCOTUS took away! Trans people's right to exist! Civil rights!") and while there are grumblings of genuine collectivism in both parties, such views don't have much power.
Collectivism believes that rights come with duties -- and even the French Revolution's great document included disussion of "the rights and duties of man and the citizen." When's the last time American discourse had a real discussion of "the duties of man and the citizen?"
I mean, read some of the stuff even the French Revolutionaries wrote:
The obligations of each person to society consist in defending it, serving it, living in submission to the laws, and respecting those who are the agents of them.
Every citizen owes his services to the fatherland and to the maintenance of liberty, equality, and property whenever the law summons him to defend them.
No one is a virtuous man unless he is unreservedly and religiously an observer of the laws.
And my favorite two:
The one who violates the laws openly declares himself in a state of war with society.
The one who, without transgressing the laws, eludes them by stratagem or ingenuity wounds the interests of all; he makes himself unworthy of their good will and their esteem.
But of course American discourse involves no discussion of such things; they're anathema. Even the farthest of the far right would shudder at saying such things out loud! Even our legal system involves many complex financial instruments designed "by stratagem or ingenuity" to avoid taxation, and a major theory of American legal thought argues that there is nothing immoral about breaching a solemn contract!
Pure libertarians are definitely individualist, but also marginal, because most Americans have some level of collectivist ideals even if they fall well short of the global and historical norm.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
HR having a "Cluster hiring" policy literally gives them a party cadre within a few hiring cycles, and then you're fucked.
Wow... you weren't kidding. I looked up the term "cluster hiring" and was greeted by this helpful description (in an academic context):
Cluster hiring, a recruitment practice known to increase diversity and promote interdisciplinary collaboration, is becoming increasingly popular among colleges and universities looking to diversify faculty and advance research related to social justice.
That's almost, but not quite, the most on-the-nose self-aware description of the long march through the institutions I've ever seen. I also enjoyed the one HR blog that described it as "an approach that aims to aggressively onboard diverse candidates", which sounds rather, um, unnecessarily violent. (Perhaps it's just a microaggression.)
The most self-aware description of the long march I've ever seen was from a book by a progressive theologian, described in an academic article I read like this:
"I do think the church is well placed to bring about some significant change in the world. And change in the world is desperately needed." The church’s "new mission" will be to “develop spiritual awareness in individuals and communities around the world”. Because the church – at least in North America – is so widely distributed throughout the community it is well placed to effect widespread consciousnessraising about such issues as AIDS, Global Warming, equitable access to technology etc. "The church has ground level access to millions of people. And millions of aware, reflective, conscious people is exactly what this world needs."
(Students of history may be reminded of suicide-cult-leader Jim Jones, who -- before drinking the Kool-aid -- attempted to convince the people of Indiana to "put real socialism into practice" through the guise of Methodism and then Pentecostalism. Sometimes a wolf comes as a wolf.)
I do appreciate all the evidence we're gathering on how progressives are wearing all our institutions as a skinsuit, but one wishes they might try to be more subtle.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
I am fascinated by this genre of "horror" (loosely described) having such a hold on women.
Heck, I'm surprised horror-qua-horror has such a hold on women! All the people I know who are into horror movies are women. Not to mention True Crime!
It seems like women are either really not into horror, or they're really, really really into horror.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
In general, both the Republicans and Democrats are centrist parties. And more ideologically-driven members of both parties are, IMO, correct when they say that "RINOs" or "neoliberals" are weaksauce versions of their ideologies.
Trump talks a big game about deportation and immigration, but will accomplish very little. No mass deportations will occur during a Trump presidency any more than under a Harris presidency. Trump also talks about repatriating trade, but will only implement tarriffs that will increase prices without increasing US manufacturing. Republicans also talk a lot about how great of a pro-life success Dobbs was, but as far as I can tell, handing control over abortion policy back to the states has resulted in a more pro-choice regulatory landscape than under the status quo. And there's a lot of discussion of "law and order," but the streets are unsafe even in red states, and forget about riding public transit.
Likewise, Democrats talked a big game about defunding the police, and while there were definitely areas where budgets were slashed, no actual "defunding" or "abolishing" took place. They've also talked about healthcare reform for a long time, but since 2010 have accomplished approximately nothing. Redistribution of wealth in any appreciable sense has never happened, and entitlements continue to be soaked up by boomers with fat wallets while the poor and disabled are still means-tested to the bone. Significant movement on workers' protections hasn't happened; instead delusional baristas are setting up labor unions, because when I think of exploitation of labor, I think of not putting up rainbow flags. And not, you know, what's going on in Amazon warehouses.
But while the serious economic and philosophical problems of the US continue to fester, we keep getting distracted by irrelevant culture war issues like weird sex and gender identity things and whether or not Trump is literally Hitler. It's good to know we're focusing on the important things!
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
because neither of them can offer anything which actually helps people deal with the problems they're facing in their daily lives
I think I agree with you, but I'd like to hear you elaborate: if we could snap our fingers and generate political capital for things that would help pepole deal with the problems they're facing in their daily lives, what would those things be?
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
I'm sure there have been some converts, but I don't doubt that there have been enough progressive young tech workers joining the field to more than balance them.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
· Edited 6mo ago
We should encourage understanding; that is, a rational understanding of the physical and social causes that make people think as they think and do as they do. But such understanding is distinct from empathy and compassion as emotional affects.
Compassion isn't a social affect: it's an act of the will.
When I suggested to you that compassion is better than understanding, my point was not that you need to get all teary-eyed and emotional about everyone's problems, though I won't knock that. My point is that it's far greater and more important to earnestly will and desire the best for everyone. That doesn't mean being emotional about it, and it certainly doesn't mean affirming the desires of every single person, especially when they go against their best interests. It can often mean telling people to their face that the path they're on ends up in disaster and they need to stop, now. "Admonishing the sinner" is considered a work of mercy very much for that reason.
But it certainly means caring about what happens to people, even if only abstractly. It means seeing the bad places and needless suffering that people end up in, and earnestly wishing that it were not so. It even includes taking steps to prevent bad outcomes, if only in a very small way.
Understanding can help, insofar as it can help you see where people have ended up with the needs that they have. But it's more important simply to wish for the best, even if you don't fully understand what that looks like, even if the only thing you can muster is the earnest desire that all should end well.
If I understand @dovetailing and @SubstantialFrivolity correctly when they talk about empathy and compassion, I think this is what they're saying. The antonym isn't emotional impassivity, but malice. Dovetailing is arguing that what people often feel towards trans people is malice: "the cruelty is the point."
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
· Edited 6mo ago
I've seen the point made that this could also be due simply to Islamists being more than willing to kill for insults to their faith, like the Charlie Hebdo incident. Christians, especially today, have a more "turn the other cheek" attitude, and aren't so willing even to criticize blasphemy, much less to kill for it.
If true, that's rather scary: it suggests that the only way to ensure tolerance of a belief system is to be uncompromising and violent in defense of it, because any weakness will be exploited even by people who consider themselves paragons of 'tolerance.'
I realize that sounds like a "Just Asking Questions" moment where I'm suggesting the opposite to justify something terrible, but I have a genuine fear that this is true and would consider it horrifying if it were. I would much rather we all get along, and I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
all the aspiring PMCs move as close to the blue enclave as they can manage
This is as much about economic opportunity as it is about cultural sorting.
In our country, we have red counties and blue cities. So someone with the talent, interest, and capability to do the sorts of high-skill jobs you need to do to get ahead in this day and age often end up having to move to a blue enclave, whether they like it or not.
There are certainly some strivers who pursue trades, or other skilled professions with more geographical flexibility. But in general, the money follows population, and the population is clustered around blue areas.
The brain drain is real. But describing it in terms of a desire to become Democratic simply doesn’t explain the cause by itself. People are just trying to provide the best livelihood they can to themselves and their families, and to do that they have to follow the money = population = density = Democratic correlation.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
Mastodon is also used by people who believe you can create technological solutions to social problems, and people who believe "decentralization" means "has the ability to cultivate an echo chamber of exact proportions." With a helping of "why would anyone ever want to delete a post from the internet?"
I suppose if Mastodon had come into existence in the 90s, it would have been used by libertarians a la crypto. But of course we had decentralized social media in the 90s, they were just called IMs and message boards.
The internet is the real decentralized social media, we don't need fancy algorithms or federation protocols: we have the protocols at home, and they're called the Internet Protocol, the Transmission Control Protocol, and the Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
I still don't understand why such an absurdly-overengineered technological solution has been adopted by such censorious people. The ethos of software engineers has changed so much in the last 20 years.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
· Edited 6mo ago
I wanted to reply to this but forgot about it, but this did get really personal and I know I also found it frustrating, and actually kind of laughable in that sense. Like you give a shit whether a married stranger on the internet thinks you're marriageable.
I'm with you, man. But I think this interchange illuminated one of the big lessons I've learned from being on the motte: the worst enemy of men who struggle romantically isn't progressives, but traditionalists.
Progressives will tell you you're lonely by making up all sorts of just-world reasons why you're a bad person, but traditionalists will come right out and say they think you're unworthy of being married because you're a weak, cowardly man. What you've learned from this interchange is that it's not just the men who think that in trad communities, but the women too. And even hydroacetylene has gone on record that the trad approach to dating doesn't actually work very well.
I'm certainly a pretty conservative believer, but what I've learned from the motte is that I absolutely, under no circumstances, want to be a trad Catholic. Or at least a trad Catholic disagreeable enough to post on a politics board. They are fanatically bad apologists for their understanding of the Christian approach to gender roles and even for their understanding of the Gospel.
Whatever they think they're doing, our local trads are doing the very opposite of evangelism. Someday they will have to make an account for their behavior before the throne of the Lord. And I hope the judgment will not be too heavy upon any of us, distracted from prayer and charity by useless arguments and the sound of clanging gongs.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
I didn't post the meme originally, but several people had just expressed they didn't understand it and I was just trying to be helpful.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
· Edited 6mo ago
The people making this meme don’t think he’s “slightly less hawkish.”
That was an injection of my own thoughts, I can see how it could be confusing. I was simply trying to gesture at Trump's differences of opinion on foreign policy from the mainstream.
Also, I don’t think anyone says he’s “literally in bed with dictators.”
Sigh. Here we go again.
On national security, he’ll sell out Ukraine and get in bed with dictators, most prominently Russian President Vladimir Putin. A liaison with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán isn't out of the question either.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-military-generals-hitler/680327/
The Republican nominee’s preoccupation with dictators, and his disdain for the American military, is deepening.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/14/opinions/trump-dictators-putin-xi-erdogan-ben-ghiat/index.html
Trump continually praises dictators and who he is trying to reach with this kind of talk. Some of it is no doubt Trump airing his fantasies of the kind of authority he could exert as president. He praises Hitler, Chinese leader Xi, Russian President Putin and others because of their absolute power, not in spite of it. He repeats these leaders’ cult of personality propaganda in presenting them as so strong and feared that it is useless to resist them.
From the Kamala Harris compaign:
https://www.facebook.com/KamalaHarris/videos/harris-vs-trump-harris-walz-2024/1092590845847573/
Donald Trump admires dictators—and he wants to be one on day one if given the chance.
Also, from the first Trump administration, who could forget SNL making a joke about Putin fucking Trump:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/snls-homophobic-trump-putin-jokes-need-to-stop/
"Honey, why you still up?” Bennett’s Putin says, emerging from a hotel room door bare-chested with a randy, horny smirk. He seductively pats the small of Baldwin’s Trump’s back. “Come back to bed, babe!"
Maybe "admires dictators" is different, but at least one of those pieces expliclitly said "in bed with dictators," and the implication was all over the past year of the campaign -- let alone the first Trump presidency.
Perhaps I made some mistakes in my presentation, but I was simply trying to provide my best understanding of the meme in terms that people who disagree with it might be able to understand. I would not have posted, particularly in the friday fun thread, if I thought I were going to create a debate over all this. It's a silly polandball meme.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
6mo ago
· Edited 6mo ago
I didn't use the word "compassion" in the posts I wrote about vaccines, and that's not what I was asking for anyway. I was asking for understanding - an understanding of the conditions and values that cause people to do what they do and think what they think - but that's different from compassion.
Fair enough. Yet compassion is the more excellent way.
But I don't think that evolutionary fitness is tied in any direct sense to your ultimate moral worth.
Let us review what you wrote:
Humanity will not go extinct; but if it does, it'll be because it deserved to
And to the extent that this "conflict" does have a basis in reality and isn't purely virtual, it's largely a good thing anyway, as its primary effect is to prevent evolutionarily unfit individuals (largely male) from reproducing
Those are judgments based upon moral worth.
I’d also add that you were quite literally saying “it’s not happening, and it’s a good thing.”
You’ve attempted to retreat to the Bailey, by saying you were only descriptively stating “nature’s judgment” as “an objective fact”, but the motte is right there for all to see. You were clearly describing these things in terms of what is good and deserved. “It deserves to” is a moral claim of moral desert.
As it so happens, saying “you are defective, and it is good and desirable that fewer people like you exist in the future” is sneering, and is a moral judgment. If you think it is not so, I find your perspective quite perplexing indeed.
He claims to be a Catholic Integralist. If you're going to say that people should be held by the state to religious standards of behavior, you damn well better be sure you're following them yourself.
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