Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
3d ago
Here's the thing though. I'm fine with human civilization ending. I don't see anything inherently good about human civilization continuing. And I don't see anything inherently good about human civilization ending. I'm neutral about it.
There's a saying about this..."so open-minded his brain fell out."
I enjoy being alive, but I see no fundamental deep importance in keeping the human species existing. I'm not a nihilist in the least bit. I love being alive in a very visceral way.
Okay, so you're a solipsist, not a nihilist [edit: fixing a brain-fart]. This is not an improvement.
Supah_Schmendrick
4d ago
Most humanities programs are, to put it bluntly, huffing their own farts. There is little grounding in fact, little contact with the real world of gears, machinery, or meat. I call this the Reality Anchor. A field has a strong Reality Anchor if its propositions can be tested against something external and unforgiving. An engineer builds a bridge: either it stands up to traffic and weather, or it does not. A programmer writes code: either it compiles and executes the desired function, or it throws an error. A surgeon performs a procedure, the patient’s outcome provides a grim but objective metric. Reality is the ultimate, non-negotiable peer reviewer.
What about a descriptive discipline like history? What's the reality anchor for that?
Supah_Schmendrick
7d ago
Where were they for the four years of nonstop gaslighting and censorship we endured?
One theory is that they might have some sort of relationship with the Bidens. I don't know if there's any true merit to the idea, am not endorsing it, and haven't seen more than idle speculation on this, so caveat emptor. But basic googling does reveal that Kevin Morris, who called himself one of Hunter Biden's "closest friends" and who loaned/gave Hunter Biden at several million dollars to tide him through his tax and legal issues, also has a long-standing relationship with Parker & Stone.
Very much YMMV, but frankly pulling punches for personal reasons makes as much sense to me as the idea that somehow the same guys who did "the snuke" suddenly converted to the resistance.
Supah_Schmendrick
7d ago
I swear, if it wasn't for my late-Victorian educated granny teaching me how to do long division the old-fashioned way, I'd never have learned the way it was taught in school.
same here, only it was my "learned calculus with a slide-rule" engineer dad who got so fed up with what the school system was trying to pull he just sat me down and long-handed it out with me.
Supah_Schmendrick
9d ago
I've thought a lot about this issue for the last ten years, as many have, and it's hard to escape the feeling that public consent has been laundered by keeping the spotlight firmly on rare, sympathetic cases while the intent of campaigners has always been significantly more far-reaching.
This...seems like a fully generalizable description of basically all political activism in WEIRD democracies??
To me the regulated-militia bit implies a strong skepticism of loose cannons and even an outright endorsement of some loose degree of government (perhaps suitably local) control.
There has been linguistic drift; at the time of the founding, the word "regulated" meant "functioning," and in the concept of a militia - which the founders generally intended to be the primary American military force to the exclusion of standing armies - meant well-equipped, trained, and disciplined. [Edit: the militia was supposed to supply their own weapons, or draw from privately-stocked and -maintained armories. Hence why ensuring that the militia would be well-armed would require the private ownership and carrying of military arms]
As far as I'm concerned the 2nd Amendment, properly understood, requires every citizen to own, maintain, and drill with M4s and other military weapons, a la Switzerland. However, practically the champions of militia vs. a permanent, professional military establishment lost for good after WWII.
Supah_Schmendrick
10d ago
That's still the person, not the gun itself, and a 98th+ percentile asshole-quotient person at that. Might as well ask "is there so much difference between a pet tiger that could maul you and a drunk, sleep-deprived rice-rocket driver coming back from a sideshow?"
Supah_Schmendrick
10d ago
Come on, be charitable. It's not a perfect analogy. The point I'm trying to make is that it's a dangerous thing to be carrying around in public. It does require volition, but volition may be influenced by rage, or alcohol, or psychosis, or mental illness, or one bad day.
But that's a significant difference! You've moved the goalposts from "that's something that can kill if you don't concentrate on it sufficiently" (untrue, but would strongly favor your position a la "ultrahazardous activities") to the true argument of "but people are sometimes idiots, impaired, or negligent" which is a major shift with significant consequences!
Supah_Schmendrick
10d ago
This was quite different back then than it would be now. If you live your entire life in one neighbourhood and there are a dozen other ethnicities living there, soon enough everyone will adopt a common tongue.
Except that's not true. New York had significant yiddish, italian, bulgarian, lithuanian, greek, etc. communities, where those languages were spoken alongside, or even to the exclusion of, english in the early 20th century. Chicago had polish, ukranian, etc. Los Angeles today has several areas where spanish is predominant, as well as several suburbs that are at least duolingual with many/most advertisements in mandarin, vietnamese, etc. Up until WWI huge swathes of the midwest spoke german, usually as a second language, but in some areas to the exclusion of english.
Immigrant ghettoization is extremely common, and tends to preserve language use.
It's interesting how open carry has changed in the US in the past 30 years. I grew up in a place with many guns and where open carry was legal, but only the most trashy of rednecks would open carry, and they were derided by other gun owners. "Whatsamatter, you think the Russians are going to invade today?"
Comparing modern to founding-era and 19th century gun discourse is also fascinating; back then there were laws against concealed carry because that was viewed as covert, sneaky, and dishonorable. What do you have to hide and who are you trying to surprise? Whereas open carry was considered completely normal. Nowadays it's the sight of a gun that freaks people out, so concealed carry is much more popular; allow the gun person their hobby without scaring everyone.
Supah_Schmendrick
10d ago
a leashed tiger, or a running chainsaw.
This is a wild comparison; the gun is inert and has no volition of its own. Nor is it always in a state of active danger like the running chainsaw. Firing a gun is not something that is done by failing to pay sufficient attention to the gun - it requires volition and active intent across several particular bodily motions to draw, aim, turn off a safety, and fire a gun, just like it would to grab someone by the head and try to break their neck, or try to stab someone with a knife or pen, etc.
Supah_Schmendrick
10d ago
Shady dealers, private market sales, straw purchasing, theft, etc. These are all much easier to prevent in a society with few guns and strict controls then a society with guns everywhere.
Is this actually true? I fully accept that prohibition lowers the general public's ability to access the prohibited substance (e.g., alcohol prohibition actually lowered drinking significantly and permanently changed U.S. drinking culture), but is there any evidence that it significantly impacts illicit dealing in the prohibited/regulated substance?
Supah_Schmendrick
10d ago
In the Roman republic and empire, it was for example build around collective military aid: polities on the Italian peninsula which were subjugated by Rome and fought side by side with the legions were eventually granted citizenship.
This is a deep and incorrect elision of the same process - the denigrating and hollowing of republican citizenship into imperial subjection - that I am arguing is happening here, today. The socii did not participate in the roman centuriate assembly or plebeian councils, did not serve in roman offices or have any say in roman foreign policy, despite making up at times at clear majorities of roman armed manpower; in fact, the original premise of their becoming socii was that rome would not interfere in their cities' internal affairs at all, in exchange for a territorial guarantee and military mutual aid. In practice, this confederal relationship broke down and Rome did indeed start meddling in the internal affairs of the socii, and the legal distinctions between the various cities began to chafe as rome grew prosperous off war proceeds while the socii were left having to deal with trade barriers that blocked their ability to share in those rewards. By the time of the principate and empire, roman "citizenship" was a very different, much diluted thing.
French foreign legion, RPG, Israel
Of your other examples, it's telling that two are entirely inapposite - one isn't a country but instead a quasi-penal military unit, another is entirely fictional - and the third literally has a religious requirement for naturalization (at least of the type you're discussing). Far closer to my point than yours.
Of course, if America has an ideology, it is the ideology of the American dream.
The term "American dream" is itself an artifact of the modern progressive era, with basically no resonance at all before that (with the exception of a tiny little bump in the years immediately surrounding the founding).
Supah_Schmendrick
11d ago
Er?
when the melting pot itself melts and Jeffersonian democracy wears away to nothing, there's a fight over how to replace it. And like most fights, there's swings back and forth until a new consensus emerges.
Like I said...there's a fight. And whoever wins, wins. That's not a tremendously happy answer, but I think it's fairly descriptively accurate, no?
Supah_Schmendrick
11d ago
how do we address the issue I mentioned of idealogy changing constantly?
This is the price we pay for being a propositional nation; the proposition changes as the populace does...when the melting pot itself melts and Jeffersonian democracy wears away to nothing, there's a fight over how to replace it. And like most fights, there's swings back and forth until a new consensus emerges.
Supah_Schmendrick
11d ago
This idea has been played with. Personally, I liked the resulting comic series, but YMMV.
Supah_Schmendrick
11d ago
Why say he was never on Epstein's plane when we know he was on Epstein's plane?
Because people lie when you accuse them of something that makes them look bad. It's practically a universal response.
Supah_Schmendrick
11d ago
This is true for American citizens, but the fact that we're even considering applying it to non-citizens shows just how much the concept of "citizenship" has decayed. It also, incidentally, shows how little anyone actually means it when they say America is a "creedal" or "propositional" nation. If citizenship is not a matter of ethnic belonging (i.e. an intersection of familial and cultural ties), it must then be ideological, which necessarily means exercising discretion and control over the ideologies of people allowed in or, at the minimum, allowed the rights and duties of citizenship.
As I've quoted before, GK Chesterton wrote about how this used to work in America, before our imperial phase:
The Spanish Inquisition may have been admittedly Inquisitorial; but the Spanish Inquisition could not be merely Spanish. Such a Spaniard, even when he was narrower than his own creed, had to be broader than his own empire. He might burn a philosopher because he was heterodox; but he must accept a barbarian because he was orthodox. And we see, even in modern times, that the same Church which is blamed for making sages heretics is also blamed for making savages priests. Now, in a much vaguer and more evolutionary fashion, there is something of the same idea at the back of the great American experiment; the experiment of a democracy of diverse races which has been compared to a melting-pot. But even that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was trace on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless. America invites all men to become citizens; but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship. Only, so far as its primary ideal is concerned, its exclusiveness is religious because it is not racial. The missionary can condemn a cannibal, precisely because he cannot condemn a Sandwich Islander. And in something of the same spirit the American may exclude a polygamist, precisely because he cannot exclude a Turk.
"What I saw in America" 1912, pgs. 8-9 (boldface added for emphasis).
Supah_Schmendrick
12d ago
I have some friends in this category. They’re miserable.
Same, all the moreso because if and when they do manage to find someone who ostensibly wants a strait-laced monogamous relationship, the dominant gay culture is constantly shoving extra-relationship sex into their faces, leading to rampant cheating and drama and relationship blow-ups/divorce.
Supah_Schmendrick
13d ago
If your goal is the support of civilization - and particularly european-derived civilization - and the flourishing of european-descended individuals, that may not be the best example to cite.
Supah_Schmendrick
13d ago
Israel is a liberal & open democracy.
Ehhhhhhhh...it's definitely both of those things when compared to its regional neighbors, but in any sort of absolute ranking it has all sorts of problems; a crazy runaway judiciary, excessive military entanglement in politics, endemic public corruption, etc.
And yet lots of people keep covering such things up and not freaking out and leaking them out of moral outrage.
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
The rich and powerful are expected to get away with some crimes. Sex trafficking children is not on that list.
Err, the west covers for sex trafficking kids all the time, and you don't need to be rich and powerful to get away with it (though it helps). Popular entertainers get away with it. Politicians cover massive-scale abuse - far beyond what Epstein is accused of - up and journalists look the other way to avoid having their foreign policies outed as idiotic, avoid having to be on the same side as icky migration restrictionists, or to avoid being called racist.
Supah_Schmendrick
19d ago
How are a bunch of dudes in pickup trucks and paragliders ever, EVER going to credibly threaten one of the most sophisticated armies on planet earth?
You say this like we didn't just have the Afghan war, with the US military fighting dudes in pickup trucks and with AKs and jerry-rigged IEDs.
Also, Israel is tiny It's literally about 9 miles wide from the border to the sea at one point, and it's only 20 miles from Tel Aviv to the border. How many people with AKs running around Boston would it take for the whole city to freak out and panic?
Not dying. Maintaining the level of success, arete, and prosperity that has already been obtained. These are not only good insofar as we get more of them - they are good in and of themselves, and forgetting and taking for granted the successes of the past is one of the chief flaws of modernist thinking.
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