SSCReader
6d ago
By my observation, the anti-LGBT crowd generally don’t desire to go on the offensive, they just want to be left alone.
Then you probably don't live in the right areas of the country. People still disown their gay kids. There are a lot of very socially conservative spaces in America, they are just not visible online mostly.
SSCReader
6d ago
I’m not entirely convinced that anyone can know the internal experience of any group that you are not a member of.
Forget groups, I’m not entirely convinced that anyone can know the internal experience of anyone else.
We just had a whole discussion about how one man thought no men would be willingly be kicked in the balls to have a child. And was immediately corrected several times over by multiple other men. So clearly even for men, for a fairly universal experience of being kicked in the balls our individual internal experiences vary massively.
SSCReader
9d ago
Sure, that could be a cause. But the claim was that Blue mental health is worse than Red mental health because you hear about it more. That they might have different causes that vary over time isn't relevant to whether that is true or not. If Red mental health problems currently seem to manifest in different ways and thus are not as visible and thus not being counted as mental health issues at the rates at which they occur, that would be separate from what is causing them.
Why there are mental health issues is irrelevant as to whether we are measuring them accurately and if they appear at the same rates in the same ways in these different populations at any point in time. Conditions of course vary over time in both populations. If we were in 1975 then we'd also want to be seeing if those urban drug overdoses were hiding mental health issues, if we were doing the same comparison back then.
SSCReader
9d ago
I heard legends of people doing stuff like playing bloody knuckles or sack tap, but never have known anyone personally who did that.
We used to play a variant of conkers, where when your conker got broken you had to let your opponent take a swing at your knuckles, that used to hurt like hell.
SSCReader
9d ago
Different balls, different pain I guess. I mean don't get me wrong, it hurts, but it's not on some other level of pain than other types for me at least.
SSCReader
9d ago
Right? It's normal for every day to be an MMA cage fight against a little monkey.
Certainly with my boys it was. Though they were more into wrestling and elbows off the top rope AKA bunk bed. Ohhhh yeaaah! I certainly got a few black eyes and knees/kicks, to the groin over the years, sometimes while trying to catch them while they leapt off something high, without considering the consequences.
SSCReader
9d ago
Not cjet but this is from Albion's Seed. A book analyzing American culture through the lens of British groupings. Cavaliers would be ex-gentry and influence plantation culture, Scotch-Irish borderers, working class rural types, then the more known Quakers and Puritans were the main 4 I believe.
The idea was that many of America's current sub-cultures can be traced back to the groups they descended from. (Southern gentlemen, Appalachian rural folks, and so on and so forth).
SSCReader
9d ago
Speaking for myself: Getting shredded from thighs to feet by trying to jump a barbed wire fence (and failing). Being glassed in a bar fight. Intestinal cramps from ulcerative colitis which literally made me vomit and pass out from literal pain for the only time in my life. Getting a healthy tooth removed by an old school dentist back in the day, while just on laughing gas. Migraines when I was younger, used to take me out completely for a few hours.
A kick in the balls hurts, but it's mostly over in a few minutes, unless you are very unlucky and rupture something I suppose.
SSCReader
9d ago
Uhh, I would. Getting kicked in the balls is painful but it's not that bad. If that's what it took to have kids, I'd certainly at least have my current 3.
I got kicked and kneed in the balls playing rugby and football, why wouldn't I do it for something much more important?
SSCReader
9d ago
Except men commit suicide more often and are more likely to be conservative. All that counting the number of people who say they have or are in treatment for mental health issues, can tell you is the number of known people, people who seek treatment or talk about it.
Men more often keep it in until they snap. Working class men specifically (who went about 63% for Trump) make up the majority of fatal drug overdoses, alcohol related deaths and suicides it appears. Self-medicating, coping and keeping it inside until you can't is the male strategy basically.
Blues have worse visible mental health is perhaps all we have the data to say. But I think there are enough signs that say that a lot of Red men particularly suffer what Blues would call mental health issues, they just don't talk about it and suffer through it in silence, until they drink/drug themselves to death slowly or kill themselves directly.
The truth may well be that Blue women particularly talk about it too much, and Red men particularly, don't talk about it enough. Which is going to confound any easy way to compare rates of mental health issues.
SSCReader
12d ago
Depends on the exit poll. You can find 56% (Guardian), 52% or 49% depending on where you look. I took the high end because if that doesn't count as droves then neither does any lesser number. You could split it and say it is roughly 52% plus or minus 3 maybe.
Really we'd have to define the terms of what does greater problems and droves mean before any of the numbers can tell us anything. For me "droves" would have to be over 60% at least and consistently getting under 50% would be greater problems attracting X. But that's really just squinting at it and going off vibes. One could make reasonable arguments for very different numbers I am sure.
SSCReader
12d ago
I would say it's fair to say they are still having trouble attracting young people overall. Even Bush at his best with the post 2001 bump couldn't break 50%, (I think Reagan was the last conservative to do so in 1984). It's also fair to say they aren't having trouble attracting young men specifically and that Trump appears to have reversed that trend somewhat.
I suppose it depends what you mean as "trouble attracting". Not being able to get a majority of a group for 50 years, maybe qualifies? I'd suggest the claim Democrats are having trouble attracting men is true for similar reasons. They haven't got 50% of men (though Obama in 2008 got close), since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
SSCReader
12d ago
Isn't this completely false? Last I've seen they had trouble attracting young women, with young men flocking to the in droves.
Trump got about 56% of men under 30, while Harris got about 59% of women under 30 (55% Harris to 42% Trump overall for 18-29, because more women vote than men). But the young men were most concerned about the economy, so it's hard to tell how many are going to the right vs how many were just voting against the current party because the economy sucked. Presumably some of those 56% will shift back if the economy sucks again in 2028, but we can at least say that they are willing to vote for Trump/the right, even if some of them weren't specifically flocking to the banner. Trump was up from 36% in 2020 to 42% of 18-29 in 2024, so there was certainly a swing.
However as I pointed out previously Bush got between 45% to 49% of the 18-29 vote when he won in 2000 and 2004, so Trump hasn't got back to where conservatives were a couple of decades ago. How that vote shakes out in 2028 is probably going to determine if we can see a long term swing rather than a single election cycle swing.
SSCReader
19d ago
Indeed which is why I said assumed here, and then later pointed out that their prefences may be entirely different as well.
Still you have to do both sides of the equation if you hope to make proper comparisons.
SSCReader
19d ago
Sure there are other dynamics, but you have to measure both sides the same in the first placebefore you can the measure the dynamic differences.
SSCReader
19d ago
Assuming your definitions are accurate for the moment, Have you done the same in reverse? How many men in your pool meet the 9 basic criteria women would put on them?
For example if we assume women also have non obese in their preferences that filters out close to 30% of those men in one fell swoop, just like it did for women.
The pool for 9/9 women is 9/9 men. A man who only meets 2/9 criteria is going to be paired with similar women. The pool of 9/9 women is irrelevant to him and vice versa (in general).
On your modal outcome where 10 men are pursuing every 9/9 woman, well if 9 of them are not 9/9 men then most of your problem goes away. Their reach exceeds their grasp. They really do need to lower their standards to meet their own achievements. If all 10 are 9/9 men then yes you have a problem.
This is a pairwise function, not an independent one. You can't evaluate only one half of it.
You need to build the same estimate for number of single young men who meet the 9 basic criteria women have, then compare those two estimates. Of course for women their criteria may be different. For example if women prefer a man with some experience then their bodycount criteria may be 5-10 not less than 5.
Or to put it another way its irrelevant logically how many men in total are pursuing marriageable women. It matters how many marriageable men are pursuing marriageable women in this context. Non-marriageables have to be filtered out on both sides for the comparison you want to do. They are in their own pool together.
SSCReader
21d ago
Well, i am from Northern Ireland and its not quite that simple. We're not Scottish Protestants any more, we've been there for hundreds of years. Half my family is of Scottish descent, but the other half is from Ulster even before the Plantation happened.
I'm both Irish snd Scottish by ancestry. And thats very common, after all the Plantation of Ulster happened in the 1600's. Thats longer than the United States has even existed as a country. Plenty of time for inter marriage between settlers and natives who converted to Protestantism to create entirely separate ethnic family trees. Its why its Ulster Scots, not just Scots.
SSCReader
22d ago
The UK of the 1980s was quite modern and interconnected. In another time, the Troubles could have been more traditional uprising instead of very long terrorist campaign.
Well it was already the remnant of a traditional uprising. The partition of Ireland and the Anglo-Irish Treaty was a solution to the Irish War of Independence. It's extremely unlikely the Troubles could have become a more traditional uprising because most of the people who cared were placated enough by the freeing of the Republic (nee Irish Free State) and the peace deal ratified by both Irish and British governments.
The Provos always struggled to recruit enough people to do anything more than they did. The Troubles was essentially the very long death rattle of the Irish War of Independence (and the Irish Civil War between those who supported the Anglo-Irish treaty and those who did not within the new state). It was the end state of a traditional uprising, not the beginning.
SSCReader
22d ago
Except.... Romney got 37% (lost to Obama), McCain got 32% (lost to Obama) so it starts to look true, but Bush got about 45% (beat Kerry) in 2004 and 47% (beat Gore) in 2000. Clinton got 55% to Doles 35% in 1996, so back to being true and Bush Senior got 34% (lost to Clinton) in 1992 but 53% (beat Dukakis) in 1988.
Partially it's just whoever wins will in general do better with most groups than times when their side loses (because that's how you win!). If you compare to times when Republicans win Trump at 43% in 2024 is a touch below Bush in 2000 and 2004 and less than Bush Senior in 1988.
If you look at 1984 to 1996 it looks like youth support for Republicans is in free fall from 59% (Reagan win) to 53% (Bush Senior win) down to 34% and 35% (losses to Clinton) but they jump right back to 47% and 45% the next two elections (Bush wins). Then drop back down into the 30's (losses to Obama) and then pop right back up for Trump in 2024. It looks mainly to be an artefact of who is winning/losing in general.
I wouldn't pay too much attention or be surprised when youth vote percentages are high when you win and low when you lose. It's just a subset of winning/losing. In the last 50 years Republicans have been as high as 53% (or even 59% if we go back to Reagan in 84!) and as low as 32% for McCain. Trump is still well within those norms I think. Actually his win in 2016 is maybe the odd one out. He won with just 36% of that youth vote. Which in most years would correspond with an overall loss (and he did lose the popular vote of course, not that it is relevant much). 36% again in 2020 with a loss, which is about on trend. Then up to 43% in 2024 with a win.
If anything it is the opposite, if you compare like with like. Trump at 43% and 36% with wins compared to Bush at 45% and 47%, Bush Senior at 53% with a win and Reagan at 59% and 44% with wins. On his loss he is on par with Romney, a touch ahead of McCain and Dole and Bush Senior on their losses.
Or if we average (a very blunt tool!) Trump has 38% across 3 elections which is just ahead of Romney (37%), ahead of McCain (32%), behind Bush's average of 46%, above Dole's 35%, below Bush Senior's average of 43% and below Reagans average of 51%. So pretty much middle of the pack.
So I think we can say Trump did NOT get a significantly higher percentage than most Republicans get. He did do better in 2024 than Romney and McCain when they lost, but that's kind of to be expected! And he didn't do as well as Bush or Bush Senior when they won.
SSCReader
22d ago
Yup and 45% of women overall, up from 42% in 2020 and 41% in 2016. The differences are often over-estimated I think. It's only a few percent across the board.
Nope: Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 51% supported Harris while 47% supported Trump. Gen Z men did go 55% for Trump though. Women went 58% for Harris. That is closer than it was in 2020 however but still not a majority for Trump in Gen Z, let alone overwhelming.
Though I don't think that would suggest they are indoctrinated into wokeness either to be fair. A basically 50/50 split wouldn't support that (or at least that things like the economy can override whatever woke feelings there are).
Edit - It actually seems to be closer to 54% for Harris and 43% for Trump depending on which exit polls you aggregate. Which doesn't change the argument much.
SSCReader
30d ago
I'm a neo-liberal capitalist with a twist actually. And it was very nice of you with the gas station worker, bit that illustrates my point. You built a relationship with her over time then she could ask you for a favor.
You can't speedrun the relationship.
Danish Miss Teen America (?) takes your order sure. Try asking a French waiter a stupid question though. Norms are different in different places at different time for different people. You have to learn to navigate the ones in front of you. Not the ones you wish there were.
SSCReader
30d ago
It generally corresponds with scale and culture, and is much more the case in
Absolutely it can I agree. But even in a small tea shop in the Cotswolds if you go in, and ask them how the labor relations are between management and staff, after saying you don't want to buy anything, I'm not sure you'll get much of an answer.
SSCReader
30d ago
inhumanity of the fact that two 'normal' people can't talk anymore about current events because of...all the stuff you just said
Setting aside whether she might get fired, it is entirely human not to want to talk to random strangers about things at your job. Being a neighbor is just geographical proximity. Even is she lived next door she may not want to talk to you about anything and that is very human. Especially if she can detect the disdain in which you hold her.
If you want her to act as you think a neighbor should then you need to make an effort to not judge her like:
"almost comically short and fat, like a cube. Her hair was greasy, thin, obviously unwashed, and would've benefited from a cut some months ago. She was curt, bordering on rude, asking what I wanted. When I told her I wasn't necessarily interested in ordering anything, but was very much interested in her thoughts on the 'strike' et al she gave me a stare that made a cow look intelligent."
Is this how you describe the people you want to form a neighborly community with? Is this how you talk about them? Never once in your vent did you speculate that your neighbor maybe overworked and underpaid, that she might be working multiple jobs, that she might have a point in what she did, that perhaps she picked up on your immediate reaction to seeing her. You described her entirely in a negative fashion. You called her a soulless NPC.
Why should she act like a neighbor to you? Did you act like a neighbor to her? You didn't even buy a coffee at the place she works, you went out of entirely selfish reasons and on the very first time you met her, asked her a badly thought through question. You didn't start with small talk about the weather or any of the other socially acceptable ways we have of building rapport.
If you want to have a neighborly community, then you need to start treating people like your friendly neighbors. Not treating them like sources of information to satisfy your curiosity, going into their place of business with no intention of buying anything. You admitted below you should have at least bought something, so that is a start. You skipped over a whole bunch of steps in the making friendly neighbors dance, and then are confused when she doesn't treat you like one.
When a guy moves in next door, he is not automatically your friendly neighbor you can ask possibly difficult questions to, because of geography, you have to build that relationship before you ask "Hey, your employer is having a labor dispute, what is the real skinny on that real quick?" You invite him over for a bbq, you ask if you can help him move in, you lend him your lawnmower, tell him where the best bar is. We have social conventions and rules and structures for a reason. They are crucial in building relationships.
So make up your mind, was she a soulless dumb fat cow? Or was she a neighbor you want to build a real communal relationship with? If she read what you said about her, do you think it is likely to make her want to treat you more like a friendly neighbor or less likely?
No. Shame is a useful social tool, but it is not a precisely controlled spigot. Invariably some people will judge more harshly an activity that is judged to be problematic than you had planned.
Hate the sin, not the sinner, is a nice idea but we can see from history how it works out. Some number of people will hate the sin and the sinner and will act upon it in ways you do not like. We've seen it in Christianity and we've seen it with cancel culture.
That doesn't mean shame should not be used. Just be aware it is not a precise instrument. Some people who do the the shamed activity or are the shamed type, will likely suffer harm.
If you think x is bad then be prepared that some looney at some stage will murder a hooker or something and justify it through the same rationale you used to shame it. You may consider yourself slightly responsible. You may be right. As long as that is the cost you are willing to confront head on of your ideology then thats all you can really do. Social norms have to be enforced. Shame is a powerful tool in service to that objective. As with every tool evaluate the cost/benefit trade off before you use it.
More options
Context Copy link