MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
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User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3hr ago
Pentecostals have rock-concert services at which they seek to demonstrate a set number of 'signs of faith' listed in the bible. 'Speaking in tongues' is the most popular of these. Snake handling is a popular way to make fun of them, but is a fringe movement therein. Politically conservative, they might have women clergy, and moral theology varies a fair bit. They take the bible 100% literally and hold a variety of post-biblical supernatural beliefs, but usually less firmly than Catholics.
How black is Pentecostalism in the US? In London most of the Pentecostal churches are ethnic churches for some African or Caribbean country.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4hr ago
And you just refuted the transactivist point of view by making an obviously correct argument about the meaning of words.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4hr ago
The trans-inclusive definition of "woman" is self-evidently incoherent. But pointing that out is an argument about the meaning of words, not about what Caitlyn Jenner is.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17hr ago
MTF transsexuals are either women, or they aren't.
This seems like the worst possible example - “Are transwomen women?” seems to be a question where 90% or the disagreement about the meaning of the word “woman” and only 10% about ground truth.
If you exclude people who believe in intrinsically gendered souls (for whom the question, “Can female souls be incarnated in male bodies?” is meaningful even if the correct answer is unknowable with mortal technology) I don’t think you would get any disagreement on questions like “Does Caitlin Jenner have testicles?” or “Does Caitlin Jenner have a considered, sincere belief that she is supposed to be a woman?”
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
Yep - the proximate cause of the firing is the affiliate revolt. The question is then whether the affiliate revolt is driven by spontaneous outrage among affiliates (notably, the Sinclair family are conservative and still own a lot of shares in Sinclair), FCC pressure on the affiliates (who are the directly FCC-licensed entities), or a desire by Nexstar to pre-emptively suck up to the administration to get the Tegna merger approved. "All of the above" is the way to bet.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
My experience is that most of the real "left-wing kid from religious conservative home" stories involve a kid who is non-gender-conforming in some way (in my generation, mostly gay guys and tomboyish girls).
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
3d ago
· Edited 3d ago
Trump lies like your uncle telling fish stories.
This is a much better metaphor than "Trump lies like a used car salesman." Used car salesmen do not, in fact, lie "like used car salesmen" (although some private used car sellers do).
The main reason why "is Trump a liar" is a scissor is that Trump tells fish tales in contexts where nobody else does, and his supporters don't see it as a problem. The cleanest example is the Letitia James commercial fraud litigation - Trump's people said in a mortgage application (where lying is a crime) that his personal real estate portfolio was THIS BIG, private bankers who are used to working with Trump and wanted to humour him pretended to believe them, Letitia James prosecuted the Trump organisation for lying on a mortgage application, the judge treated the lies as real lies intended to deceive (because that is what the law says, and what would be going on if anyone other than Donald Trump lied in a commercial mortgage application), and Trump's supporters were outraged that their guy could be punished for telling what was obviously a fish tale.
You can tell a similar story about golf cheating, economic statistics, Sharpiegate, pet-eating Haitians, and even the results of the 2020 election.
A yuge part of Trump's political success is that his reputation for fish tales creates a right wing version of "clown nose on, clown nose off" where he can make a false statement, act on it (or get other people to act on it), and then if it turns out not to be believable claim it was a fish tale all along. This creates as least as much outrage in his political opponents as OG "clown nose on, clown nose off" by MSM pseudo-comedians does in their political opponents.
In real-world angling, if you tell the neighbours that you caught a fifteen-pounder and invite them all round to dinner to eat it you are not allowed to serve up a tiddler and laugh at them for believing fish tales.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
Do you think that a mommy-mentality or "egalitarian therapy culture" would have been more effective in terms of pure politics?
I think that anything, including shutting up, would have been more effective in terms of pure politics than the woke turn - which didn't even help shore up minority support for the Democrats. My go-to joke on this point is that the Trump was such a weak candidate that the Democrats could have beaten him with an empty suit in 2016 or 2024, and did beat him with an empty suit in 2020. Why did a woman with access to Bill Clinton's political sense, machine, and advisors (and essentially unlimited cash) run a campaign which underperformed an empty suit? I think the main problem is the incredible unpopularity of the woke frame.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
4d ago
Who hasn't been told "you have to take your brother as well"?
If its occasional, yes. But making a kid his brother's keeper, and particularly making big brother responsible for little brother's fuckups, is considered abusive parenting ("parentification" is the technical term), not nurturing parenting. The ideal Mummy State makes the badly-behaved retarded kid its problem, not the healthy siblings' problem.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
Though Atta was 33 and engaged to be married. Leaders have different demographics to foot soldiers, and thank God that the forces driving American domestic political violence don't appeal to potential leaders.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
To me, the most interesting point is how Lakoff's programme interacted the change in what the left-wing project was about between then and now.
In 2011, centre-left politicians thought they were in politics to deliver rising material standards of living for the bottom 99%. The activist base had started to shift to social issues (the tipping point was the failure of Occupy in late 2011) but the establishment wouldn't for a few more years. The frame that Lakoff was telling the Democrats to adopt was to fully lean into their role as the Mummy Party. (It isn't in the excerpt above, but Lakoff explicitly said was that the correct frame was that the nation was a family and the State was a "nurturant parent"). Of the six points, 2 is "accept support from successful businessmen who offer it", 4, and 5 are "git gud" and 1, 3, and 6 are "always talk like Mummy, talking like Daddy only benefits the Daddy party".
What actually happened is that the broader left-wing ecosystem of which the Democratic Party is part did embrace the spirit of points 1 and 3. They did organise around a single morality, optimise their communication to reinforce the frame of that morality, try to change the world through brain-changing morality etc. But the morality they adopted wasn't egalitarian therapy culture with the State as mother, it was woke culture with the State as HR lady. By 2020, centre-left politicians thought they were in politics to raise the relative social status of historically oppressed groups at the expense of white males.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
It really isn't. The Troubles involved organised groups committing violent acts as part of more or less intelligent strategic plans. Apart from the Islamists, modern political violence exists on a continuum from lone wolf to lone nut, with the motive ranging in seriousness from "I hate this guy for the usual tribal reasons, so I decided to kill him" to "Tim Walz told me to do it in a dream, so obviously I had no choice"
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
After getting the guy, the next job of the cops is to determine if he was part of a conspiracy. That is going to involve going over his online and IRL networks with a fine-tooth comb, and a lot of the results of that investigation are going to hit the public record.
I expect we will learn a lot more over the coming weeks. Sometimes we learn enough that the only thing left to argue about is a line-drawing exercise about just how sane you need to be to count (as with Paul Depape or Ryan Routh). Sometimes we learn that there are no answers (as with Thomas Crooks) or what we learn raises more questions than it answers (as, most famously, with Lee Harvey Oswald). But there will be more information coming out.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
In a world where
- Both factions care only about winning and not about the fate of the country
- A faction can in fact adopt a free-speech-for-me-but-not-for-thee policy and stick to it
then obviously the winning move is to suppress your opponents speech. But this proves too much - obviously the winning move is to go full Sulla, execute your opponents, steal their stuff, keep half of it and use the other half to reward your supporters, and use the temporary lack of opposition to amend the Constitution to permanently install your preferred policies. This doesn't happen because all factions in real-world politics rely to varying degrees on the support of normies who care more about the fate of the country than about their preferred faction winning.
The more serious issue about "is speech suppression tactically wise" is that empirically movements which don't support free speech can't stick to a free-speech-for-me-but-not-for-thee policy, and end up suppressing their own internal debate as much as they suppress the enemy. Whether it's the Nazi Night of the Long Knives, the various Communist purges, McCarthy turning on right-aligned institutions like the army, woke cancel culture purging far more lefties (whether for heresy or just mis-speaking) than righties, political movements which start suppressing speech mostly end up turning speech suppression from a weapon against the outgroup to a weapon for resolving intra-group personal beefs. And then you have a culture of fear which gums up your own internal decision-making processes and you end up doing something self-destructively stupid like Arische Physik, Lysenkoism, or defunding the police.
Liberalism didn't just win in the debating club, it also won at Hiroshima. There might be a reason for this, and I think resistance to self-destructive purges is a big part of it.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
5d ago
I am a liberal - it is a way of showing goodwill to the local majority. But I'm happy to stop doing it.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
6d ago
There are right-wing conspiracy theories about paedophiles and left-wing conspiracy theories about paedophiles. Depape was radicalised by Qanon, which is a right-wing conspiracy theory about paedophiles, as Ms Linker correctly stated.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
6d ago
· Edited 6d ago
But the attacker (David Depape), was, if he was even capable of holding any sort of political position at all, not even remotely right wing, at least not in any way that any right winger would identify as a bedfellow.
He was a Blue Triber who was radicalised by right-wing content online (but had no involvement with the GOP or any organised right-wing group) and went on to attack a left-wing politician. I think that counts as right-wing political violence, although not a particularly worrying kind, and definitely not something that right-wingers should be collectively punished for. If Tyler Robinson turns out to be a Red Triber who was radicalised into killing a right-wing politician by left-wing content online (but had no involvement with the Dems or any organised left-wing group), then the right are reasonably going to consider this left-wing political violence. The President has already called for collective punishment of left-wingers, as have several Motteposters. We don't know much about Robinson's motives or sanity yet, but the scenario where the only morally relevant difference between Depape and Robinson is that Robinson could shoot straight is currently very plausible.
Heck, we have right-wingers trying to claim the Crooks shooting of Trump as left-wing political violence. There is far more evidence that Depape had a right-wing political motive than there is that Crooks had any political motive at all.
Depape (who was delusional, but clearly not severely enough to be legally insane) was saner than Routh (who fired his lawyers after they suggested running an insanity defence), and Routh is getting counted as left-wing political violence.
We've had every single right wing politician "disavowing" this (i.e. January 6th) for the last 5 years,
No you haven't. You had Donald Trump doubling down on this for the last 5 years, and you made him President while drumming the right-wing politicians who disavowed it out of the GOP and calling for them to be prosecuted (which I agree hasn't happened yet)
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
6d ago
· Edited 6d ago
de Gaulle went on to win it
Lol Gaullist propaganda. The British, Americans and Soviets won it and the British and Americans graciously allowed de Gaulle to take some of the credit in order to ensure an anti-communist government in post-war France.
I wasn't relying on the wiki article for analysis - I was using it for links to interviews with George Lucas. The claim that Lucas was inspired by those three comes from his own words. My personal view is that the dominant historical inspiration for the Galactic Republic and early Empire is Rome, including via Isaac Asimov (Coruscant is obviously Trantor, and Asimov was always explicit that his Galactic Empire was inspired by Rome).
eagerly voted excessive powers by a legislative body feeling lost and ineffective
A fairly accurate description of how Augustus and Napoleon spun the grants of extreme power post-coup, even if it isn't what actually happened. As with Augustus, Caesar and Napoleon (Hitler is a grey area) the Senate meeting we see on screen was a stage-managed ratification of a coup that had already happened. And there is no vote on-screen, and canon material consistently describes the declaration of the Empire as a proclamation, not the result of a vote.
I suggest the Wikipedia analysis, insofar as it ignores the words, is misguided.
I wasn't there, but I don't think Petain was installed "to thunderous applause" given the miserable circumstances.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
6d ago
As I said, legal processes to invalidate elections involve specific election offences committed by the candidate or campaign. In the case of Georgescu, it was (assuming that the documents released by the government were genuine) an absolutely blatant campaign finance violation - a million euros was spent on paid promotion of the TikTok account while Georgescu was claiming to have received zero campaign donations.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
6d ago
Although Giuliani was responsible for Four Seasons Total Landscaping, which was the most visibly shambolic moment of the whole affair.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
6d ago
Legally, definitely not. Politically, I don't think that type of attack has ever worked to undermine the legitimacy of an election anywhere, and it has been tried a lot.
The US is one of the few countries where there is no legal process to overturn an election on grounds other than the casting and counting of the votes. But in countries where there are other grounds to overturn an election, they look like "The candidate or his designated campaign team committed one of a short list of specified offences" - most commonly exceeding spending limits or knowingly accepting illegal foreign assistance. The idea of overturning an election based on some third party being biased in a way which it is not itself illegal is batshit - particularly if it is the incumbent claiming his own government was biased against him. But in any case using a legal technicality to overturn an election makes you look like a sore loser and typically causes you to lose the rerun election in a landslide.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
6d ago
Or, if you prefer, the actual event I think it was based on, which was really two events: the selection of Marshal Petain as the head of an interim French government to negotiate capitulation with Hitler, and the subsequent vote to give him unlimited constitutional powers.
That particular parallel seems week given that the defining feature of the selection of Petain was that it happened to a country that had just lost a war and everyone knew that the new government was being chosen to capitulate to Hitler.
The more obvious parallel is the fall of the Roman Republic (the terminology of Republic/Empire/Senate is obviously taken from Rome). The obvious parallel to the specific scene where liberty dies to thunderous applause is Julius Caesar being declared dictator for life by the Senate. The consensus among blogging classicists seems to be that Palpatine's rise to power looks more like Augustus than Caesar, but Augustus didn't start taking on Imperial airs and graces until he had already held absolute power for several years, so there was no grand scene in the Senate marking the formal transition from Republic to Empire. There are also the inevitable parallels to the Reichstag passing the Enabling Law in 1933 - in particular the idea that the Empire is an assumption of emergency power to deal with an ongoing emergency (rather than a post-civil was assumption of absolute authority to restore peace, order and good government as was the case for both Romans).
Wikipedia's article on Palpatine gives a long list of historical dictators he might be modelled on, but clicking the links to sources shows that George Lucas was probably thinking of a combination of Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
6d ago
"The left successfully manipulated the information environment such that Americans voted the wrong way" is not grounds for overturning an election. As a matter of law and public opinion, the appropriate response would be "Sucks to suck. Git gud."
The weird decision was going after the voting machines first rather than running with the plausible lies about mass postal vote fraud from day one. In general, until Eastman takes over from Giuliani and Sidney Powell in early December, Trump's effort to overturn the election was pretty shambolic - particularly given that it had clearly been pre-planned.
If real fascism is in the offing, you should oppose it effectively - which doesn't necessarily mean violently. The moral imperative to be effective is as strong as the moral imperative to oppose fascism in the first place. Empirically, disorganised political violence in a democracy is an ineffective tactic.
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