ZanarkandAbesFan
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User ID: 2935
ZanarkandAbesFan
2d ago
It's not a question of a separate underclass. At the same socio-economic level, native Brits get the book thrown at them for stuff that's tolerated when done by Muslims. Hence our PM's nickname "Two Tier Keir".
ZanarkandAbesFan
3d ago
Except that America is freakishly good at assimilating people and most of the migrants are from groups that aren't that different and also regard American white identity as aspirational.
Doesn't the second part of this sentence undermine the first? It's easy to be good at assimilating people when the people are already co-operative. The recent Somali fraud scandal seems to illustrate that when America tries to assimilate the type of immigrants that European countries get, they get European outcomes.
ZanarkandAbesFan
3d ago
Is it? Looks like authoritarian multiculturalism with none of the redeeming qualities Singapore has.
I think it's even worse than that, because authoritarian multiculturalism suggests to me some uniformity of enforcement. I think what we're seeing emerge in the UK is a unique form of caste system, where the favoured groups (Muslims and third-world migrants) aren't subject to the usual laws yet still perform overwhelmingly negatively in most outcomes due to their extreme dysfunction.
ZanarkandAbesFan
3d ago
The UK is careening toward authoritarianism, but it's hard to predict what flavor it will take, or whether it will quickly disintegrate into a failed state.
I think the flavour is already clear: anarchy-tyranny, where certain demographics (i.e. Muslims) are essentially above the law, while everyone else is subject to ever increasing repression.
There's plenty of non-anti-semitic anti-Israel people that exist, but this place is kinda warped.
I think third-worldism is the animating factor among those people (to be clear, I'm talking about politically engaged people, not normies).
ZanarkandAbesFan
5d ago
After several years of being a part of this website my position is that >90% of Israel-critical takes are straightforwardly motivated by antisemitism. Those that don't make direct references to Jews being evil and conniving etc. are almost universally either bad faith ("Israel is evil because they can't guarantee zero civilian deaths among their enemies"), quite obviously false ("The Muslim world would love America if not for Israel") or complete non-sequiturs ("Jews should never have been there to begin with!")
There are a number of issues on which I have different positions from most users on this site where I still feel I could fairly reasonably steelman the alternative point of view. The general attitude towards Israel here isn't one of them. I know it's trite to equate criticism of Israel (or "Anti-Zionism", which I think is a dumb concept in this day and age but I digress) with hatred of Jews, and on the left I think it's probably more due to general Third-Worldism than anything else, but on the Motte it's really the only explanation that makes any sense to me.
ZanarkandAbesFan
6d ago
It sometimes amazes me that there's anyone who actually pushes back on the redpill observation about "Hypergamy."
I accept the basic idea that women are on average more selective with their sexual partners than men, but what push back on are the more extreme versions of this argument that tend to claim things like most women are cynical status/money/height-maxxing machines who'll only grudgingly accept settling for a non-chad once they're nearly 40 (and who'll they'll cheat on with an authentic chad whenever they get the chance). I've just met too many ordinary, average people in what appear to be genuinely happy relationships to be able to entertain this model of the world.
ZanarkandAbesFan
10d ago
Guy Gavriel Kay's Children of Earth and Sky. I'm about 80% through and while well written it honestly hasn't really grabbed me.
As a general note, it kind of makes me sad to see how strange the thinking patterns had become, I think maybe because to incessant electoral campaigning. Everybody should have an ultimate plan to solve everything, forever, perfectly, or it's even not worth talking about.
I'm skeptical of how many people actually think like this. I think it's often just a convenient criticism to level against the other side when someone wants to avoid the social consequences of being forthright about the actual objection. Since it's still mostly frowned upon to openly say "I'm angry about the war in Iran because I hate Trump/America/Israel/Jews", it's much easier to make the objection that actually, it's just because an unrealistic standard of forward planning wasn't met.
I'm sure this doesn't apply universally; there are probably people out there who genuinely are favourable to this sort of ME intervention in principle but simply don't agree with how the current one is playing out. But certainly on the Motte and among the MSM I've noticed that that the people saying "there's no plan!" are mostly the same people who anti-Israel generally.
ZanarkandAbesFan
11d ago
I've been replaying Bloodborne. I've noticed that some elements of its gameplay feel a bit less tight compared to more modern games like Lies of P, but it's still an absolute masterpieces.
ZanarkandAbesFan
14d ago
The easy low effort swipe is to make it easier to qualify as a doctor, but doing so without lowering medical standards and/or quality of care seems more difficult. There's also the simple calculus where people are less willing to take on, in the US, large amounts of student debt and to commit to the many years of study it takes to become a qualified doctor. After which you can look forward to high stress, long hours, dealing with patients, and potential lawsuits. It's no surprise that people would rather hustle sneakers or crypto or streaming when the effort to do so is significantly less.
Assuming we're talking about the US, why not make medicine an undergraduate degree, like it is in the rest of the world?
ZanarkandAbesFan
15d ago
"Having to show ID/proof of citizenship to vote" is one of those things that even when I was quite left-wing I didn't think was at all unreasonable.
ZanarkandAbesFan
19d ago
Propaganda and wishful thinking?
That being said, it's probably difficult for even a competent military to deal with the USAF+IAF when they don't have their own air force.
ZanarkandAbesFan
20d ago
There's a lot wrong with this post, but to keep things focussed:
Israeli leadership wants this conflict to have the moral logic of a war for survival rather than a policing action; they simultaneously want to deny the sovereignty of Palestine and deny any responsibility for Palestinian welfare.
Gaza has had complete sovereignty since the mid 2000s. So I don't see any contradiction in Israel treating the conflict as a war.
ZanarkandAbesFan
24d ago
They proceeded to burn all that good will and more with their conduct afterwards
I think this sentiment gives the lie to the idea that there was much goodwill among people on the left and center to begin with (which is the group that dominates traditional media). The messaging from these people basically seems to have been "Yes 10/7 was a terrible thing, but Israel shouldn't actually have done anything about it". The whole MSM/NGO machine was primed from the outset to hyper-focus on every negative outcome the war had on Gazans and portray them as a particular consequence of Israel's uniquely evil conduct, conveniently forgetting that war always negatively affects civilians, particularly those whose leaders try to maximise their own suffering for PR purposes (using human shields, firing from hospitals, stealing aid etc.)
ZanarkandAbesFan
25d ago
I don't have much to comment, except that I hope you and your loved ones stay okay.
ZanarkandAbesFan
29d ago
It strikes me that with each Israeli-USA attack on Iran, it becomes more obvious to any Iranian that a nuclear weapon might be a useful thing to have. The bombings might set back the physical process, but they increase the motivation.
This sort of thing is obvious only to people who accept axiomatically that Israel needs to be destroyed, and that this concern overrides literally everything else. If Iran wants to not be bombed, they could simply give up on this goal, with quite literally no downsides.
ZanarkandAbesFan
30d ago
However the Iranian tactic of "launch ballistic missiles at all our neighbors" might mean the US will end up using fewer interceptors than it otherwise would have.
It's a bold strategy, Cotton, that's for sure.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
More to the point, it really makes you think that the whole problem of the last twenty years was leaders who were aware of U.S. dominance but had other goals in mind, probably including enrichment of cronies, that depended on the U.S. sandbagging hard. And arguably this is just the U.S. being let off the leash. We haven't even removed the leg weights yet.
It's interesting. I don't have the exact tweets to hand but I've seen a fair few that go along the lines of "If it's this easy, what have we been doing the last several decades"?
I'm sure this has already occurred to you, but it's worth pointing out the difference between expressing greater sympathy for the Palestinians i.e. thinking they're probably having a worse time of it, and actively "supporting" them (to use functor's terminology) in their goal to eliminate every Jew in the ME.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
That's fair enough. Do we have a sense of Iran's likely missile capabilities? My sense was that Israel destroyed/absorbed a huge chunk of this during the Summer, and given that the Iranians don't seem to have managed to fire off much that's hit anything of strategic importance over the last 24 hours, I assume they haven't managed to replenish their stocks. Or has the US been spending its interceptors already?
How much in the way of resources does the US realistically stand to lose here? I'm definitely not a military expert, but it looks like the Iranians seem to have little ability to attack anything of significant military value. They've set a hotel in Dubai on fire and killed one Israeli AFAIK. And I don't particularly buy the Iranian line that they're holding back, but next time they'll really retaliate.
I also disagree on the reputational front. Striking when the protests were at their peak would of course have been ideal, but carrying out a strike now after having moved so many military assets into the region and having made so many threats seem strictly better for the US' reputation at this point than not doing anything at all and demonstrating that none of the threats or posturing had any credibility from the start. I also do think that demonstrating that the US isn't afraid to eliminate the leaders of actively hostile states does affect the behaviour of these leaders even if it by itself doesn't revolutionise the state in question.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
In related news, not everything is lost. Here is how Iran can still win. When all human wit and wisdom failed, listen to the cat girls. What can go wrong?
Watching third worldists' minds melt is always a surreal experience. Thanks for the lols.
ZanarkandAbesFan
1mo ago
I don't really see what the failure case is here. Trump's unlikely to send in ground troops, so the most probably worst case outcome from the US' POV is that a heavily degraded IRGC maintains control of the country. That's not any worse for the US than the status quo.
Well, knowing group average IQ scores might prime someone to be favourable to Jews.
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