sulla
4d ago
He simply stood in a spot. That's is not the same as shooting a jaywalker or even remotely comparable. That is just a dishonest comparison.
sulla
4d ago
But, the key (and obvious) point is that people who graffiti "kill ICE" on college campuses will pretend that it's obvious that the agent woke up today with the intent to kill, and refuse to see any other point of view.
sulla
4d ago
It is literally a policy officer's jobs to escalate in order to enforce the law. That is what it means to have a monopoly on violence.
Well, fleeing shouldn't be a death sentence. But attempting to strike an officer with your car can be. (agent, officer, whatever). Sure, her intent was to flee, and striking the officer was simply a side effect to which she was completely indifferent. In Minnesota, if the officer died, it would have been considered depraved-heart murder, the second degree felony of which Derek Chauvin was convicted.
As for the officer, what happened? While he was getting his gun out, the car accelerated, he panicked, tried to get out of the way, was clipped by the car, and awkwardly shot his assailant through the driver-side window. There was less than a second between the assailant stepping on the gas and the shot being fired. Why did he shoot through the window? The car unexpected turned away, which is why he didn't become a pancake.
I don't think shooting was "the right move," in that by the time the shot was actually fired the danger had already passed. But that's a skill issue - the decision to shoot initially was 100% justified, as is backed by countless cases.
A leftist attempted to end the officer's life, or at least acted in a way that was completely indifferent to it, and because of that she died. Now most other leftists are trying to end his life a different way. We're not going to stand for it this time, or Monday Morning QB in ultra-slow motion the actions an officer took when a leftist protester was trying to murder him.
While we cannot see inside someone's brain from a video, the explanation above is perfectly rational, consistent with the evidence, and clearly the most likely explanation (compared the delulu fantasy that the officer for no reason decided he wanted to kill someone). Many will pretend not to understand, or pretend that it is implausible, hence making discourse impossible. I am not going to argue with them. Instead, we are simply going to call on the Trump administration and red states to protect this officer from Minnesota's deranged courts. We will not let people who openly brag about wanting to kill ICE agents lie about what happened today. This time, we are holding the line.
sulla
8d ago
A lot of people think that moves like bombing Fordow were unpopular because the "evil jews" liked it. But the truth is most people vaguely know Iran=Bad and that destroying their nuclear facilities at minimal cost is badass. Same here. Their worldview is we took out a communist dictator and made it look easy, like the Avengers or taking out an evil supervillain or something.
You are correct: the foreign policy moves of Bush, Obama, and Biden were unpopular because they were failed, drawn out, and extremely costly. Trump's moves have been dramatic, successful, and low cost.
sulla
8d ago
Total aura shift for Trump. He was a lame duck, dead in the water. The Fuentes doomers were winning. Trump had failed. He hadn't met his campaign promises, and his approval rating was in the gutter. But then, in an decisive display of competence and leadership, he ousted a dictator and took over a country that had been a thorn in the US's side for decades. And he did it at almost no cost.
His speech was fascinating and a dramatic shift from anything we have heard in the past 80 years. No "muh democracy." He talked about Venezuela's crumbling infrastructure and the inability of their government (deliberate or not) to stop the drugs. Their mortal sin was not dictatorship, it was incompetence and the negative impact their incompetence was having on the United States. He openly acknowledges that the oil will benefit the US, and says this is a good thing. And it resonates.
Trump wanted a big legacy-defining move, like buying Greenland, and this time he got it. Under his leadership, the United States took over Venezuela in a matter or hours at minimal cost. The outcome is truly astonishing. And he might not be done. He alluded that "something needs to be done" about the Mexican cartels. Destroying them would be a true legacy-maker. We'll see how it all works out in the long-term, and whether it becomes of a legacy of greatness or failure.
I predict we'll see a boost in Trump's approval ratings. The average person knows nothing about Venezuela except that it was bad and a problem. And now they see that Trump appears to have fixed it overnight.
sulla
23d ago
I respect the elimitivist “consciousness isn’t real” position much more than the hybrid “consciousness is real but it is a property of computation” position, which is popular but nonsensical.
I have accepted more or less the gnostic position. Most people aren’t capable of knowing the “divine spark.” But for me personally, it is directly observable at any time and is such that its cannot be explained by properties defined by modern physics. It is directly revealed. Many others have access to the same experience, but it is incomprehensible to those who do not.
There is no point in arguing. It is either self-evident, or you are not capable of knowing. Persuasion is futile in either case. I believe eliminitivists feel more compelled to debate because they do not wish to feel inferior. But it is really not up for debate.
sulla
25d ago
I agree but “A Jewish professor was murdered” is not sufficient to conclude anything. To make schizo conspiracy theories you at least need some details to work with.
sulla
26d ago
I do think the Brown PD may be withholding info that could be used to help narrow down the suspect list out of misguided anti-Islamophobia, but I know people in the area and it is flooded with police and FBI. I really don’t believe they are just twiddling their thumbs and putting on a show.
We’ll see. Plenty of killers weren’t caught overnight. It’s not so new.
sulla
26d ago
Everyone is out over their skis on the Jewish professor. You shared no evidence that it was a political murder, and not personal or a robbery of some sort, and I haven’t seen any elsewhere yet. Happy to be proven wrong, but let’s hold ourselves to higher standards here.
sulla
27d ago
Both my comment and your comment aged poorly, in that 1) the person of interest was released, and 2) one of the victims was a prominent campus conservative, and there are reasons to believe that she was the target. Culture war juice still available.
I find it kind of disappointing how reliable this board has gotten for discussing culture war events. This guy appears to be a woke gender equity guy, he was a former soldier, he attacked the class of a Jewish professor who taught about Judaism and US/Israeli relations… There are many CW angles here.
We talked for so many years about the culture war turning into real violence. Now it’s happening and we want to talk about education? It’s a fair angle but it shouldn’t be the only thing being discussed here.
Edit: And here’s the real juice: one of the victims was prominent campus conservative Ella Cook, and some believe she was the target. If leftwing extremists have truly graduated from assassinating not just Trump or famous right wing voices like Charlie Kirk, but to beautiful young not-famous white women with the “wrong” views, this would be a quite significant development and escalation.
sulla
1mo ago
The Nick Fuentes interview with Piers Morgan was a good demonstration of how boomers do not understand Gen Z rhetorical tactics at all. One example is the “agree-and-amplify” strategy.
This strategy came from The Red Pill/PUA community. The idea is that girls will try to throw you off your game by making some unfounded criticism, to test how secure/powerful you are as a man. It’s called a “shit test.”
The “agree-and-amplify” strategy says the best approach is to do exact that. Example: Girl says “Wow that’s a big truck, are compensating for something?”
Loser response (no getting laid): “No, my penis is slightly above average! I just like trucks!”
Agree-and-amplify: “Hahah yeah, micropene. 1 inch. It’ll have you screaming tho.”
The latter projects confidence, she knows your joking of if she believes you, you can neg her about it. She made it sexual and gave you an opening. Etc. All in good fun.
Fuentes did the same thing repeatedly, and Morgan just does not grasp it at all.
For example, paraphrasing:
Morgan: “Are you racist?”
Loser response: No, I have friends who are black! I just think [crime statistics]!
Morgan: Sounds like you’re racist.
Game, set, march. Better is the Fuentes agree-and-amplify:
Fuentes : “Haha yeah. I don’t want any black people around”
Morgan: [clutches pearls]
Fuentes: I have black friends though. They are also concerned about [crime statistics]
Morgan: But you said you were racist!
It makes it feel like Morgan is not in on the joke. It denies his moral frame that any hint of racism = bad. He needs to come up with a more concrete argument. When he instead tries fails to re-establish the frame through repetition, it doesn’t land.
I was reminded in a way of the classic Charlie Kirk owning libs on campus. The key is that the libs did not really come into the bait understanding Kirk’s beliefs or tactics, but Kirk understood theirs inside and out. This let Kirk win easily every time.
Morgan is a wiley veteran and won some parts of the interview. But overall he did not know how to handle Nick’s tactics at all.
In the end, it is turning into a debacle for Piers Morgan. As the dust settles, he comes across as the evil defender of a decrepit regime going after some dude’s dad. He was forced to pretend to not understand basic statistics, causing him to appear either stupid or malicious, depending on your gullibility. In many ways, he was the perfect heel employing dirty tactics to get an edge.
And to make matters worse, his decision to focus on the Catholic Nick’s virginity has backfired horribly, with everyone learning about his wife cheating on him with everyone from internet randos to the literal pool boy. How true are these accusations? I honestly don’t know, but they are already cemented into the hivemind’s collective beliefs.
I could really never stand the rambling nature of Nick’s show and never watched more than five minutes, but I agree with most of what he said on Tucker and Piers. On my scorecard, total groyper victory. Curious if others agree.
sulla
1mo ago
I mean, agreed you have to stupid or mentally ill to do something like this since there is no upside, but maybe use cash and turn off your cell phone, bro? License plate alone wouldn’t be enough to build a case.
sulla
2mo ago
Since you seem so keen on raising the alarm on the rise of Nazism, how about you actually define what are the core ideas and values of Nazism, that way we can actually pit all these supposed Nazis against these values to determine if they actually are Nazis or not?
Most commonly they will choose a set of characteristics that describes the modern group they don’t like, but that fails to uniquely describe historical Nazis, or fails to describe the consensus “bad parts” or historical Nazis and instead focuses on the contested parts (Hitler liked dogs, Nazis were pro-family, etc.)
sulla
2mo ago
The root of it is the recognition on the “young right” of WWII as the founding myth of the modern regime, combined with opposition to said regime. The myth is that Hitler, out of sheer hatred, decided to kill all Jews, and on an unrelated notes, to conquer Europe/the world. The US and the allies, of course, saved the day, and we all learned an important lesson about why right wing politics are evil.
The myth is false and the reality is a bit more complicated, and does not really support the weight of the founding myth upon deep interrogation. So young right wingers rebel against the lies by pretending to be nazis. They embrace the villain in order to deny the myth its power.
In my opinion, it’s not really possible for non-Germanic US citizens in 2025 to be “Nazis.” It’s like if a faction of ethnically Chinese citizens identified as Zionists. It makes absolutely no sense because the ideology is tied to a specific people at a specific time. Even hating Jews doesn’t make you a Nazi. Lots of factions have hated Jews throughout history and most of them have little else in common with Nazis. I also believe in some degree of revisionism, and that we learned many of the wrong lessons from the war.
However, I also think the explicit anti-semitism is quite self-defeating. They take a reasonable premise, that the US spends too much on Israel and hypocritically accepts it as an ethnostate (arguably true), and stretch it to an unreasonable extreme - that almost every conservative politician is thoroughly compromised by the jews and are therefore evil/untrustworthy (schizo). Or that Jews are overrepresented in media (true), therefore media exists to push a Jewish agenda (schizo).
There is a bit too much tolerance for the schizo prediction in some of these groups. The problem is not that it will lead to a second Holocaust, so much as it makes us look insane and unsympathetic. At the same time, the general breakdown of Hitler-as-myth is likely immensely helpful to the modern right-wing cause, and jokes or ironic embrace of Hitler do serve this purpose effectively at times. But it is a delicate line between schizo and funny.
sulla
3mo ago
In all seriousness, I have no idea how you'd teach a man more interested in beards and shoulders to love tits and ass instead.
Men are very imprintable sexually, you just need to make then orgasm to the “correct” images, thoughts, and experiences enough times, in addition to removing whatever sexual hangups they have towards women.
With this in mind, it’s pretty obvious why Christian conversion therapy doesn’t work.
sulla
3mo ago
This is not innately a bad way of doing politics. If you have a minority that cares A LOT about something that most people are indifferent towards, it’s actually good for the minority to win, because it helps them more than it hurts the majority. Of course this can be exploited.
sulla
6mo ago
I’m not overweight, but I have an average appetite and need to put effort into not overeating. I would describe it like this:
You have a strong itch. If you are on autopilot, your body will scratch it.With willpower, you might stop yourself from scratching it in the short term. But it doesn’t go away. It’s there every second of every hour of every day, and it is impossible to ignore, constantly demanding your attention.
You might not scratch it for a day. You might not scratch for a month, or even a year. But the thought of never scratching it for the rest of your life makes you want to cry. It feels cruel or unfair. But you know absolute discipline is required or scratching it will quickly become habit again.
But wait! It gets worse. You routinely attend social events where you are expected to scratch it. Everyone around you encourages you to return to your scratching ways.
The itch is unbearable. You decide to introduce “cheat days” where you are allowed to scratch the itch, while giving your body a week to recover. But it only makes it worse. It’s a weekly reminder of the relief that you ate denying yourself.
Eventually, you give in and allow yourself to scratch the itch. Your skin may be ruined but at least you are not subjected to the 24/7 torture if having a powerful itch that you can’t scratch.
Dieting is not scratching. Ozempic removes the itch (for many, at least).
sulla
6mo ago
I don't particularly want that end result, but I find it hard to argue against murderous force on principle. The arguments supporting it seem obviously correct; the protests against it seem sincere, well-meaning, and completely wrong.
Well the Zizians also found it hard to argue against murderous force on principle, and instead ran a nice empirical experiment for us. It turns out it’s a bad idea.
sulla
6mo ago
Well sometimes in traffic the left lane moves slower than the other lanes, even when there is no jam and the cars are just tightly packed.
Okay. I agree not all escalations are justified. I think the escalation of standing in a spot so that the suspect cannot simply leave is justified.
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