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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25058 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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Chaos in French Politics

After a heavy defeat in the European elections, French President Emmanuel Macron has used his constitutional power to dissolve the French National Assembly and call a snap election.

The significance of this move cannot be overstated. Dissoudre is not something you do lightly, it's a very risky move that can easily have unforeseen consequences.

The last invocation of that power in 1997 by Jacques Chirac had devastating effects. Chirac, who was President alongside a right wing majority that he couldn't properly control sought to get a more presidential majority and in the end the left wing formed the Gauche Plurielle coalition led by Lionel Jospin, won a majority in the election and got Jospin appointed Prime Minister.

Many are speculating about Macron's motives. Not least because he has a reputation as a schemer.

Some see it as a trap laid for whoever wins the necessarily narrow majority. Historically Jospin's own cohabitation government would end up being so unpopular that he wouldn't make it to the second round of the presidential election following his tenure and would retire for public life altogether. Macron has had to rule with a very narrow majority since his own election and he may be ceding power to the left or right blocks which he knows are disunited to lay the groundwork for the next presidential elections.

Others even speculate this may be part of a complex scheme to allow him a third term beyond the two consecutive ones allowed by the constitution, as he would resign and then come back.

Whatever his motives were, he has succeeded in plunging the entire spectrum of French politics into unmitigated chaos. The elections are on the 30th of June and everyone is scrambling to ally and/or betray each other in most dramatic (and French) a fashion.

The Rassemblement National at the gates of power

The clear winner of French seats these European elections, Marine Le Pen's RN has never been so close to power.

This is the culmination of a decade of "dédiabolisation": efforts by her and her party to to become more respectable and erase the stigma of her infamous father and his ex-SS friends.

The broad appeal of the RN has surprised many. It is no longer a reactionary old man's party but has voters in pretty much all social stratas of French society. Young and old, poor and rich, everywhere the RN is now a force to be reckoned with.

The reasons are only now being admitted by French intellectuals who refused to see them for years and recently were even acknowledged by Macron himself: a broad rejection of France's policy on public safety and immigration.

This broad appeal is perhaps best represented by the RN's current party leader and would-be Prime Minister, Jordan Bardella. A 28 years old of Italian, French and Algerian ancestry who used to be a Call of Duty youtuber.

Despite this growing popularity, the RN has never led a French government and is still the would be target of the barrage républicain, the informal alliance of every other party against them on antifascist grounds. Though as we will see, this is now cracking.

The RN is in a sense the board onto which this whole election is played, and all stratagems relate in some way to its growing popularity.

Civil war among Les Républicains

LR is the established center right party, the party of Sarkozy and Chirac.

The party has waned in popularity under Macron but its position at the gates of the right and established apparatus has maintained its importance in French politics. LR parliament members have been the kingmakers as of late since Macron's party couldn't get a clear majority.

However the party's historical roots as a big tent for the right have posed a problem. Within it are now two coalitions, one of center right liberals sympathetic to Macron and another of conservative nationalists sympathetic to the RN.

Party leader Eric Ciotti is squarely on the conservative side which is more popular with the base, while his lieutenants are on the liberal side. A high-low vs middle configuration if you will.

As a result of the dissolution, Ciotti announced an alliance with the RN. This immediately lit the fires of rebellion.

His lieutenants unanimously moved to remove him from the party over this. However he ignored the decision, saying it was illegal and barricaded himself at the seat of the party.

This led to a number of dramatic scenes, including Ciotti talking down to journalists from the window of his office, as if on the battlements of a castle, as well as various party officials saying they were going to remove him by force, or call emergency services to remove him as he had lost his mind. French twitter went ablaze with memes comparing him to Tony Montana and his last stand.

Eventually the party officials found a key to the seat, opened the door and held an exceptional session of the political bureau to remove him with the forms. However Ciotti kept ignoring them and contested the decision before a judge.

His legal arguments were just recently vindicated and his exclusion stayed. Whatever this means for the future of the party or that of their alliance with the RN, nobody really knows.

The implosion of Reconquête!

R! is the party formed by right wing intellectual Eric Zemmour as part of his presidential bid. More radical than the RN on immigration but more liberal on economic questions, it was joined by Marion Maréchal, the niece of Marine Le Pen.

Maréchal and Zemmour share very similar politics, but a very different disposition towards the RN. And have led a bifurcated campaign during these European elections.

Zemmour antagonized the RN quite a bit, and Marine Le Pen in particular as being ineffectual, weak and ultimately left wing, whilst Marion Maréchal held to a more conciliatory stance seeking the union of the right.

This came to a head right after the dissolution, when in a party address, Maréchal, with Zemmour right behind her, announced apparently without his knowledge or consent that she was in talks for an alliance with the RN. To the applause of everyone but him.

They then proceeded to accuse each other of duplicity and treason on various media interviews. Zemmour excluded her from the party and she is now calling for people to vote for the Le Pen-Ciotti coalition.

The rise of the Nouveau Front Populaire

Before dissolution, the French left wing had been at its most fragmented for years. The Gaza war had finished to highlight the division between Jean-Luc Mélenchon's LFI and less radical parts of the left.

Mélenchon's conciliatory stances towards Palestinians and Islam in general may have played a big part in the surprise rejuvenation of the Parti Socialiste under Raphaël Glucksmann. The center left party which used to be the big tent for the left was left completely destroyed by Macron's first election and has only recently recovered the ability to contend with LFI for the leading spot on the left.

LFI had recently managed to put together an uneasy coalition with the left and the greens under the name of NUPES, but it was functionally defunct by the time of the European election.

Nevertheless, dissolution and the possibility of RN government turned every left wing mouth in the country to one word: union.

The same people who were at each other throats over Gaza quickly signed an unanimous pledge to unite under the name of the Front Populaire the famous antifascist 1936 left wing coalition of Leon Blum that instituted paid leave, the 40h work week and led France into its WW2 capitulation.

This new popular front has made a large contrast with the disunity of the right, however it seems on the left the knives still do come out, if after declarations of unity.

Mélenchon himself has not wasted time to attempt to seize control of the alliance. He has already declared himself the putative candidate for prime minister and his party cronies have started unilaterally nominating candidates.

As part of this, Adrien Quatennens, a high ranking LFI MP, who in 2022 had been convicted of domestic violence, pretty brazenly called for feminists to support him after being nominated for his own seat. To massive backlash.

The alliance also nominated François Ruffin (a documentarian and MP very popular on the left) for his own office seemingly without telling him. This angered him so much that he started attacking them and listing all the ongoing controversies with respect to the nominations.

This includes Quatennens' case but also the ongoing purges that Mélenchon has been doing, removing potential seats from anybody who ever criticized him. Committing the crime of "lèse-Mélenchon" as one of the purge victims put it.

The center left is no less divided in this unity. Many see Glucksmann's timidity towards LFI as weakness given he held a larger share of the vote in the European elections, and some, including two former prime ministers have denounced the alliance's inclusion of parties that supported Hamas, including the NPA, a small trotskyist party which is currently under investigation for making the apology of terrorism (which is illegal in France).

The mess in the background

All this political chaos has conspicuously overshadowed what are usually major events in French life: the football Euro and the coming Jeux Olympiques. Whoever wins this election will have to preside over the JO and the already expected chaos of them is to be compounded by the disorganization of a new administration.

Meanwhile and ever since the results of the European election, there has been a constant movement of riots and both declared and undeclared demonstrations against the popularity of the RN. Police officials have opined that with how occupied and exhausted they are with the JO they wouldn't be able to handle widespread riots that are sure to come with a potential RN win.

Overall France is at its most disorganized it has been in years. Even the election itself, the cause of all this ruckus may be difficult to make happen in the given timeline. There are concerns that there physically isn't enough paper to print all the ballots in time and many jurists have deposed motions before the Conseil Constitutionnel to stay Macron's move or delay the election, though the timeline is on the face of it within the bounds described by the constitution.

Party leader Eric Ciotti is squarely on the conservative side which is more popular with the base, while his lieutenants are on the liberal side. A high-low vs middle configuration if you will.

As a result of the dissolution, Ciotti announced an alliance with the RN. This immediately lit the fires of rebellion.

His lieutenants unanimously moved to remove him from the party over this. However he ignored the decision, saying it was illegal and barricaded himself at the seat of the party.

Hey hey hey, you're not supposed to be making DECISIONS here. You're supposed to be the disreputable figurehead who attracts the base while we respectable people set the policies.

I didn't include it for the sake of brevity, but there were some really funny episodes during this whole thing. At one point the Facebook and Twitter pages of the party were attacking each other because the password holders belonged to different coalitions.

They're just now removing his party credit card from him (as the treasurer is from the liberal coalition). It really has all the trappings of civil war except violence, which is hilarious.

Although my favorite image from the whole thing is tiny Valerie Pécresse, trying to act tough and saying there is "no place for traitors" as she's coming to try and fail to remove Ciotti.

The leader is not supposed to just be able to walk over the entire party in a parliamentary, party-based system. Like, they are the helmsman, they are supposed to have a great deal of room for making decisions and maneuvering around, but there are obvious limits.

This guy gained so much street cred by telling his party to pound sand until he had a judge tell his party that they couldn't do squat. Not knowing anything else about the guy I'd say he's well placed for a very senior leadership role if the right alliance wins (up to supplanting the 28yo from RN).

The judge seems to have only done the equivalent of a preliminary injunction; the ouster may yet prevail.

I doubt part of the job description of a party leader is make unilateral decisions over alliances for the party with zero discussion.

What does the word "leader" mean? He leads, they follow.

Good post. It's crazy to me how disorganized and fragmented France can be sometimes. On the one hand this could be the sign of a healthy democracy, on the other hand this level of fragmentation is part of what led France to being shattered so easily by the Germans in WW2.

Leon Blum that instituted paid leave, the 40h work week and led France into its WW2 capitulation.

Small correction, it was Reynaud that led France at the time of its capitulation.

It bears mentioning that the French people are currently on their 5th attempt at creating a healthily running republic.

Macron has a genuine will to power. Hard to describe in other terms, but it really feels like, completely independent from ideology, he desperately seeks a kind of greatness. He will likely fail, but he will do whatever he thinks it will take to get it, even if it involves sacrificing his own party and movement to do it.

I think he wants someone to win. If the RN (or RN-LR coalition) wins a majority I don’t particularly think that he would have much trouble agreeing to much of their program, his own views on things like immigration and security are pretty vague, it’s questionable if they’re even views at all.

Others even speculate this may be part of a complex scheme to allow him a third term beyond the two consecutive ones allowed by the constitution, as he would resign and then come back.

It unironically cannot be ruled out.

Shameless plug for something I run but https://shuffle.com/sports/novelties/politics/france/french2024 we were first up with markets and been surprisingly heavy betting on it. Super heavy RN action. No US/UK/AUS.

So does betting on women's sports exist online on your platform or other platforms?

I wanna try out that meme where you bet on the former men competing in women's sports.

Not generally on the sort of leagues/comps where trans are going to be included.

What are the odds for Rassemblement National to win a majority in the National Assembly?

$6 for RN to have a straight up majority

I think the polls suggest they’ll probably get 20-60 seats short of an outright majority.

Which, of course, means they have no power at all. In fact, the more seats they get (short of an absolute majority), the more power the far left has. Unless Ciotti wins his fight, but I suspect what will happen is the wrangling will go on until Ciotti loses.

Which, of course, means they have no power at all. In fact, the more seats they get (short of an absolute majority)

Ah, but you forget yourself. Even if they win a majority, there's always the bureaucracy of the deep state, the judiciary, the media and the academy ready to block any meaningful changes.

This, but unironically.

France isn't Germany or the USA; the law of the sword is a lot closer to the surface there - remember, they've had a constitution fail and get replaced within living memory, and French history for the last few centuries is mostly just one bloodbath after another (this is the French Fifth Republic).

Defying the mob there is not a safe proposition.

Quatennens

He's since retracted his candidature, so there are no major problems on the Front Populaire side and I think overall they did a pretty good job of presenting a clean front; Quatennens was their main mistake; on the Hamas aspect they made a common declaration condemning it as terrorist, which addressed some accusations that LFI would never call Hamas terrorists.

Many see Glucksmann's timidity towards LFI as weakness given he held a larger share of the vote in the European elections, and some, including two former prime ministers have denounced the alliance's inclusion of parties that supported Hamas, including the NPA,

[citation needed] What prominent politicians "support Hamas"? What did they say exactly?

Here's the official release by the NPA which they are being investigated over. It includes the following phrase:

Le NPA ne se joint pas à la litanie des appels à la prétendue “désescalade”. En effet, la guerre contre les PalestinienNEs dure depuis 75 ans, et la gauche devrait se rappeler de la nécessaire solidarité avec les luttes de résistances contre l'oppression et l’occupation. Le NPA rappelle son soutien aux PalestinienNEs et aux moyens de luttes qu’ils et elles ont choisi pour résister.

I think it's pretty straightforward. They are literally supporting "palestinians and the means of struggle they chose to resist" and end with "Intifada!".

I wouldn't expect any less from revolutionary trotskyists, and I think they should be allowed to say that, but as the law stands in France right now, that opinion is illegal.

Now it merits to be said that this party, despite a long history on the left, is extremely marginal.

A lot more important is the position of LFI, the now most influential left wing pary, and while it isn't anywhere near as inflamatory, they are still aligned to a specific side. Mathilde Panot got raked over the coals for refusing to call Hamas a terrorist organization and Mélenchon himself is constantly denouncing Israel and its appartheid state whilst being a lot more evasive about any questions involving Palestinians.

Anyway. The center left has fought LFI on the Gaza question and I interpret Glücksmann's success as a rejection of "antisemitism" from center left voters given the testimonies of the many such people I know. Though to be fair, I don't have hard numbers to back this.

Others even speculate this may be part of a complex scheme to allow him a third term beyond the two consecutive ones allowed by the constitution, as he would resign and then come back.

How would this work? It's hard to find a direct source on this but ChatGPT claims/hallucinates that Macron can only run again with another person serving a full presidential term in between.

You asked a bot before checking the constitution?

The constitution did not spell out the nuance on what defines consecutive.

Leaving it open to interpretation I suppose -- probably the French courts will not be letting ChatGPT do the interpreting though?

The constitution says

le président de la République est élu pour cinq ans au suffrage universel direct. Nul ne peut exercer plus de deux mandats consécutifs

The whole question is this allows for a third nonconsecutive one or not. If the limitation is of more that two terms back to back or if the limitation is anything beyond two consecutive terms.

The literal reading of the text is ambiguous, though it's clear the intention way always to cap a man at 10 years.

Why put the word consecutive at all in there if the intention was to forbid nonconsecutive terms?

The issue seems to be the following: if Macron resigns, the president of the senate will become interim president, and Macron will be nothing. At the same time, this will trigger elections for the presidency.

Assume now that Macron is a candidate for this election. Is this his 3rd consecutive mandate (and thus unconstitutional) or is the intervening interim presidency enough to give him a blank slate for another 10 years?

It would be his 3rd consecutive term. I don't think it would be constitutional. He could run again in 5 years, however.

Let me put it this way: Macron has already had two consecutive terms. Does this make him part of "Nul" or not? Is he now off limits to the presidency or does the limitation specifically limit how consecutive mandates can be? It's not clear.

I expect the CC to attempt to interpret the intent of the legislator here, which would likely allow for an ex president returning to political life but likely not procedural tricks to get around the rule.

The Constitution says no more than 2 consecutive terms. Since three is more than two, he can't have a third consecutive term. Unless I am misled there is nothing at all said about nonconsecutive terms.

What about 3 terms, all with a term in between? That clearly complies, the intention can't be to cap at 10 years overall.

The argument as I understand it is that the intention of the legislator was to prevent a single man ruling for too long whilst still allowing for enough time to enact an ambitious long term political program.

In this sense, having someone do two terms, retire, and then come back and do two more would probably be fine (though you'd have to start young). Your scenario would probably be fine too, maybe even if we're talking about a Putin/Medvedev situation.

But doing two, then doing some procedural shenanigans where you resign on your last day so somebody else is in the seat and it doesn't count as consecutive? That probably wouldn't be fine.

The question then is where on the spectrum between those two Macron's scheme is, and where on it would the CC put the line.

*Treason in Canada

Background:

  • CSIS (intelligence agency) whistleblower leaks that hostile foreign governments have substantial influence in Canada, including influence over MPs, and no one is doing anything about it.
  • An inquiry was eventually triggered. The secret report was recently released to certain parties. The report states that multiple MPs willingly assisted hostile foreign governments in actions against the interest of Canadians. The full text of the report is not public and the names of those MPs are not publically known.
  • Trudeau is the PM, and his office controls security clearances and classification. CSIS doesn’t have prosecutorial or police power. RCMP (federal law enforcement) has investigative power, but reports directly to the PM. Moreover, much of the info in the report was gained from CSIS intelligence or five-eyes intelligence, which makes the conversion from intelligence to legally admissible evidence very difficult. Regardless, there appears to be no ongoing RCMP investigation.
  • The question of whether the facts in the report can become legally admissible evidence in a particular trial are largely irrelevant to the political problem of treasonous MPs.
  • It is widely assumed that MPs from multiple parties are involved, but that Liberal MPs likely make up a majority. Everyone expects China to have the most influence, followed by India.
  • The other major parties, CPC and NDP, have called for the names to be released.
  • Trudeau’s party, the Liberals, refuse to make any of the MPs names public. In one parliamentary exchange over making the issue, a liberal MP said “Boo Hoo! Get over it!”
  • Prior to this, Trudeau and the Liberals have been tanking in the polls, and a new election is expected in 2025; a landslide Conservative victory is expected. Now, Canadians are going into an election where they will have to vote for MPs without knowing which MPs are literal traitors.

--

This seems to be a legit constitutional crisis (for lack of a better term) for Canada. If nothing happens and the names don’t get released, I would expect substantial ramifications for Canadian society. I would expect foreign influence to sky rocket and for corruption in the Canadian parliament to become an open market. If the government is willing protect treasonous MPs, even when they are all but publically outed, why would hostile parties not just openly buy as many MPs as possible?

I would also expect this situation to cause faith in the government to plummet and for separatist sentiment in Quebec and the Prairies to increase. Trudeau has publically opposed the concept of Canadian nationhood/sovereignty. For example, he said that there is no such thing as a Canadian identity and that he views Canada is the world’s first “postnational state.” He has also presided over an aggressive immigration policy which has put incredible pressure on the social fabric, on the housing market, and on health care. Now, on top of all this, is an openly treasonous government.

Will this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? I'm surprised there isn't more news and discussion about this. @KulakRevolt can we get a QRD from the inside?

*As is true of the US, I’m sure there is a technical definition of treason in Canadian law. Whether the actions of any particular MP rise to that level does not change the political implications.

For example, he said that there is no such thing as a Canadian identity and that he views Canada is the world’s first “postnational state.”

I've been trying to put into words why I'm against open borders and I think this is the piece I needed to understand my inherent distrust. A post-national state does not have a people, it has a territory. Other - real - nations can exploit that territory without regard for the people. The government of a nation is elected by the people to put their common good first.

Trudeau sees himself as some sort of steward of Canada's natural resources and land. His "postnational state" denies the existence of a category called "Canadian people." There is the land of Canada, and the people currently inhabiting it which he has jurisdiction over. But without having a category of Canadian people to even reference, his decisions are not sourced in what is the well-being of the Canadian people and their decedents.

A post-national state does not have a people, it has a territory.

A post-national state is usually known as an "empire".

And Canada has always been, to a point, an empire; if you don't live in the Triangle between Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, your vote and your interests don't matter in the slightest when it comes to federal politics. This is slightly less true for the provinces east of that area, and provinces do have some overlap (and it's worth noting that, because the Triangle is not its own province, it can be overruled in Provincial politics especially when that Triangle has made those provinces their enemy... which, naturally, they have).

Thus that Triangle, for all intents and purposes, is Canada, and the rest is just territory that it has empire/dominion over (the "provinces" are more sub-administrative units in the ancient Roman sense; they are not "states"). Quebec's culture is more reactive/resistant to this state of affairs; the West, not as much, but the West has more in common (culturally, legally, linguistically) with the Triangle than Quebec does.

The "post-national" rhetoric is a Moldbug-ian call for Triangle residents to be more explicit in their supremacy (and an acknowledgement that the "post-national" government will put Triangle interests first) and stop thinking Canada is/should be like the US, with its checks and balances between states- which happen to prevent SoCal and the NY-DC corridor from exercising Imperial control over the rest of the nation to which they feel entitled (because the "I win" button in democracy is simply "have more voters than the other guy"; that's why the US [nominally] has laws to limit how much power that can ultimately yield, why most of the "it should be purely population that decides everything" rhetoric comes out of those places, and why each side has the immigration policies that they do- and this is generally seen as legitimate in the mind of the average resident, even those opposed to the Triangle, the most major effect being that this is why Quebec-minus-Montreal isn't its own nation right now).

It's worth noting that #notAllTriangleResidents, of course- even in the Triangle, Canada is still generally seen through the US lens of a collection of polities working together to accomplish some common goal, with a common-ish culture, with some differences (otherwise there would be no need to have Triangle residents see their empire for what it truly is). This is an even more popular view in the West, which is why when the West (and to a point, its elites) comes to protest the Triangle and its people -> policies they wave Canadian flags, not separatist ones.

I think that for [the idea, and "nation", of] Canada to be stable going forward the rest of the nation needs some much-needed checks and balances against the Triangle; that is what the Senate is nominally for (and, very revealingly, it was initially set up so that Ontario + Quebec alone could veto any legislation, though that's not what it does in practice). Of course, usually when this happens, a pan-dominion government can be elected in the Triangle and imposes on the Triangle elite anyway (which, naturally, deflates separatist movements); that happened post-Trudeau once, and perhaps it'll happen again.

And Canada has always been, to a point, an empire; if you don't live in the Triangle between Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, your vote and your interests don't matter in the slightest when it comes to federal politics. This is slightly less true for the provinces east of that area, and provinces do have some overlap (and it's worth noting that, because the Triangle is not its own province, it can be overruled in Provincial politics especially when that Triangle has made those provinces their enemy... which, naturally, they have).

Thus that Triangle, for all intents and purposes, is Canada, and the rest is just territory that it has empire/dominion over (the "provinces" are more sub-administrative units in the ancient Roman sense; they are not "states"). Quebec's culture is more reactive/resistant to this state of affairs; the West, not as much, but the West has more in common (culturally, legally, linguistically) with the Triangle than Quebec does.

This seems off given the history of the current edition of the Conservative Party of Canada. Stephen Harper is an Albertan, and he built his political career in a party which was initially founded with the explicit goal of providing better representation of Western interests (Reform), and gradually evolved into a generic right-populist anti-Triangle elites party (Canadian Alliance) before doing a reverse takeover of the moribund Progressive Conservative party. Poilievre represents a riding in the Ottawa suburbs, but he grew up in Alberta, was a member of Reform/Canadian Alliance before the merger, started his political career in Albertan student politics, and only moved to Ottawa because he co-founded a lobbying firm with a man who would go on to be Attorney-General of Alberta. I think it is clearly fair to describe Poilievre as Albertan as well.

Even back in the PC era, Brian Mulroney (the last PC prime minister to serve a full term) grew up in (non-Triangle) eastern Quebec and represented a riding in eastern Quebec, although he did have a non-political career in Montreal in between.

The Triangle only dominates Canadian politics when the Liberals are in government and, despite what the Liberals want you to think, that isn't all the time. The Canadian party system in 2024 absolutely represents the interests of Western-Canada-outside-metro-Vancouver - probably beyond the level of representation the population out there merits.

A post-national state does not have a people, it has a territory.

Strictly speaking, a post-national state need only lack a people defined by common birth or shared ancestry, and can have one defined in other ways. One can argue that nation-states are a superior form of social organization to those other ways, but they are neither untried nor historically novel (e.g. Rome, Islam).

I'm not sure ancient Rome is the correct analogy here. Rome was quite stingy with offering citizenship. It did happen, but it took hundreds of years. Even as late as 100 BC, when Rome was already master of the Mediterranean Sea, many cities and towns within 100 miles of Rome were merely "allies" and not citizens. This caused the Social War (91–87 BC) in which Rome was forced to offer citizenship to some "allies" in order to suppress the others.

It wasn't until three hundreds years later, (212 AD) under the reign of the notorious tyrant Caracalla, that the citizenship was extended to all free men in the Empire. By then, many people didn't actually want it, and the reason it was granted was to extract more tax revenues.

Rome was ascendant when it was a nation state composed of Romans. When it offered citizenship to others, it was generally from a position of weakness. I will concede that the Romans held out for a long time.

Rome was quite stingy with offering citizenship.

While they were in most respects stingy by modern standards, the fact that they had any form of naturalization at all was a radical break from all of their Mediterranean neighbors e.g. Athens where only people with two citizen parents were citizens themselves or Sparta with its permanent helot underclass, and this contributed to Roman military dominance as they were able to radically increase their available manpower over time. I also think the sort of mass granting of citizenship to allies as a reward for military service that Rome engaged in would be seen as radical even today, something akin to the US giving all inhabitants of Sonora citizenship in exchange for them suppressing the cartels (the closest modern equivalent might be the French Foreign Legion, which is relatively small).

Rome was ascendant when it was a nation state composed of Romans.

If we're going by the standard chronology, where the zenith of Roman power is the death of Trajan in 117 AD, then I don't see how this is true. 2 of the 5 Good Emperors were Iberians and no one seems to have cared, not to mention the long string of Illyrian emperors who ended the third century crises and founded one, if not the greatest of Roman cities i.e. Constantinople. On that note, the fact that a bunch of Greeks went around for a thousand years calling themselves Romans seems evidence enough of the assimilatory power of Roman institutions (interestingly enough these Romans functioned more and more like a nation as they lost territory and became weaker, but it certainly wasn't the same as the original nation).

Good points all around. My person take is that Rome reached its zenith with the fall of Carthage. The territorial gains for the next 200 years were just the inevitable consolidation. But I recognize this might be a minority view.

And you are right to mention Sparta which largely died out because of sub replacement level fertility.

Sparta’s actual fertility rate is unknown; citizen oliganthropia in Sparta was caused by runaway inequality driving citizens below the property requirements for citizenship.

Assimilating elites and the masses are different things and changes in politics and technology matter here.

I don't think most Britons are worried about Asians who went to Harrow, which I suppose would be the equivalent to Greek and Gallic nobles fully buying into Rome.

If "Comintern" was still in the public parlance, you wouldn't have needed to search for such a term. Trudeau clearly sees himself as the General Secretary of the Canadian Union in its temporary position as a state, during its transition to an indivisible part of Communism.

The saddest thing, is if I took a poll, i would bet that more canadians know that Trump was convicted than know that literal sitting MPs willingly assisted foreign governments.

I sometimes think that in the vacuum of having any national identity (which is bad, patriotism is generally bad as many here would say), the national identity has just become some kind of "feel superior to the americans". It happens at political levels when Dobbs was passed and Trudeau made a big thing about abortion and contracepton. It happens with healthcare, we accept mediocrity because "at least we aren't the USA" and i think we do it with immigration too.

I have frequently quipped that "the [only significant] difference between American culture and Canadian culture is that Americans are very proud of being American, while Canadians are very proud of not being American."

I grant that, with the emergence of Trumpism, it seems increasingly clear that there are in fact aspects of US culture to which we have no good answer–but you are correct that I am much happier with mediocre but universal healthcare (in Canada or my adopted homeland of Britain) and would not trade it for the America alternative.

Canada's in close cultural proximity to the USA but doesn't have Borderers and is creeped out by them. One side of US politics is largely composed of Borderers. Hence, they identify with the other.

Amazon Go checkouts being manually tagged by an Indian farm

That was misreported. The system mostly worked, but in cases in which it has low confidence the tapes are manually reviewed and labeled. Which is how you train the system. It wasn't really Actually Indians.

Of course China and India are corrupting Canada: the Chinese and Indians have been given free reign to immigrate, for the former in their stronghold of Vancouver, the latter more concentrated in Ontario. Neither group treats democracy the way whites do, voting for policy, but instead use it as an ethnic tally, and in particular the more you see these races immigrate and vote, the more you see the representatives allowing them to continue immigrating. Both countries are increidbly populous and have grown relatively wealthy over the last two decades, and that wealth is now being used to control places like Canada.

There is the issue regarding Chinese immigration that the PRC government is notoriously willing to take emigrants' families hostage to force them to do what the PRC wants. As such, the majority of Chinese immigrants are effectively sleeper agents, which doesn't matter right up until you want to pursue foreign policy that Beijing doesn't like and then it really, really does. We've been dealing with this in Australia for the last couple of decades.

At what point do the rapid destabilizing demographics shifts and apparent deep corruption by foreign powers turn Canada into a national security problem for America? If things go south up north, are we going to have all those "new Canadians" hopping the border to the U.S. and bringing Canada's social ills with them? Is anyone in the U.S. govt thinking about this?

If things go south up north, are we going to have all those "new Canadians" hopping the border to the U.S. and bringing Canada's social ills with them?

The US-Canada border is actually really defensible, all things considered; the bodies of water one would have to cross are significantly larger than the Rio Grande (the US would lose a war in 1812 partly for this reason). Sure, it's possible to trivially cross the border provided you can get over the St. Lawrence, but because most of the "new Canadians" live in Toronto they'd have to spend a non-trivial amount of money to do that.

The only other city that has a large population of immigrants is Vancouver, which is right on the border; a fence long enough to be more than a few days' walk would be enough to prevent those crossings (as you get into "in the middle of nowhere" territory pretty quick outside of that, and Washington State isn't exactly the most habitable place either).

If getting out of Canada became important enough, I guarantee you they would drive to the middle of nowhere and cross over into Minnesota or North Dakota.

If anyone knows of real politic assessments of the US-CAN relationship, please send them my way/post them here. I hope that there are at least some plans for dealing with a rump/decrepit/hostile/defunct/failed Canada within US Govt. and policy circles. The increasing importance of the Arctic should increase demand for such thinking, along with the pivot to Asia/China, and a few other factors.

I don't think it's too difficult to come up with even armchair strategic assessments considering most of the facts on the ground haven't changed since the days of War Plan Red/Defense Scheme No. 1 and 2 (for the US and Canada, respectively, though the US plan focused more on Canada in the context of taking on the entire British Empire).

Canada is one of the easiest countries to cut completely in two: there's one road that separates East and West, and jack shit for 2000 miles between Toronto and Winnipeg (Thunder Bay exists mainly because it was the way to get from East to West before the car was invented). And no, tanks aren't getting through there either; the only way to do it is by air, sea (into Hudson's Bay), or on foot. And Canada doesn't have that many aircraft capable of transporting armor, much less armor itself (most of their tanks aren't even operable).

After that, the inevitable blockade would do most of the work. If that part of Canada is separated from its food and energy supply (yes, the hydro power is unlimited at current burn rates, but the oil and industrial inputs sure aren't and those come from the part of the nation that its army has no chance of reasonably defending) it's not going to last very long. Then all the US has to do is make sure the shanty migrant ships aren't making it, which is pretty easy to do so long as you're willing to actually stop them (and in this kind of situation, they would be). Yes, the border is very long, but that doesn't make much difference if the average Canadian cannot get to a section you don't control, and by and large they can't.

On that note, it's deceptively easy to isolate the most populated part of Canada from the US: destroy the bridges. All Ontario border crossings are over water (almost like the border is where it is for that reason), and demolition of those bridges from either side means that reinforcing an incursion on either side would become difficult very quickly. Those bodies of water are not fordable. Same thing for Quebec; Montreal and Quebec city are on the north side of the St. Lawrence, both excellent defensive positions (and have been used as such a few times, too). These nations are an ocean apart should they choose to be; for the west, destroying the bridges and road is going to have the same effect.

As far as strategic industries go, Canada doesn't have any that can't be trivially attacked by conventional rocket artillery (or standard artillery, for the communities on the St. Lawrence, as destroying those bridges means the Maritime provinces aren't going to put up much of a fight) from the US side. The same is true of all its major cities, especially Vancouver. This doesn't hold true for the US; assuming equal-capability equipment the only major US city in Canadian artillery range is Detroit (if it even qualifies as "major" any more, lol).

As far as commerce goes, Canada depends heavily on other countries to refine the products of its resource extraction (which affects the West more than the East); a collapse in the ability to trade with the US (each provinces' largest trading partner) would be catastrophic to the economy.

This is, I think, why the Defense Schemes focus more on rapid attack being the only feasible way to resist an American invasion, because the country really can't be held. Sure, a friendly Europe could resupply Upper/Lower Canada, but I think unrestricted submarine warfare (this time by the US) would likely rout those merchant marines, and the American navy is currently peerless, so the only time you have to do damage is while you still have the element of surprise.

I agree that America could annex Canada with little to no military effort. I'm more curious about the details of when, how, and under what circumstances that would happen. What are the politics and sentiments of the people? What considerations would the US have to weigh before making such a call? What are the alternatives, and what interests do those alternatives serve? Etc.

Any in depth sources on those matters would be much appreciated.

I agree that America could annex Canada with little to no military effort.

The best defense Canada has against getting annexed by the US is to import an extra 20 million South Asians (even better: an extra 40 million). The magnitude of the poison pill the US would have to swallow to get the land for itself would make even the staunchest American imperialist balk and puke.

In fact a large portion of these 40 million people will want the US to annex Canada because it means they get full access to the US jobs market!

I thought you were gonna go with the prospect of dealing with the French lol. Or more liberal states being added.

A ton of the migrants came in the recent COVID influx and don't have citizenship and can likely be deported or have visas and PR cancelled before unification.

Unlikely any time soon. Canada has a better immigrant profile than the U.S.

I’m curious if there’s anything to be done about it when liberals, to whom the majority of the corrupt MP’s probably belong if for no other reason than they hold a majority, don’t want to.

If the NDP at any point grows a pair (probably requires turfing Jagmeet, which would also be a good idea, for them) you could see a majority-backed confidence motion on this which would get either information or an election in short order.

I think this situation can be more fairly characterized as a crisis for the current government and balance of power in Parliament than a full-blown constitutional crisis, unless we are speculating about the second- and third-order effects for trust in institutions, separatist sentiments, or populist sentiments on the left/right.

What should hopefully come to pass is that the facts will come out, names will be named, and it will become clear that the Liberals have their hands dirtiest all the way up to the level of the PMO (side remark: the PM himself may not be directly implicated, since if you have been listening to him lately, he doesn’t read his briefs or keep close tabs on anything his advisors are up to). Once that happens, we would hope for a criminal investigation and a swift vote of non-confidence, not necessarily in that order, leading to a change in the party in power.

The real confounder here is how much the Tories and especially the NDP have their hands dirty as well. If the other parties are as complicit as the Liberals, they might be able to keep the current balance of power in place for another year through collusion, at enormous cost to the relationship between the Canadian People and our most hallowed institution of “Good Government”. But that would only postpone the inevitable electoral judgement day.

A preview of the next 6-18 months.

I think there is a spectrum of behaviors going from "bad optics" to "corrupt" to "treason".

If you are accepting campaign donations or gifts from some foreign, state-sponsored NGO that is mostly bad optics (unless your constituents are on board with that). (Depending on local laws, INAL, don't accept bags of money based on something you read on the internet.)

If you do the above, but with a clear understanding that you intend to influence policy towards your money-giver, that would be corruption. If done correctly, this can be hard to prove. Did you vote for that trade agreement with the country sponsoring you because you were bought, or just because you genuinely believed that to be a good thing?

I would use the word treason in cases in which you also violate vital interests of your home country. Passing on secret military information, unsuccessfully participating in a coup and the like.

Over here in Europe, getting gifts from foreign nations (such as Azerbaijan) is not unheard of. More recently, Krah (AfD) and some of the people working for him have been accused of taking money from Russia and China, respectively. Typically, the worst offenders get prosecuted, but it is not like the voters really care.

When has Trudeau opposed Canadian sovereignty?

He has done so in the link provided, unless you believe Trudeau is himself sovereign. Trudeau's statement that 'Canada is a postnational state' is indistinguishable from the denial of Canadian sovereignty and is in fact a naked argument for Comintern.

Is this rhetoric surprising? It shouldn't be. Its Trudeau, the literal communist heir. And not just any type of communist, the type of international communist who believes that nationhood is a moral evil and that sovereignty and moral righteousness lies only in global communism.

Why?

If Canadian sovereignty has any reference to the people of Canada, discounting any non-integrated individuals, then it must be the case that Trudeau's statement denies Canadian sovereignty.

Why?

What would "postnational" mean without reference to some non-arbitrary, non-"I'm-not-touching-you" definition of Canadians? Who or what is sovereign on Trudeau's definition? Trudeau?

Apparently not Canadians. Trudeau's vision of Canada is "post" all such concerns. Thus, the concept of Canadian sovereignty, on his thinking, is "post" the fact of or concerns of the people who inhabit Canada's borders. If that which is sovereign is "post" Canada, then sovereignty doesn't lie in Canada in any meaningful respect. Therefore, Trudeau's claim that Canada is a postnational state is a denial of Canadian sovereignty.

Trudeau being Trudeau, and not any other person, its clear that his declaration of a "postnational" Canada is little more than an argument for Comintern.

Trudeau's statement that 'Canada is a postnational state' is indistinguishable from the denial of Canadian sovereignty and is in fact a naked argument for Comintern.

That is a ridiculously huge leap.

If Canadian sovereignty has any reference to the people of Canada, discounting any non-integrated individuals, then it must be the case that Trudeau's statement denies Canadian sovereignty.

Canadian sovereignty doesn't have any reference to the people and even if it did, that wouldn't mean his statement denies Canadian sovereignty.

Thus, the concept of Canadian sovereignty, on his thinking, is "post" the fact of or concerns of the people who inhabit Canada's borders.

This is a clearly incorrect interpretation of his meaning, which is about a lack of mainstream culture, not the lack of concern for the people. He states this explicitly.

That’s absurd. Sovereignty is obviously not the same thing as nationhood. Governments do all sorts of pedestrian tasks, like issuing passports or regulating products, which don’t require a national character. A post-national state, then, would happily implement those even as it opens the gates to immigrants.

You’re committing the mirror-version of appealing to Hitler. It is possible to have patriotism, aggressive foreign policy, and even a racial identity without trying to start a Fourth Reich. Likewise, preferring the boring bureaucratic parts of state sovereignty does not make one into Daddy Stalin.

What would "postnational" mean without reference to some non-arbitrary, non-"I'm-not-touching-you" definition of Canadians? Who or what is sovereign on Trudeau's definition? Trudeau?

Presumably Canadian citizens, the rules for becoming one which are determined by the elected representatives of the current citizenry. Could such rules be considered arbitrary? Sure, but I think you need more than that to claim that they are illegitimate e.g. you can argue that the representatives were not enacting the will of the citizens, you can argue against democracy as a process for deciding questions of citizenship, etc. Also, if Canada had really ever been a single nation they would be speaking English in Quebec.

Hated Ancestors

I am part of a family heritage organization. This particular family has been in the US for a little over 400 years. The organization's main responsibilities are maintaining a few old grave sites, and serving as a bit of a repository of information for people going on genealogical hunts. I am possibly going to be joining the board of this organization in the future.

Anyways, these ancestors of mine owned slaves, and quite a few of them fought and died on the losing side of the American Civil War. I feel mostly apathy about this. I did not know these people, I didn't even know anyone who knew them. Any "wealth" they had from slavery was never passed down, they all went heavily bankrupt in the 1870s (they were all lending each other money, and someone made a poor investment so they all went down together when debt collectors came in). I don't feel any need to defend their actions, or to attack them to prove to myself I would not have acted similarly in their circumstances. Its just a fact that sits out there and is kind of interesting, but has no bearing on me personally.

I was aware that my view on this might be different than others, but it was confirmed the other day. We received this email to our general inbox (information in brackets is anonymized from original email):

Began my morning looking to purchase land in [Southern US State] and I came across the [Surname] name while viewing a property in [Small Town, Southern US State].

As I further traveled down this rabbit hole, from the time, ‘A man from [European Country]’ entered America, natives chased away, privileged education, owning slaves, and building up the economic community to owning many properties across [Southern US State] and possibly the United States.

I read a section on your website, how to gather and reserve information about the enslaved in a PowerPoint. I opened a next page showing all of the different owned properties from A to Z, assuming to be left as a legacy to your descendants.

This research was very daunting to my spirit albeit it being a part of history, your history, which at the same level very interesting. This information also showed how ‘others’ had their history swayed and influenced by your family’s history.

If it were not for the slaves… If it were not for the Natives… If the [Surname] never entered America… This country, your family…what would have happened to its inhabitants?

Doubt if I’d buy that piece of land in [Small Town, Southern US State] for fear of the ancestor’s spirits, Native and African slaves wandering around looking for descendants in 2024 to be released from their bondage and inequities thrashed upon them for wealth by its oppressors.

Purpose of this email was to express my personal feelings towards the [Surname] descendants and how sad it is that when Americans say privilege, we only need to read history of those before us.

~Forgive my sentence structures. My [Community College] English instructor always reminded me to work better at my writing skills. Education.

Thank you for your time.

In most cases I'd be happy to toss this email in the trashbin of my mind. This lady disliking me because of my ancestors isn't really a big deal. Someone lost a property sale somewhere, also not me and also not a big deal. But I do share one thing with this lady that constantly frustrates and annoys me: A Government. It would be nice to be a in a world where I could fully dismiss this kind of thing from my life. But if they vote and too many people that share their opinion vote ... well I'm sure they will find inventive ways to make their feelings towards us a more solid thing. I don't know where this leaves us. I'm certainly not going to respond to this lady's email.

It would be wrong to leave you all with the impression that this is a normal interaction. My mother has been doing genealogical research lately, including some compiling of the slaves names. She has made friends with a man in the state who was trying to research his ancestors. The man had hit a wall and couldn't find out more until my mom published the slave research.

I'll answer questions about my ancestors, but I will generally try to avoid doxxing myself, even if I'm not highly concerned with that outcome.

The sentence structure and grammar of that email is incredibly weird, though it's good she's aware of that. It's genuinely hard to make out what she's trying to say in parts of it. This makes me seriously wonder what this person's background is.

It's also just incredibly bizarre to randomly send an email to a historical society complaining? I guess? about someone's unrelated family on the basis of an unrelated history. It's also weird to send such an email in which the main argumentative thrust is "you family is horrible and I bet you're haunted by ghosts" while apologizing for her writing style and thanking you for your time. It's hate mail written in a polite tone, which is simply strange.

Also, who the heck "begins their morning" looking to purchase land in a random state and by the evening has decided a family she doesn't know is haunted by ghosts with enough confidence to want to send an email?

This is the sort of thing that just leaves me scratching my head, like those weird pseudo-Catholic cultists who think the third secret of Fatima is that Marcionism is true and the psalms are chants to an evil God.

Just to psychoanalyze from afar, she (for some reason, the writing seems very feminine, and I'd bet good money that the writer is female--a male wouldn't bother writing this email, and if he did it would be written more as a string of curses without any attempt at politeness) is a not-particularly well-educated but generally well-meaning individual from a bad background who has probably done things mostly right (at least within her context) but nevertheless has accrued a lot of damage over her life and isn't particularly successful. The letter is half an outpouring of frustration at where she's ended up, and half an attempt at some kind of connection. What kind, it doesn't matter--the response could be an angry condemnation back, and it could be self-flagellation from the recipient. Doesn't matter. She just feels very lonely and isolated and desperately wants some kind of reassurance that she's seen. She makes her pain obvious by lashing out in the hopes that it will create some kind of response.

I ran it through ChatGPT to anonymize it. After I was done with that I also asked ChatGPT how it would rewrite the email if the original sender had asked. That email actually didn't seem unfriendly. So yeah maybe they weren't actually that hostile, their signoff doesn't imply hostility. Just the whole pondering how the country might have been better without my ancestors existing. I originally interpreted it as "english as a second language" but I looked up the lady who sent it (she gladly attached her name to the email), and she did seem to be born in the US. But yeah, hate mail written in a polite tone is strange.

Interesting because I totally interpreted the ghost thing as a rhetorical flourish rather than a literal statement about fear of being actually haunted, though I'm well aware those people exist, and those are after all the kind of people I would expect to send unsolicited emails.... wait...

I joke but I do think "rhetorical flourish" still has like a 40% chance of being the case vs 60% crazy, so with these odds charity means I select rhetorical flourish from a well-meaning person as the default unless demonstrated otherwise.

Your ancestors lived in a peaceful part of the world. Compared to Nigeria, the level of violence in America was mild.

The difference is that your family was organized enough to have records stretching back 400 years while others barely know who their grandparents were. Being capable of record keeping is nothing to be ashamed of.

I feel nothing either way. No shame, no pride. It is semi-interesting to me that my ancestors happened to be in America so early, and that they have been intimately involved with some major events. But its not much more to me.

Its kind of like this: I was born in a place, and when I was 3 my family moved out of that place and never returned. I have zero memories of living there. The fact that I was born there is just kind of a fun and not-so-interesting fact about me. I feel similar about the ancestors, its just more interesting to most people.

I work in a fairly disreputable field since it pays well. My retired father has been doing a genealogical deep dive, and it appears that my family has done this for generations. Whaling, slave trading, mild piracy etc etc etc.

I might be anti-slavery, but I personally feel that if I had been born into the world that my ancestors had been born into that I likely would have gone to sea in pursuit of a better life, and that likely would have come with a certain form of cargo. So I don't feel I can really cast judgement on my forebears.

Whaling was seen very positively in its heyday, being an officer on a whaling ship was a high status career. It’s seen negatively now but 19th century Americans didn’t care about whales.

Doubt if I’d buy that piece of land in [Small Town, Southern US State] for fear of the ancestor’s spirits, Native and African slaves wandering around looking for descendants in 2024 to be released from their bondage and inequities thrashed upon them for wealth by its oppressors.

Man, I don't know how other people react to these sorts of things, but my reaction certainly isn't anything remorseful or kind. While I am not responsible for either the good or evil deeds of my ancestors and I know that well intellectually, my gut response to someone speaking to me this way is that I'm glad my ancestors won and theirs lost. If the best way someone can think about their ancestors is thinking of their them hanging around my property being spiteful ghosts, it's no wonder that they couldn't do any better during their lifetimes.

Of course, as I think you imply later when speaking of the kind relationship your mother has with her interlocutor, that kind of spiteful response isn't good and isn't healthy either. These identitarian sentiments that dredge up centuries old wrongs and treat them as contemporary are absolute poison to discourse. The people telling others to dwell on them, to hold this sense of grievance dear to their spirit are undoing decades of progress towards healing and camaraderie.

Hmm. I've been digging around in my family tree lately, and it seems like everytime I'm about to come across some post-war embarrassment, there's a plot-twist. That great×6 uncle with a Confederate war record? Turned out to be drafted, and before that was making shoes for black women fleeing to Canada... and also, the rest of the family fled the state because of Sherman's Total War campaign. Other side of the family was known for contributing Confederate soldiers? Surprise: Great×2 grandpa just had a step father from that family, and was just an underaged incest baby, 😥. Hey, remember how great grandma was totally racist when they did the ancestry research in her lifetime? Should have hung out more with her aunt, whose was with a priest who inherited way more land than he needed and converted it into a rest-stop for travelers, only to get burned down by the Night Riders. It's almost scary, as though the people writing these things down in the 19th and early 20th century had some kind of agenda in spite of being states and decades apart and not actually closely related to the people they were writing about.

I'm not sure how I should feel about any of this, but the contrast with OP is starting to make me feel kinda selfish. To the point I almost feel I should point out that the older relatives I actually met were unambiguously racist. Proud of how much American Indian blood was in the family, but simultaneously racist against everyone else.

It really is a shame that people who are afraid of vengeful ghosts wield so much power over us.

This lady isn’t a majority, as you note. And there’s simply not enough people in the voting public who are legitimately afraid of the ghosts of slaves to worry about it. I would suggest that those of these who do exist contact a priest, not an uninvolved geneological researcher.

The descendants of my ancestors’ slaves are mostly successful and bear us no ill will, although they don’t particularly want to live in the small town in Louisiana where our plantation was located(in fairness, no one else does either). Nor do they bring up that, uh, the connection is because our ancestors owned theirs. Everyone likes to believe they were kind to their slaves, but no one actually knows, and the best evidence that can be obtained is a few scattered mentions that Cajuns were known for treating their slaves somewhat better than average. That some members of my family are quite proud of the victories our confederate shock formation won isn’t much bother either. Everyone broadly understands they’re my ancestors, and I didn’t choose them, and to disown your ancestors would be a horrible thing. Family, the weight of generations, is fundamentally what it is, and demanding performative dissociation from it is the ultimate price of atomic individualism. It’s one I won’t give, and it’s one that hasn’t been asked.

Everyone likes to believe they were kind to their slaves, but no one actually knows, and the best evidence that can be obtained is a few scattered mentions that Cajuns were known for treating their slaves somewhat better than average.

This has been part of my Mom's research actually. One of the things that made it easy to track the slaves that my ancestors owned is that one of the guys would write a paragraph or so about each slave when they passed away. Some aspects of their personality, some positive traits, some things they liked, etc.

I think the whole concept of being "kind" to a slave is a bit oxymoronic. The kindest thing to do is to free them immediately. Most slave owners fail by that standard. There are of course different levels of how terrible you can be to a slave. There isn't evidence that my ancestors were fucking their slaves (and yes, it is definitely possible to know that sort of thing. They knew it about some of their neighbors and gossiped about it in letters.) There are two ways to motivate slaves, the carrot and the stick. We do know they used the carrot, some of the slaves were paid wages. We don't know how heavily they used the stick. Quite a few of the freed slaves took on the family name of my ancestors after they were freed during the Civil war. The men that were older when the civil war broke out thought it was a horrible idea. The younger men were excited by it ... and most of them fought in it and died.

I don't feel like I'm forced into disassociation about it. I feel mostly the same way about my parents. They have done things in their past that I don't condone. Even though I know them and I share half my genes with each of them I feel zero responsibility for their actions. But I know I am probably a bit weird in some areas. I often think the "tribal loyalty" part of my brain is broken and doesn't work. I care about and feel loyalty towards specific individuals, but for anyone I don't know .. there is zero chance I care about them.

I think the whole concept of being "kind" to a slave is a bit oxymoronic. The kindest thing to do is to free them immediately

It's a social dynamic that doesn't exist today, and paternalism was a big part of that dynamic. The paternalistic aspect was very real but isn't to be recognized in this day in age. It certainly isn't an oxymoron.

Luckily someone in my family already compiled all the archival research going back to the 1730s: enlisted in the Revolution, 300 acres, 4 horses, 0 Negroes according to archival documents. It's wild reading wills and such. The first ancestor to arrive to America left his son a Bible, a stove, and a pipe in his will.

It's a social dynamic that doesn't exist today, and paternalism was a big part of that dynamic. The paternalistic aspect was very real but isn't to be recognized in this day in age. It certainly isn't an oxymoron.

The longer fleshed out statement I had originally was something like "it would be kind to not punish them for anything that isn't an actual crime, and pay them wages for the work they do, not forcibly separate their families, and allow them some avenue of exit from the situation if they think its not working out for them." But that was basically the equivalent of freeing them, so I shortened it. But quite a few of those things have no place for someone being "paternalistic". When paternalistic and economic concerns were at odds the economic concerns won out. I say that not as judgement, but as a simple statement of facts. Just like today a company that is unconcerned with economic realities will eventually go broke.

I also believe paternalism does exist today. It is the government as parent to everyone. The government is not as limited by economic concerns, which honestly makes it more frightening. In both cases of paternalism I don't think of them as "kind". The proponents of paternalism probably wouldn't describe it as "kind" either. At best they might say it is a "kindness". Paternalism is a belief that a strong hand is needed for guiding the less able-d and less intelligent to the right paths in life. That the strong hand will dish out measured punishments that are less harsh than what the world itself might dish out (thus the sort of "kindness").

It doesn't really matter. My family arrived after the Civil War. My wife's earliest American ancestor arrived on the Mayflower, but none of them ever owned slaves (as they were religiously scrupulous against the institution). This sort of thing gets you exactly zero credit with the progressive race-pushers, you still "benefited from a system of oppression" or whatever. So them trying to shame you for what your ancestors did is double-dipping the shame.

So you just recently learned that you share a country with people who hate you and everything you stand for? Really?

There’s a reason the Founding Fathers were skeptical of democracy: they knew people like this exist.

So you just recently learned that you share a country with people who hate you and everything you stand for? Really?

What part of my post implies I didn't know these people existed?

Elsewhere in the thread I discuss it, but having direct evidence of a thing can change your estimate of how likely a viewpoint is. But my belief was never that 0 of these people existed.

Unless this person is Native American, I don’t think they really have good standing to piss and moan about the sins of the past. You know, given that they happily live on land seized by sword and ethnically cleansed i.e. the entire United States.

But Native Americans seized land and ethnically cleansed each other. Any surviving Native Americans are descended from the victors of these myriad wars. The email sender referenced being haunted by spirits because only extinct bloodlines are innocent. The only way to be good is to go extinct in this doggy dog world.

I'm a broken record on this, but Native Americans have no better standing. They ethnically cleansed the pre-Clovis peoples from North America, with the only difference being that they were smart enough not to leave any records of their existence (aside from traces left in their mtDNA).

And even the original inhabitants of the Americas have no great standing in my view. Does the first person to cross the land bridge get to claim the entire continent for themselves?

And if they do, what does that say about migration more broadly?

Well mixing your work into the commons and maintaining it, makes it your property. But obviously the original inhabitants have failed on the second clause.

Perhaps it all comes down to a misplaced, illogical application of instinct. Nothing more or less than that?

  1. The instinct of justice. If someone in your tribe is exploiting another member for wealth, you should shame the exploitative member and pursue a form of reparation. This is a pretty universal rule: a child might apologize and make up for it with a friend; a husband might get a gift for an insulted girlfriend.

  2. The instinct of judging by bloodline. Humans all come equipped with the knowledge that child is like parent, whether in humans or husbandry or agriculture.

The problem with (1) is that “the moral standard of freedom to your out-group” is purely an invention of Whites, and “exploiting out-group member for gain” is plausibly universal among non-whites in the same era. So, our “instinct of justice” should make us love Whites for ending extra-group slavery and exploitation, rather than illogically applying an anachronistic standard (which they themselves discovered) to a pre-standard era. We should always rejoice in moral development and probably give the discoverer extra honor, which in this cause would be Europeans, who risked their lives to save many millions of Africans when they placed their ships off the African coast and threatened Africans and Ottomans to force them to stop slavery. But there is something pernicious about those who fail to see this, because they are now committing an evil, by impugning the very people who deserve honor. Re: (2), it makes no sense per the above, but it ironically makes sense for judging the allegedly oppressed class, because of their lack of development. Do the people who judge by bloodline apply the same instinct to the children of criminals? Very likely not, as their instinct has been subverted.

The ghosts are probably the most coherent complain here. Ghosts are bad vibes, and it is hard ignore the vibe of a place which you know was depressing.

If this wasn't you I would claim this was made up rage bait. It is also mentally unhinged and the person writing it is not well.

I mean, the awkward stilted writing style screams ‘this was legitimately a crazy person who wrote it, not something made up for internet clout’.

One time while managing a GNC a very old lady customer (I had helped her several times previously) asked me if I was God fearing - I acknowledged no - which frustrated her. Then she told me that I was going to Hell and that she is never stepping foot in such a Godless place again.

Sure enough - never saw her or her husband again.

The older we get the more childlike and idiotic a lot of us become it seems.

This has the flavor of one of those ancient Greek myths where the gods come disguised to interact with mortals and test their faith/virtue. I would warn you to stay on guard for curses, visitation by oddly-aggressive wildlife, natural disasters, and general misfortune.

oddly-sexually-aggressive wildlife if it was Zeus

This lady disliking me because of my ancestors isn't really a big deal.

Until she is in position to direct the FBI to ensure that the settlers get no futurity.

I mean, I can kind of get that there might be a sort of disconnect about reading what to one might be a traumatic family event and see others discussing it in a kind of blasé, "hey this is kinda neat" way. Personally I'm fairly interested in family history, but some people think it's a strange hobby. While I don't really understand the person being so bothered as to write this email (perhaps your org got conflated with another history org like a few that do operate in bad faith? I wouldn't say they are the majority at all, but I think they DO exist) I also don't really understand you being so bothered so as to think this person should not be voting? Is it simply because of their iffy (stilted but overall good, I'd say) English skills? Their easily-offended nature? Or something else? Because as I said, I wouldn't interpret this in a hate-filled lens. I'd say, oh, misunderstanding, wish we could have had a discussion instead.

too many people that share their opinion vote

Why do you think that there is any chance that there are lot of people who share this opinion? This part:

Doubt if I’d buy that piece of land in [Small Town, Southern US State] for fear of the ancestor’s spirits, Native and African slaves wandering around looking for descendants in 2024 to be released from their bondage and inequities thrashed upon them for wealth by its oppressors.

really makes it sound like a fringe crazy---the left variant of the people screaming about adenochrome. As pointed out below, people who care about racial equality suddenly saying that judging others for their ancestry is ok are preemptively giving up their entire argument.

It's definitely not like a very active forum where merely supporting race blindness makes a comment one of the most controversial in your posting history. I would be much more worried that there are lot of people voting with this opinion.

But if they vote and too many people that share their opinion vote

Why do you think that there is any chance that there are lot of people who share this opinion?

I maybe should have included two "ifs" there to be more clear.

But if they vote and if too many people that share their opinion vote

Basically, I'm not certain how many people share their opinion. Receiving the email is some level of evidence that more people with that opinion exist. I also tried to add in the second to last paragraph to make it clear that this is not the only kind of interaction.

really makes it sound like a fringe crazy---the left variant of the people screaming about adenochrome. As pointed out below, people who care about racial equality suddenly saying that judging others for their ancestry is ok are preemptively giving up their entire argument.

Agreed that it doesn't make much sense. But I also think its silly to believe in ghosts. I have strong doubts that this is anywhere near the most brilliant holder of these beliefs.

It's definitely not like a very active forum where merely supporting race blindness makes a comment one of the most controversial in your posting history. I would be much more worried that there are lot of people voting with this opinion.

I don't really like either extreme. I have lots of evidence already of one side existing, its depressing to get evidence of the other extreme existing as well.

I don't really like either extreme. I have lots of evidence already of one side existing, its depressing to get evidence of the other extreme existing as well.

Here's one person's experience that might make at least part of it not so depressing: I've spent a lot of times in universities in extremely left-leaning areas (Like Jill Stein beating Trump extreme). There are routinely literal communists in my circles. I've never not been able to pull an IRL political argument back from extremes through tying everything back to core ideals like egalitarianism (and playing word games to avoid certain triggering phrases)---no standardized testing isn't a white supremacist plot, which alternatives do you think are going to be less biased? Rent control isn't as obviously good as you think it is, you have to be careful not to screw over people trying to move in, have you looked at what the actual minority groups you're speaking for think about police funding? Do you really trust elite college admissions committees to implement a non-transparent, "holistic" affirmative action policy without sneaking in a bunch of details that turn it into something mostly benefiting the privileged under the cover of tokenism? etc.

I therefore thought that both extremes were basically covered by the Lizardman Constant. Reading this forum has been one of the biggest shocks I've experienced to my beliefs about the world in the last 5-10 years (second to the Ukraine invasion I guess)---here are a large number intelligent people I share a country with who actually just have irreconcilable value differences; people who have such crazy policy preferences to me not because they disagree about facts like the far-left people I meet, but because they honestly believe that people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as.

Reading this forum has been one of the biggest shocks I've experienced to my beliefs about the world in the last 5-10 years (...) but because they honestly believe that people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as.

Huh? With all the constant complaints about racism, you're shocked at the possibility of racists existing?

Who are you even talking about? We have holocaust deniers, we have HBDers, but I don't remember seeing anyone say an intelligent black people shouldn't be treated as intelligent, because they're black. It sounds like you're whipping yourself into a frenzy.

Who are you even talking about? We have holocaust deniers, we have HBDers, but I don't remember seeing anyone say an intelligent black people shouldn't be treated as intelligent, because they're black.

Eh, nobody denies that intelligent black people exist, but we certainly have a few people who believe they are so rare as to be irrelevant, and/or that if any "good" blacks exist, they should be treated the same as all the others (e.g., expatriated to Africa, herded into reservations, or whatever).

and/or that if any "good" blacks exist, they should be treated the same as all the others (e.g., expatriated to Africa, herded into reservations, or whatever).

I am having trouble remembering anyone saying anything like that, and believe if any example is found it will already be a step or two removed from this description.

I honestly thought that most of the complaints about racism in the US were mostly caused by unconscious bias---things that the perpetrators would feel very guilty for and stop if they realized what they were doing. Otherwise, I thought the stories were some combination of exaggeration, cherry-picked bad luck, or very special circumstances---being in a certain part of Idaho or in a circa-2002 airport.

but I don't remember seeing anyone say an intelligent black people shouldn't be treated as intelligent, because they're black

People maybe don't say this---they'll question whether there are intelligent black people in the first place or say that people should be treated differently based on how far back their ancestry goes in the US. The first is a factual point that can be pretty quickly refuted, but the second is a values difference.

I honestly thought that most of the complaints about racism in the US were mostly caused by unconscious bias-

I'm talking less "complaints about racism in the US", and more complaints like "Trump supporters are racist". You're telling me all the post-2016 drama was about "unconscious bias"?

People maybe don't say this-

Well then I have a bit of an issue with making claims like "they honestly believe that people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as". I agree there are actual values disagreements here (no shortage of folks here supporting monstrous things like surrogacy), I don't even mind slapping negative valance labels on them, like "racism", anymore. But if you're going to make an elaborate descriptive statement about what people believe, you should make sure it's accurate.

The first is a factual point that can be pretty quickly refuted, but the second is a values difference.

The first is a point I haven't seen anyone make here, and the latter is already a step down from your original claim, and I still want to know who you're talking about, because it doesn't quite fit into any conversations I remember.

The first is a point I haven't seen anyone make here

See the discussion here.

and the latter already a step down from your original claim, and still want to know who you're talking about

Sorry, let me clarify---I also think there are a lot of people here who "honestly believe that people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as". I think the strongest evidence for this is what I linked above: one of the mods of this place saying that their posts supporting colorblindness tend to be very controversial because those posts are against the prevailing attitudes here.

There's another sort of of-topic interesting point: I'm not really sure that "people should be treated differently based on how far back their ancestry goes in the US" is significantly different from "people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as". The cardinal, anti-meritocratic sin of judging people by their descent instead of their own accomplishments appears just as strongly in in both cases.

I find it amazing that someone who's been here for a long time and is clearly pretty smart can end up with these interpretations of themotte's viewpoints, reading the same words I have but interpreting them so differently, lol.

From the post you linked about someone being downvoted for advocating colorblindness, I upvoted this reply:

As far as I'm concerned, the policy of acknowledging both race and additional information you have about a person is strictly superior to doing the same but ignoring race. I'd be more concerned if a black doctor was treating me since I know about how much AA they receive, I'd be less concerned if the doctor publicized his SAT score or had other objective markers for performance like a specialization in a field where his race counts for nothing (I doubt that's the case in the US, but I could be wrong). This is where AA in general taints by association, said doctor could absolutely be someone who managed to get in without not so subtle nudges, but since they usually lack a way to prove it, they're automatically discounted in the eyes of a rational agent with no additional information.

This is ... not speaking against meritocracy. If you have a way to measure someone's merit, use it, If not, because it's being suppressed, then use race as bayesian evidence. The replies to the post are evidence against, not for, your claim that a lot of mottizens believe 'people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as'.

More comments

See the discussion here.

I disagree with your interpretation somewhat. He's talking about inventors and scientists, so the extreme end of intelligence. This is "tails of the bell curve coming apart" argument rather than intelligent black people not existing.

There's another sort of of-topic interesting point: I'm not really sure that "people should be treated differently based on how far back their ancestry goes in the US" is significantly different from "people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as".

It's fine and well if this is how you see it, but there are people who don't agree. If you treat these things as interchangeable you'll be slandering your targets in front of them.

The cardinal, anti-meritocratic sin of judging people by their descent instead of their own accomplishments appears just as strongly in in both cases.

I don't think everything should be meritocratic, though. I wouldn't let some random dude take the place of my cousin in my family, just because he's more competent, and/or more pleasant to be around, for example.

More comments

here are a large number intelligent people I share a country with who actually just have irreconcilable value differences

I am certainly one of the people here with whom you would say you have “irreconcilable value differences.” However, I’m quite confident that our value differences are not actually “irreconcilable” because I used to have basically the same beliefs as you do now. I was a very committed progressive for nearly the entirety of my twenties, basically from the time I first developed a serious political consciousness. I believed very strongly in egalitarianism and would have been disgusted by “bigotry”, “prejudice”, “hate”, etc. Yet, here I am now, one of those far-right racialists. I “reconciled” myself to these beliefs over time as a result of life experiences and sustained observation of the world - and the people - around me. If I could undergo that process, I have no reason to think it’s impossible/implausible for the same to happen to you.

people who have such crazy policy preferences to me not because they disagree about facts like the far-left people I meet

We have the policy preferences we do because we disagree about important facts regarding humans and what they’re like. You flatter yourself by supposing that your beliefs are purely a matter of understanding facts, whereas our ideas are due to “values” which are, somehow, immutable, immune to persuasion, and presumably assigned to us at random at the moments of our respective births. This isn’t how “values” actually work at all, though. For an intelligent, thoughtful, and perceptive person, “values” should be subject to change in the exact same way that propositional/epistemic beliefs about reality are - in fact, values are simply a type of propositional belief. If you have the same “values” at age sixty that you did at age twenty, that’s probably because you just weren’t paying very much attention to the world or thinking very hard about anything.

I think I wasn't very clear---I totally agree that values differences are in principle reconcilable. I've even on record in this sub saying that values can be derived from other concerns and can definitely be argued.

My point was that I've found that specifically my values difference with most of the racialists on the Motte is irreconcilable. I've been bashing my head against this since my first post in this sub and basically consistently gotten replies that are unmoderated personal attacks instead of any substantive argument, particularly from a certain poster who believes only Russians have souls and his following. Again, one of my very early interactions with this community was someone ban-evading and calling me a slithering rat just for having the temerity to try and argue value points. I guess a lot of racialism is just motivated by idiosyncratic aesthetic preferences that are too strong to be overwhelmed by any other consideration---how is this anything but not irreconcilable?

This experience has not meaningfully changed in the last three years, although I will say that you have been much more reasonable. So trying again, do you mind explaining/linking to some place where you've explained these specific facts?

We have the policy preferences we do because we disagree about important facts regarding humans and what they’re like

I've even on record in this sub saying that values can be derived from other concerns and can definitely be argued.

In that post, you and Yassine are certainly not arguing that your views are in any sense reconcilable with inegalitarian/particularist views. The central argument there is that your specific set of values are the objectively and inarguably correct set of values, given everything that’s true about the world we live in. Nowhere in there is a suggestion that there’s any practical way for anyone to persuade you out of those values; quite the opposite. You’re saying that the only way someone with inegalitarian values could have any leg to stand on morally is if there were massive, fundamental structural/technological changes in the way our civilization is organized; barring that - something which will not happen in our lifetimes - your values are correct, and mine are not even worth discussing because they’re in the dustbin of (current) history. Not exactly an invitation to “reconciliation”.

I've been bashing my head against this since my first post in this sub and basically consistently gotten replies that are unmoderated personal attacks instead of any substantive argument

I read all of the replies to that post, and I can identify not a single one that I would consider an unmoderated personal attack devoid of substantive argument. Perhaps you’re referring to replies to other posts not linked to.

Again, one of my very early interactions with this community was someone ban-evading and calling me a slithering rat just for having the temerity to try and argue value points.

First off, you’re totally misinterpreting his use of the word “rats” in that post. He is using it as a shortening of “rationalists” - a group with which he himself identified at the time, and presumably still does. It was a very common term of self-identification at the time; there was an entire constellation of Tumblr users, for example, who proudly called themselves “Rat Tumblr” (or Rattumb for short), meaning just “Rationalist Tumblr”.

In that post, Ilforte is accusing you of aping the shibboleths of that subculture while working directly and intentionally to sabotage its aims and core values. In the segments of your post that he quotes, you very clearly do appear to be advocating using social shame to rigidly enforce speech taboos around certain topics - to not only ridicule and socially bully racialists, but to actually actively ruin their lives in a professional sense, or at least to celebrate those who do so. This is, indeed, a very serious violation of one of the core values of that subculture at the time, which was strongly opposed to that type of social shaming and speech tabooing.

I’m also unsure what you mean by accusing him of “ban evading”. That post is in /r/CultureWarRoundup, a totally separate splinter subreddit from /r/TheMotte, and not a sub from which I believe Ilforte was ever banned at any point. If you mean he’s ban evading by cross-posting a post of yours from The Motte and criticizing it… that’s not what ban evading is.

I guess a lot of racialism is just motivated by idiosyncratic aesthetic preferences that are too strong to be overwhelmed by any other consideration---how is this anything but not irreconcilable?

I’m sure that in some cases this is probably true! However, again, many of us racialists once shared your liberal priors, instincts, and aesthetics. Yet this was not enough to stop us from eventually adopting these views. Why do you think that is? Clearly in that case it can’t just be due to some ineffable, inarticulable, subconscious psychological difference between us and you, right? If I was progressive once, I must contain the capability to inhabit the brain states compatible with progressivism. And yet obviously I also simultaneously contain the capacity to inhabit the brain states compatible with rightism. Are you so certain that you lack that capacity?

This experience has not meaningfully changed in the last three years, although I will say that you have been much more reasonable. So trying again, do you mind explaining/linking to some place where you've explained these specific facts?

That would be difficult, simply given the lack of any effective search function in this site’s design. I have been meaning to put together a master spreadsheet of links to some of my more successful/important posts, such that I would be able to supply those links when prompted, but I have not gotten around to doing so. I don’t have time to pull those right now, but I’ll see what I can do at some point in the future. However, I would caution that I’m not confident the posts alone will be persuasive to you, since they will not be in combination with the specific and non-transferable life experiences I’ve had which caused me to be more sympathetic to these ideas than I likely would have otherwise.

Not exactly an invitation to “reconciliation”.

It's a point that can actually be argued---if you don't agree maybe you can describe why instead of pulling out about 150 words of debate-team kritik?

On the other hand, this:

However, I would caution that I’m not confident the posts alone will be persuasive to you, since they will not be in combination with the specific and non-transferable life experiences I’ve had which caused me to be more sympathetic to these ideas than I likely would have otherwise.

is not something that can be argued or lead to any kind of reconciliation. I either have the same life experiences as you or there's no way that I'll ever understand why your values are valid?

That would be difficult, simply given the lack of any effective search function in this site’s design. I have been meaning to put together a master spreadsheet of links to some of my more successful/important posts, such that I would be able to supply those links when prompted, but I have not gotten around to doing so

This is a frustratingly long post that somehow manages to dodge every possible chance to give a concrete argument on the actual value issue in favor of making meta points. I guess the most productive thing to do here then is wait until there's an actual substantive point to discuss. I mean, there hasn't been much in 3 years of trying, but maybe something better will come out of this.

May I remind you that the VP and the most recent Supreme Court justice were explicitly chosen on the basis of race?

Political appointees are picked for ridiculous reasons all the time. This isn't the most objectionable thing that's happened in VP or Supreme Court choices. I also don't think these choices really made a policy difference over the alternatives. The only material impact was to the other people who could've been chosen otherwise---like 5 people in the whole country who are doing pretty well in life either way and purposefully chose a career where they knew they would be judged in bizarre and unfair ways.

Do you have other examples that are a little more materially impactful/out of the ordinary? Maybe you can try for same level of material impact as Trump's policies on legal and skilled immigration that were very plausibly motivated by Stephen Miller/Motte-style explicit racialism?

Reading this forum has been one of the biggest shocks I've experienced to my beliefs about the world ... people who have such crazy policy preferences to me not because they disagree about facts like the far-left people I meet, but because they honestly believe that people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as.

My impression is that very few mottizens are racialists, in that they think that eg black people should be treated differently from white people 'solely' because of race? Some people here don't really believe in HBD and are 'liberals' or 'progressives' on immigration. There are people here who want to treat people differently based on IQ and genes, but with genetic predisposition to IQ or other traits set equal would happily let in the few Nigerian or Iraqi neuroscientists if their merit was assessed accurately. There are people here who are more like normal American conservatives on the topic, and would judge people not on their race or IQ but their culture, their willingness to assimilate to American ideals and national identity, etc. I think all of those outnumber people like SecureSignals

here are a large number intelligent people I share a country with who actually just have irreconcilable value differences; people who have such crazy policy preferences to me not because they disagree about facts like the far-left people I meet, but because they honestly believe that people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as.

This might be less clear than you think. I think quite possibly the largest contingent of people here are in favor of colorblind meritocracy, roughly. But in the absence of data, then your priors would be affected by race. That is, you should think a random Asian you meet is probably a bit smarter than average, until you actually get to know them or they go through some other filtration mechanism so that you know more accurately. This is technically treating people differently by race, but it's due to variation and knowledge constraints, not value differences.

That said, you only said that here are a large number, and the more substantially racist minority may still be a large number to you.

I think quite possibly the largest contingent of people here are in favor of colorblind meritocracy, roughly. But in the absence of data, then your priors would be affected by race.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I think the most prominent writer fitting the view you describe is Richard Hanania. I'm searching through comments to see what this place thinks about his writings on racial issues---here's something sitting at +28 against it, though here's another at +14 possibly in favor though it's hard to tell what they would think in the perfect world where colorblindness was possible. (I'm not super good at searching for things, maybe you can do better?). Somehow this still leaves me with the impression that the voting population here is further towards racialism that Hanania.

I also think the link I gave above about what one of the mods thinks about the general attitude towards colorblindness is also very strong evidence.

Oh, but Hanania's known for more generally being a troll and bothering people, so I wouldn't trust opinions of him as reflective of the popularity of this one stance (though I think he not infrequently has interesting things to say). I don't currently have time right now, but maybe I'll look later.

I had generally similar experiences in college. Could talk with far extremes on either side but you can still come out thinking some version of mistake theory where everyone is just trying to do their best, and we just disagree on how to get there.

Outside of college was always the real kicker. People in college always seemed at times a bit fluid with their values, or that their values were at least subject to some social desirability bias. Well once you can start picking your social circles and you've done it for over a decade, those values seem to calcify.

Doubt if I’d buy that piece of land in [Small Town, Southern US State] for fear of the ancestor’s spirits, Native and African slaves wandering around looking for descendants in 2024 to be released from their bondage and inequities thrashed upon them for wealth by its oppressors.

I strongly suspect she's otherwise a loud member of the "trust the science" tribe.

Sigh.

More effort, less sneering, please.

Oregon Goes To The Purge

The court reaffirmed its provisional class certification of the Custody Class and expanded it statewide. The court then found that Petitioners were likely to succeed on the merits of their Sixth Amendment and due process claims and subsequently “order[ed] that counsel must be provided within seven days of the initial appearance, or within seven days of the withdrawal [of] previously appointed counsel,” and “[f]ailing this, defendants must be released from custody, subject to reasonable conditions imposed by [Oregon] Circuit Court judges.”

Some quick background: the Eight Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees a right "to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence" in some criminal trials at certain stages of the trial. There's a whole lot of complexity of where and how that applies, but for those who can't afford a lawyer of their own, for covered crimes, the state eventually evaluates whether the defendant is indigent, and if so appoints a public defender, eg @ymeshkout. But this is neither glamorous, fun, well-paying, or even particularly safe work, so there is seldom a glut of people jumping up and down to do that job.

In 2019, a group called the Sixth Amendment Center was commissioned by Oregon state to review the public defence office, and their final report was highly critical, highlighting heavy workloads and huge pressures to close cases with as few hours as possible. Public defenders in Oregon began (or more cynically, were, given the 6AC report) lobbying for changes to their maximum caseloads and reimbursements, and while it's not accidental that their solution would have involved getting more pay for less work, this eventually did get a cap on maximum cases and some additional funding, targeting an estimated 30ish full-time employees added to 400 then-present. During COVID, a combination of increased juggling of cases due to the slower pace of concluding trials, varying treatments of different classes of crime, (and interpersonal issues) only added to the matter; case backlogs became the norm, instead of a rare exception.

In this case, the jailed plaintiffs argued that they were facing the court without competent counsel, or being held indefinitely before trial, due to the lack of indigent defense available. In several cases, they were arraigned and/or had bail hearings without having seen a defense lawyer.

And as a result, the federal judiciary will be letting them loose on the streets, with a pinky promise to arrest them harder should they reoffend.

That title isn't entirely fair. While the original district court injunction required jails to free anyone who'd been jailed seven days without an attorney, the order was later revised to exclude those "charged with murder and aggravated murder", or who have their release revoked, or who fired their own attorney. And at least theoretically, non-jail custody is still on the table, such as GPS monitoring or probation check-ins, though the majority opinion's logic about their effectiveness ("The dissent does not explain why any of these standard measures would fail") is not the most compelling.

But with the class certification, this applies to all jailed defendants within the state of Oregon and the court not-so-subtly invites further such preliminary injunctions from other states in the 9th Circuit ("The State of Washington is facing similar problems and consequences"). While the initial class claims 'only' a little over a hundred defendants presently jailed, the injunction itself is prospective, binding all future criminal prosecutions, with the corresponding impact on any police or prosecutor interest in bringing such charges.

  • There's some obvious system failure/'sleepwalking into disaster' problems, here: the opinion jabs at the dissent near its end with "Consistent with the Sixth Amendment, Oregon could solve this problem overnight simply by paying appointed counsel a better wage. It is Oregon, and not the district court, that created this crisis." The dissent points out in turn that yes, Oregon could pay appointed counsel more, and if that would solve things overnight, why not order that instead?

  • ((Because the current plan involves increasing pay and additional hiring of almost five hundred new public defenders over the next 6 years, which would double the public defender full-time staff, while absolutely no one retires, moves away, or leaves public defense. Hilariously optimistic and too late!))

  • But this genuinely is the sorta thing that can be solved, but probably not in any magic wand sorta way. Six years is a pretty unrealistically optimistic pace for the hiring of five hundred public defenders, but if they'd started in 2019 and then put a stricter limit on caseloads, we'd at least be a lot closer to an actual fix, and even recognizing the benefit of hindsight looking back and seeing 'public defense bill with strong bipartisan support derailed over climate change bill that did nothing' is kinda morbid. It's hard to get good numbers on how many public defenders work different classes of cases, or even what classes of cases fall under each category, but it's also hard to believe that there's been a great focus on optimal allocation of present public defense resources.

  • I guess this is someone's idea of solving it? Which points, perhaps, to a more critical problem than even the "sleepwalking into disaster" bit: even if someone else does respond, you might not like their response.

  • There's a little bit to quibble about on the logic of the decision itself, most notably as to whether the delays so far were unreasonable enough to require, or that the court hearings so far 'matter' in a way that the Eight Amendment counts -- it's very far from clear that bail hearings would have looked that different with counsel present, given the defendants. There's a lot to be said about motivations: no small number of the actors here are pretty hard on the 'eliminate cash bail' train, and a few want that as part of "limiting the reliance on the formal criminal justice system for low-level, non-violent offense". I can't find direct calls to Defund the Police by the less reputable orgs involved, but I also haven't exactly gone searching.

  • On the other hand, just because they're bad in other ways, doesn't mean that they're wrong here. There's little to recommend the phrase "The court required Mr. Owens to waive counsel at that hearing in order for the court to consider releasing him". While many of the plaintiffs face potential sentences exceeding their likely time in jail before trial, the mere possibility of pre-trial time served exceeding a sentence -- of 'sentence first, verdict afterwards' -- makes an absolute mockery of the justice system.

  • Even if we were to presume the majority of these jailed plaintiffs guilty (which we're not supposed to do, and there's a slim chance may even be incorrect), there's a bigger problem where thousands of indigent defendants who were released on various bails or supervisory custody already, for court cases that will happen whenever the state gets around to actually having two sides, which means a sizable fraction of those cases probably won't happen. Witnesses will age out or become unavailable or their memories unreliable, doubt increases, chain of custody for physical evidence becomes increasingly tangled, so on. There is actually a federal statutory public interest in a speedy trial, and it's there for a reason.

  • There are even some dumb culture war matters. People following the Trump trial in New York were trying to game theory out timelines approaches for federal appeals and kept getting stuck on Younger abstention. Here, definitionally, all jailed plaintiffs were in the first stages of a state prosecution and thus unable to get relief in a federal court, but the Ninth Circuit has given a delightfully fast answer to that: Younger is already screwed when it's Important, "even assuming all four factors set forth... are met".

I have essentially no sympathy for the government. This is a problem of their own creation. "Yes your honor, we failed our constitutional obligation to ensure criminal defendants have adequate representation but the correct remedy is we can hold these people in jail forever until we get around to fulfilling that obligation."

Maybe.

Alternately, the problem is that civilization is unravelling. The systems in place that work when incidents of crime similar are to Japan break down quickly when the incidents of crime approach that of Haiti. You can't scale a system of public defenders in response to exponential increases in criminality.

I looked up the county I grew up in old FBI statistics. There were 0 to 1 murders a year. These days it's over 100. Per capita it probably hasn't changed as much as that might imply as the population grew a lot. Even so, it began having some serious issues with crime that didn't come out in the wash of "per capita" hand waving.

It would be nice if we got a Bukele that would re-civilize our cities, but I'm pretty sure the felon, aspiring felon, and felon sympathetic demographic has just grown too strong. Can't think of any other reason so many cities have adopted policies of "decriminalizing" theft and lesser assaults.

It would be nice if we got a Bukele that would re-civilize our cities

Many of our criminals aren't so dumb as to tattoo their criminal status on their skin.

A whole lot of them are dumb enough to make their membership in criminal gangs public in other ways, like social media posts and rap songs.

But we can't even criminalize gang loitering, see Chicago v. Morales. Mere membership is likely going to be a protected First Amendment right to association. Bukele doesn't have this problem.

Can't think of any other reason so many cities have adopted policies of "decriminalizing" theft and lesser assaults.

Welfare state + ageing population -> reduced resources for anything else, including law & order and defence (ironically, what a classical liberal would regard as close to the entire purposes of the state).

I looked up the county I grew up in old FBI statistics. There were 0 to 1 murders a year. These days it's over 100. Per capita it probably hasn't changed as much as that might imply as the population grew a lot.

I don't understand the problem. If your population grows by a factor of 100, you will need to raise the number of policemen and lawyers also by a factor of 100, which you should be able to do because the number of taxpayers also increased by a factor of 100.

The population did not grow by a factor of 100.

Also, the pipeline of qualified candidates to maintain civilization does not grow as fast as unchecked 3rd world immigration, even if the bureaucracy could grow at that pace. 3rd world behavior fills the gaps.

the correct remedy is we can hold these people in jail forever

Not without having them parade through the US Capitol building first.

I don’t get it. What’s the connection, here?

don’t get it. What’s the connection, here?

He's suggesting they'd be in prison if they were right-wing protesters rather than random criminals.

the Eight Amendment of the United States Constitution

Sixth. The eighth is cruel and unusual punishment. The sixth amendment provides the right to "have the assistance of counsel for [ ] defense."

I think the costs on society for a criminal trial are likely high:

  • You need police officers to investigate
  • You need forensic experts
  • You need a prosecutor
  • You need a judge and possibly a full jury
  • You need a public defender
  • In the case of a guilty verdict, you need to pay for incarceration

I find the system to pressure defendants into guilty pleas by threatening them with much longer sentences if they insist on their constitutional right to trial by jury abominable. Giving them a discount of 10% of their sentence if the case is clear-cut as a cost saving measure might be reasonable, but any more than that seems silly. If your suspect is guilty of a crime which will earn them ten years, don't offer them a plea deal for three years, just drag them in front of a jury. And if you have reasonable doubts that they are guilty of the ten year offense, don't threaten them with it.

I would be surprised if the public defenders cost more than a third of the expected total costs of a criminal trial. (In fact, I think that there is an argument to be made that the prosecutor and the defender should receive roughly equal compensation -- both are experts which will require a similar amount of time to familiarize themselves with the case, and paying one side more than the other will skew the results.)

If a state can't afford a separate prosecutor and judge, it can't afford a justice system.

If a state can't afford a defender, it can't afford a justice system.

If your suspect is guilty of a crime which will earn them ten years, don't offer them a plea deal for three years, just drag them in front of a jury.

I've got a copy of Stuntz's The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, so one big issue immediately comes to mind. The problem is that however good this might sound, and however abominable threatening longer sentences for exercising one's right to a jury trial may be, we're just not able to do this.

It's hard to get exact numbers, because most the data is on plea bargains as a fraction of convictions rather than of defendants, so you need to find the overall conviction rates — and thus acquittal rates — to compute that, and it's somewhat harder to find (and varies from state to state). But for the Federal government, you've got plea bargains at 98% of convictions, combined with a (2012) 93% overall conviction rate, to give something like 91% of all Federal criminal defendants pleading guilty. For the states, these numbers are a bit lower, something like 95% of convictions; which, for example, Texas, with an 84% average conviction rate (higher for misdemeanors than felonies), gives approximately 80% of all criminal defendants pleading out.

Thus, if something like one out of every nine Federal defendants who would currently take a plea deal insisted on a trial, you'd double the number of trials. If half of them did so, the number of trials would increase sixfold. (Similarly, one quarter of Texas plea-takers choosing trial to double trials, and half choosing juries would triple the court cases.)

Our systems already strained, overloaded, and prone to long delays with just the load it has now. I can't see any path to the vast expansion that would be necessary if any significant fraction more insisted on their day in court.

Now, the usual answer many people give to this issue is that we need to find a way to reduce the load by charging fewer things as crimes. While you might get some traction there at the Federal level, the problem is then that there isn't really all that much of the "Three Felonies a Day"-type offenses. Even the "mere drug possession"* cases make up a much smaller fraction of convictions than many people think. The bulk of felonies remain things like murder, assault, theft, rape, etc. that pretty much every society criminalizes. In this very example, we're already seeing many offenders of this sort being "let loose on the streets" — can we really picture even more "legalizing crime" than we already have?

If a state can't afford a separate prosecutor and judge, it can't afford a justice system.

If a state can't afford a defender, it can't afford a justice system.

Yes, that's exactly the point — with the crime rates of the current American population, we really can't afford a traditional Anglo-American justice system.

This is a point I've been talking about online for years. When you look at things like police per capita, police funding, prisoners per capita, and then set them against violent crime per capita, and compare internationally, the US winds up an unusual outlier — because we, pretty much uniquely, combine the police force of a wealthy "first world" nation… and the crime rates of a "third word" one. On the prisoner/crime ratio, we come out as locking up less of our criminals than many European nations… it's just that we have a crime rate many times higher. On Wikipedia's list of intentional homicide rate per 100,000 people (a proxy for violent crime in general), the United States sits right between Zimbabwe** and Yemen. It's four times higher than in France, over five times higher than that of the UK or Finland, eight times that of Germany, and thirty-two times that of Japan.

To change our current situation, we're looking at radically reforming and vastly expanding our entire justice system (and associated expenditure), or else the population either turning to non-state methods of addressing crime.

* It's my understanding that in many cases where an individual is convicted and sentenced for just illegal drug or gun possession, it's because they were also charged with other, more violent offenses and pled down to those — the plea bargain going in that direction because crimes of possession are the easiest, relatively, to prove in court — thus making the odds of losing in court the highest, and the value for the defendant of pursuing a jury trial the lowest — while the other charges would likely involve attempting to elicit testimony from victims and witnesses who live in communities where "snitches get stitches" and such.

** Where, recently, police were reportedly driven from a police station by goblins.

It seems like a widespread problem in the US that public defenders get paid like shit, even though most of them have huge loans from law school. Or more generally: the people who need a lawyer the most are also the people least able to afford one.

A federal government program that pays off law school after 10 years as a full-time public defender (and covers most interest in the meantime) seems reasonable. Or just a scholarship for people with high LSAT scores that covers full tuition in exchange for x years of service, with clawback provisions.

Some similar programs exist in many states and federal law, albeit with a few additional requirements. They have downsides -- they unavoidably attract younger lawyers with less trial experience -- but they're better than not having the programs.

There are increasing efforts to increase pay (eg, see the costs analysis assumptions for the Oregon bulk expansion).

But the money is only one side of the problem: public defense remains extremely unglamorous, unfun, unpleasant, and often unsafe work. Ymeskhout can point to clients who've stalked their public defenders, and it goes up pretty quickly from there.

A federal government program that pays off law school after 10 years as a full-time public defender (and covers most interest in the meantime) seems reasonable.

As gattsuru mentioned - this program does exist on the federal level. The problem with it is that (A) there is a question of whether it will still exist in 10 years when you need all your debt forgiven, and (B) the $150-250,000 it ends up forgiving is frankly peanuts compared to the $225,000 starting annual salary BigLaw firms are offering. So, you could go work as a Public Defender for $70,000 a year and by year ten maybe break six figures in exchange for what can be called a single lump sum payment of $250,000 - or you could go work at Dewey Screwem and Howe for $225,000 a year and in a decade be making half a million a year.

So while Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) does attract people to prosecutor and public defender's offices, it will struggle to attract the highest qualified law students who graduated from the top law schools. BigLaw slots are generally limited to the top 20% or so of all law students in the country, so it's not drawing away everyone, but it is drawing away the vast majority of the classes at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, and the top 10% of everyone in the top 50 law schools in the country.

It's too bad reading the law isn't a more popular option for people to enter into the legal profession. Would provide both a huge boost in manpower available to assist with high time things like public defense and eventually create a larger pool of attorneys with more relevant experience to make a trial system work.

The dissent points out in turn that yes, Oregon could pay appointed counsel more, and if that would solve things overnight, why not order that instead?

In general, I think there is some respect for both Federalism and separation of powers more broadly that would prevent a Federal Court from mandating such a thing, not least because it would be unclear what would fund it.

From a reach perspective, telling Oregon that it cannot jail people except consistent with (their view, I disagree, obviously) of the Constitution is the most clean judicial remedy. This is much like the prison-conditions litigation in other States -- the courts cannot build and administer more prisons, so the only thing they can do for overcrowding is give the State a cap. (Strained analogy, but you get my point).

the Ninth Circuit has given a delightfully fast answer to that: Younger is already screwed when it's Important, "even assuming all four factors set forth... are met".

This might be the plaintiffs' downfall. This Court absolutely loves procedural rulings.

I mean, letting them loose kind of is the legal thing to do under the circumstances.

I think this kind of situation probably calls for a declaration of emergency, though, or failing that opening the floodgates on gun control and self-defence so that robbery becomes a "die horribly the third time you try it" proposition. If you re-enact the Wild West you'll re-enact vigilance committees, and if you can't avoid that the best option for governmental legitimacy is to get the hell out of their way.

I think one of the strangest instances of a woke injection into a film/story just occurred and it seems to be flying under the radar. FULL SPOILERS AHEAD for Under the Bridge, a Hulu murder mystery show that’s based on a non-fiction book of the same name. For what it’s worth, I thought the show was pretty good despite what I’m writing here.

In real life, Rebecca Godfrey wrote the Under the Bridge non-fiction book. In the Hulu show, Rebecca Godfrey is a character portrayed by Riley Keough. Godfrey (speaking about her character henceforth) was born in Vancouver Island in Canada, moved to New York to start a writing career, and then at the start of the show, she moved back to Vancouver Island temporarily in the late 1990s to write a new book on her hometown.

But soon after moving back, 14 year old Reena Virk is murdered seemingly by a group of her friends. The story is so shocking and intriguing that Godfrey begins investigating the crime independently to write about it. In addition to talking to a bunch of the kids involved, Godfrey reconnects with Cam Bentland, a local police officer investigating the murder. Cam is a Native American who was adopted by white parents, and Cam is also implied to be Godfrey’s ex girlfriend. They soon rekindle their romantic relationship and begin using each other to get different informational angles on the case.

Most of the show consists of uncovering what happened with the murders, and for the sake of this post, I don’t need to go into it. Basically, a group of very troubled girls (aged 14-16) got pissed off at one of their own and decided to beat the shit out of her. Then one girl and another guy took it way too far and murdered her.

Godfrey becomes a key media player in the very high-profile case. She works both with and against the police to push the kids in different ways, and at one point, she passionately argues for the innocence of one of the main accused kids. Meanwhile, Cam eventually discovers that she was adopted by her white parents through the Adopt Indian Métis, in which the government encouraged white parents to adopt Native American orphans. Cam feels disgusted by the revelation, disgusted with her parents for being involved and never telling her, and disgusted with herself for being a cop, so she leaves the police force and decides to try to connect with her real family.

To reiterate, this is based on a true story. Reena Virk really was brutally murdered by her friends, and Rebecca Godfrey really did write a book about the murder. So it might surprise you to learn that in real life:

  • Rebecca Godfrey had no direct involvement in the murder investigations. She wrote her book after everything occurred.

  • Cam Bentland, the Native America cop, was entirely invented by the show.

  • By extension, Godfrey’s lesbian romance with Cam was entirely invented.

  • I have no in depth knowledge of Godfrey, but she was married to a man, and I haven’t seen any evidence that she was a lesbian or bisexual.

  • While there really were some heinous laws regarding Natives in Canada, none of that stuff had anything to do with the murder of Reena Virk or the Under the Bridge book.

  • Godfrey presumably approved of televised adaptation of the show, but she died at the beginning of its production, so it’s unclear if she approved of any of these additions to the real story

Discussion points:

  • If Godfrey wasn’t aware of these changes, then Hulu’s writers portrayed a presumable straight woman as a lesbian/bi woman in a fictionalized account of her. Is that a step too far in wokeness for the average media consumer?

  • Can someone clue me in on what actually happened with the Adopt Indian Métis program and programs like it? In the show, it’s implied (I think) to be literal kidnapping of Native American children by the Canadian government, but I have a hard time believing that’s true.

  • Maybe this is too broad or vague, but is it disrespectful in some sense to take a real tragic story in which most of the participants are still alive and use it to prop up unrelated woke narratives? I’m not meaning this in an obviously baity or culture war-y way. I mean, does calling that “disrespectful” make any sense? Is the concept of respecting true stories in this sense valid?

Can someone clue me in on what actually happened with the Adopt Indian Métis program and programs like it? In the show, it’s implied (I think) to be literal kidnapping of Native American children by the Canadian government, but I have a hard time believing that’s true.

The view of natives by educated liberals was very different at the time. Now people think of them like wood elves with a sacred culture. At the time they were viewed more as backwards illiterate hillbillies who needed to be brought into the modern era.

So there were no foster homes in native areas. If a child needed to be put into the system they were shipped off to a city and adopted. This was before birth control pills so young mothers having children they couldn't take care of was more common.

There's still a lot of debate about how aggressive social workers should be, so I'm sure it is easy to find cases where the child should have stayed in the home.

Can someone clue me in on what actually happened with the Adopt Indian Métis program and programs like it? In the show, it’s implied (I think) to be literal kidnapping of Native American children by the Canadian government, but I have a hard time believing that’s true.

There apparently was encourage adoption by white parents back in the 60's which was later called the 60's scoop. I tried to parse the article about why the kids were taken (eg was it from abusive or neglectful families?), but the article states it was just to place indigenous kids with white families to raise them with white culture. The article also makes reference to a program in the 50's when children were taken from single mothers to place with families.

Similar policies happened in Australia until the 1970's leading to what is now referred to as the Stolen Generations. Even though anyone involved in decision making on the policy is either long since retired or dead and the federal government issued a formal apology in 2008, it keeps being brought up in media by the usual issue motivated groups as an example of modern day racism. What is ignored though is the high endemic rates of child abuse, sexual abuse and neglect that are rife in indigenous communities even to this day.

I've always wanted to see a detailed side-by-side analysis of life outcomes for the 'stolen generation' versus those who remained in remote communities. I've got a sneaking suspicion that the stolen generations actually benefited from the transaction

It's precisely because they benefited they can be enough of a fixture in the culture to make a fuss. The kids who got adopted can use the education and stability they got from it to make a fuss about how it robbed them of their culture. While those who got to experience the culture first hand probably just died of alcohol poisoning or are trying to forget they ever grew up on the rez.

It's hard to judge - the stats that we have generally compare members of the Stolen Generations (in Australia) typically compare them either to non-Aboriginal people of the same cohort, or to other Aboriginal people in general, rather than to members of remote communities.

These statistics suggest that an SGer is on average worse off than the median Aboriginal - but as you say, SGers were specifically selected from among the worst-off Aboriginals. Is an SGer better or worse off than they would have been had they not been removed? That's the question we don't have an answer for. AIHW's full 2018 report is here. From page 74 on they show that SGers were worse off than 'the reference group', but the reference group is Aboriginal people in general, not remote communities. We have some stats on health in remote communities here and here, but cross-referencing those is more work than I'm up for at the moment. Suffice to say that we know remote communities are significantly worse off.

Yeah the Aboriginal statistics are pretty inherently tainted by the amount of 1/16th suburban Sydneysiders who get meshed in with the residents of Meekatharra. I did a year in Darwin and until you've been out there it's hard to really understand what the situation on the ground is like with the remote populations.

I’d be interested to hear more about your experiences. What’s the situation like on the ground?

Weren't a lot of them half-caste? Seems to complicate things- would they have been treated as full community members had they stayed, or would they have been discriminated against? I'm sure it varied from community to community. Did they have an IQ advantage over their coethnics, or were the white men who impregnated aboriginal women an example of not sending our best? Etc, etc.

would they have been treated as full community members had they stayed, or would they have been discriminated against?

IIRC this was part of the justification for removing them from the communities after some bad headlines around treatment of half-caste children

I agree that it would be interesting to see a detailed analysis like that and I realize you aren't saying large QOL improvements would be exculpatory ... but reading your comment made me think about discussions about progressive indoctrination in US schools.

It's plausible that learning progressive manners and beliefs will give children a substantial leg up, socio-economically. Depending on events, graduates of the Evanston, IL public schools system might be on average, better-positioned than those from, say, the Florida suburbs in the US of 2045. But I don't think many parents resisting leftward changes to their public schools would be impressed by that.

The analogy is quarter-baked, but just contemplating it weakens my openness to arguments that material improvements can justify inter-generational dispossession (for lack of a better term)

No, a Remote Amazon Tribe Did Not Get Addicted to Porn

A Times story about the arrival of high-speed internet in a remote Amazon tribe spiraled into its own cautionary tale on the dark side of the web.

Ok, which one of you chuds posted harmful misinformation?

During a weeklong visit, I saw how they used the internet to communicate between villages, chat with faraway loved ones and call for help in emergencies. Many Marubo also told me they were deeply concerned that the connection with the outside world would upend their culture, which they had preserved for generations by living deep in the forest. Some elders complained of teenagers glued to phones, group chats full of gossip and minors who watched pornography

As a result, the story we published June 2 was in part about the Marubo people’s introduction to the ills of the internet.

But after publication, that angle took on a whole different dimension.

Over the past week, more than 100 websites around the world have published headlines that falsely claim the Marubo have become addicted to porn. Alongside those headlines, the sites published images of the Marubo people in their villages.

The New York Post was among the first, saying last week that the Marubo people was “hooked on porn.” Dozens quickly followed that take. TMZ’s headline was perhaps the most blunt: “TRIBE’S STARLINK HOOKUP RESULTS IN PORN ADDICTION!!!”

Ok, what am I missing? This is a paragraph from the original article:

After only nine months with Starlink, the Marubo are already grappling with the same challenges that have racked American households for years: teenagers glued to phones; group chats full of gossip; addictive social networks; online strangers; violent video games; scams; misinformation; and minors watching pornography

There is no "some elders complained" here, it's a straightforward portrayal of the Marubo as a collective being afflicted with, among other things, minors watching porn. "Amazon tribe hooked on porn" is a decently accurate headline-length summary. Sure, shit got sensationalized, but that's a far cry from "falsely claim".

I've had a longstanding gripe with the NYT, Vox, and other supposedly higher-quality outlets, where they essentially prime their audience to read their content a certain way, while maintaining plausible deniability if anyone calls them out, but this is the first time I saw them go after someone for going with the intended reading.

What happened here, did the wrong people agree with them, so the story has to be called off?

The Marubo are doing an internet culture speedrun. First their embarrassing details are posted to the world by the NYT, then some of it is taken out of context and proliferated by fake news sites, now everyone at their work thinks they are porn addicts (and they all have the same unique last name!). We need to send Tucker Carlson down there to do a new special: “this isolated tribe received StarLink. Now they watch porn while being doxxed and slandered by the news.”

If any of them can learn english and learn how to make videos, they're going to make bank as a internet streamer/influencer.

By the time we're done with them, they might indeed decide to axe those Starlink antennas, and all will be right with the world again.

Does this count as a squeal or reboot of The Gods Must Be Crazy? In the original they solve the problem by throwing the demonic device off the edge of the world, but I suppose an axe might suffice.

I don’t think it’s hard to see what happened. The writer included the comment about porn because it was salacious and because he knew it would be reprinted, and what journalists want above else is for their writing to be read. On the other hand, after it went viral, he received a lot of angry and upset messages (no doubt delivered via Starlink) from the villagers he had been staying with for a month and who had trusted him to report on them complaining that they were being humiliated in the Brazilian press (which, again, they can now read and watch) because of his article. So he felt bad and wrote this follow-up.

...Blaming it all on other people who read it exactly like he wanted them to...

Kinda low, no?

Your friend annoys you so you call her a whore in front of your other mutual friend, exaggerating some relatively tame story in the process, expecting that this will remain a minor anecdote that will do no real harm to her reputation. Then said mutual friend decides for her own purposes to spread this news far and wide, without any context, with some embellishments (you said she fucked her boyfriend in a club bathroom, the rumor is now that she does this with many men all the time) and then your friend calls you crying telling you you ruined her life and you’re evil.

Change the scenario and most people have been in some version of this situation.

exaggerating some relatively tame story in the process, expecting that this will remain a minor anecdote that will do no real harm to her reputation

I feel a certain tension between deliberately making the story more salacious, and expecting it to do no real damage.

In any case "feeling bad" and making amends by blaming the mutual still seems pretty low to me.

Is anyone else getting the impression that since the start of the Great Awokening it has become standard practice in the mainstream media to portray the porn industry and its consequences in a categorically negative light, even if it's done in passing, like in this case? This wasn't always the case, as far as I can tell.

It was a useful weapon against the Christians: "come with us, and have all the sexy fun times those awful prudes won't let you!" Now that the Christians are out of the way, that can be reneged upon, especially because a lot of those formerly-forbidden sexy fun times actually are bad. Similarly, I see gerrymandering of the definition of 'consent' so that 'nonconsensual' can be identical with 'bad.'

An interesting parallel with the Russian Revolution, which started out being sexually liberatory, until it was decided that sexuality outside of marriage was "uncommunist" and "bourgeois decadence" (for the non-nomenklatura).

As Orwell discusses in Nineteen-Eighty Four, there is a tension between totalising ideologies and sex, because if you're thinking about the latter, you're not thinking about the revolution, and it forms loyalties that are transient, chaotic, personal, and potentially conflicting with loyalty to the ideology's preferred authority. And Dionysus unleashed really IS dangerous.

I think another factor is Mrs. Grundy. When Christian conservativism is the norm (at least when she is growing up) her prudishness will take a Christian conservative form. However, when progressive liberalism is the norm, it will take a progressive liberal form. I remember noticing this with the Feminist Society at university 15 years ago, who literally dressed like puritans (modest all-black clothing) and would almost literally march on stage to give their pre-agreed speeches at student meetings, like a set of militant evangelicals, to explain why "Pimp My ..." marketing or "Lads' Mags" should be banned from campus.

Yeah, it’s probably no coincidence that the increasing normalization of pornography, and its widespread marketization and distribution via VHS technology coincided with the emergence and increasing influence of the Christian Right. It also served as a useful bait to them, for sure. It also bears mentioning that, as far as I know, they naturally brought up all sorts of arguments against porn consumption, but these were markedly not the anti-porn arguments that have become normalized in current discourse (see my other comment above). Had this not been the case, I guess they’d have had more appeal among non-religious centrists.

It's schizophrenic. It's always going to be seen as tawdy and low-brow, and earnest arguments that its consumption is sexually healthy ring hollow to most ears. At the same time, my weekly news feed seems to regularly drop an article or two about 'empowered porn stars and all their money' or 'a porn star was invited for a school book reading and incels can't handle it'. Few people want to be porn stars or would recommend it as a career, but there's a reflexive defensiveness against anybody who might ask 'what special qualifications does this whore have to read to my 5th grader?'. There's also 'former porn star, despite being forewarned, has trouble getting a normie job after exiting and isn't that so unfair'.

Hardcore straight porn is ugh the worst, but exploring your mommy kink with roleplay and bizarre anal insertions for the viewing pleasure of strangers is both normal and an exotic frontier you should explore assuming you're not close-minded. No, there is no sense to be made from this.

I think there's some "sense" to be made from this, in that we're seeing multiple principles supported by the modern progressive left running into conflict with each other. One set of principles is that women should have full and complete autonomy to pursue whatever they want, and that any stigma, pressure, suggestion, or differential treatment whatsoever (even imagined) denies women complete autonomy. By their lights, if you treat a prostitute or porn star differently to a teacher or doctor (in settings where their professions aren't directly relevant) because of their professions, then you are denying those women complete autonomy. Furthermore, these people should actually be celebrated, which can be justified on multiple bases: equal treatment (we celebrate teachers, so why not prostitutes?), historical rebalancing (we've stigmatized prostitutes in the past, so we should celebrate them to make up for it), or personal bravery (we've stigmatized prostitutes, so any woman who takes it on in the face of that stigmatization is clearly stunning and brave and someone worthy of presenting as a role model).

The other set of principles is that straight male sexual desires are highly suspect at best and most likely evil and ought to be suppressed. This translates to celebrating porn stars while denigrating the people they serve.

I knew someone who embodied this confusion, from a very generic middle-class Western background. She was very excited to do "Slut Walks", but she was worried that they were being appropriated by "actually slutty women" i.e. strippers, prostitutes, pornstars etc., and she's opposed to the sex industry in all its forms. Her ethos was basically that sex workers should never be judged negatively (at least if women or gay) but also that their industries should be abolished.

The myth of hypoagency rears its head again. Women are always victims: they might end up being part of something worthy of condemnation, but it's always because men forced them to as part of a plot to subjugate women. They're hapless objects who aren't capable of meaningful agency.

Popular feminism is infested with this ideology, which manages to be deeply sexist and reductive against both men and women.

Yes, it's a strange yet common view, where women are both inert objects AND people whose autonomous choices regarding abortion, adultery, prostitution etc. are sacred.

It’s not a myth. Women really do have less agency than men, and less ability to do things like resist pressure to do stupid things or go against the crowd.

Yes, we should stop pretending they have agency in other areas, too. But acknowledging that a large percentage of female sex workers do not actually want to be there and that sex work is inherently more prone to exploitation than other shitty low wage jobs for this exact reason isn’t wrong.

There are plenty of people who hate literally every job out there, but like Stuff. Depending on how expensive the Stuff you want is, you compromise more of yourself. Women don't like selling themselves, but if they didn't like Stuff so much they could just pick up a shift at the macs I literally see 'Now Hiring' every macs in every country I go to.

Pop feminisms influence on the concept of selling sex is adequately examined by others in this thread, but given my own (relatively extensive by this boards standardsl) experience with hookers, there is extremely little evidence of them lacking agency or awareness. Barring the women exploitated by Moroccans/Turk johnnys in Amsterdam/Denmark and the weird shit for western slavs, most working girls seem to by exercising an excessive amount of agency. At least here in Asia they have large freedom in changing managers, are literally on a high-take commission structure, and are freely able to reject clients (Indians are effectively banned from Singaporean brothels, for example, and no one gives a shit about the racism).

The dark side of the focus on OF parasites and escorts is that the real threat of female sexual exploitation is relatively unnoticed. Girls in debt and forced into prostitution are rarely streetwalkers, they are children whose shitty parents pimp them out in their private shitholes and bring in johns via darknet meetups (strictly speaking the girl is not the one in debt, but their shithead family instead).

This is a real vector of abuse that is extant and is being addressed, but I strongly suspect that the invective against sex work while hailing it as simultaneously feminist is simply due to it being another tool in the 'MEN BAD' bag. Pedos are already castigated and hunted, so theres no value in propping up the plight of these kids.

It’s kind of comical, actually. Average liberal feminist women seemingly believe that “sex work” is real work and should carry zero shame and no woman should be disadvantaged or discriminated in any way for engaging in it, should be legal etc., but at the same time society should not normalize it in any way i.e. there should never anywhere be even a hint of social expectation of unemployed or cash-strapped young women engaging in sex work. For example, if you’re some fat, sleazy, hairy, balding landlord, the idea of asking that unfortunate young college student barista renter who’s 2 months behind payment to pay off her debt in the form of blowjobs and sex should not even begin to enter your brain, because if it does, this evil society failed her.

All of this makes zero sense, of course. And let’s not even mention that sex work, by definition, is, you know, work, i.e. something you do even if you hate doing it, because you need the money. Also, it gets taxed. I wonder how many of these feminist culture warriors actually thought this through.

I think a lot of people on the left have a power model of sexual agency (and agency in general, e.g. low wage work) which is extremely dangerous, because there's no way to translate a power model into a predictable legal system, in the same way that e.g. a classical liberal or (Abrahamic) religious conservative model can be predictable. Classical liberalism: people have freedom and responsibility, outside of some explicitly demarcated boundaries. Abrahamic religions provide a textual basis for law that can be either consulted directly by the literate, or at least (in a functioning Abrahamic society) there is probably a set group of widely respected interpreters (priests, ministers, imams, rabbis etc.) whose advice is a reliable guide to what is acceptable behaviour, even if you (or they) don't know the whole system of laws.

In turn, this inherent unpredictability of power models of agency transfers huge power onto those social forces with the authority to determine what power relations make interactions "exploitative" or "not real choices", as well as who gets victim status and its perks. A cheap but clear example of this chaotic authoritarianism is given by the handling by the MeToo movement of sexual assault accusations against Brett Kavanaugh vs. those against Joe Biden: there was no predictable and explicit principle, so what you end up with is trial-by-media of a partisan and special-pleading sort.

Contrast the total lack of sympathy scabs got despite the fact that they were just trying to scrape by.

An uncharitable assumption, but I think the easiest way of cutting this Gordian Knot is to presume that certain women, straight, lesbian, or otherwise, are fine with performing/acting sexually at/with other women. So long as no men are involved in the production of the act or the consumption thereof, there will be no contradiction.

Or, alternatively, women do like the idea as a high concept, just not so much the actual implementation thereof.

I'm pretty sure that female sex workers servicing other women exclusively don't actually exist.

None of the allegedly contradictory statements you quoted are actually contradictory.

Well, either society normalizes a trade, in which case it carries no stigma or shame, or doesn't, in which case it does. I'd say it's that simple.

Not really, no. The stigma has at least two types, and a society (we'll assume a monolith society for maximum simplicity) can stigmatize both, one, or neither.

One kind of a "stigmatized practitioner" is shunned because he is seen as if he unduly extracts value from society as a whole, particular strata or random victims. Examples: street thug, politician, john, pimp, top 0.001% OF model, business owner.

You shun those from a position of morality, good-thinking and justice. At the same time, you recognize that those people are better off in some way, even if you try to sour grapes it.

The second kind of a stigmatized practitioner is shunned (or at least, their job/patronage is) because it is seen as viscerally, materially disadvantageous for himself. Examples: beggar, hermit, retail clerk, street sweeper, common prostitute, alcoholic barfly, OF whale.

Those people are either looked down on or pitied, but very rarely envied. Those who think of those people with disdain use the stigma on the field as a weapon against the practitioners (while often being fine with perpetuating/patronizing the trade itself, like those who eat at mcdonalds and still believe mcdonalds is not a real job for real people), while those who pity them weaponize the stigma against the field (which usually has type 1 beneficiaries, to boot).

Regardless of how you feel about individual participants or whether you are one, it is not incoherent to stigmatize the trade as a whole. It does not "make zero sense" for women to want to end sex work in its current iteration (which they see as mostly exploitative of women) while minimizing collateral to type 2 sex workers. That you don't empathize, or perhaps see ending sex work or ending the stigma against sex workers as against your interests, doesn't make it illogical.

Wait retail clerk and prostitute are equally shunned? I feel so out-of-touch.

More comments

Hardcore straight porn is ugh the worst, but exploring your mommy kink with roleplay and bizarre anal insertions for the viewing pleasure of strangers is both normal and an exotic frontier you should explore assuming you're not close-minded. No, there is no sense to be made from this.

"The woke don't like straight men" is not difficult to understand.

It's schizophrenic.

Yeah, it’s Schrodinger’s porn when it comes to the NYT types.

Porn is good as a form of female empowerment and good for pissing off their fathers and pwning the socons.

Porn is bad as depictions of women being submissive sex objects (because everyone knows IRL women are strong and independent and their revealed preferences totally show they hate being sex objects) and as a substitute for IRL women on the margins, lessening men’s dependence on women and their desire to monkey-dance and jump through hoops for women. Court-jestering for a 5 with no guarantee of getting laid sounds less appetizing when you can crank it to 9s doing various kinds of fatherless things.

One recurring complaint from lipstick feminists is that online porn streaming sites post a lot of disgusting content featuring choking, slapping, spanking and other forms of submissive female behavior, and they do so in order to pander to icky White dudebros.

Yeah. Or maybe not.

Unlike IRL women of course, who definitely don’t get aroused by getting spanked, choked, slapped, or otherwise dominated in bed.

Maybe this is your point, but this always struck me as them telling on themselves. I've seen my share of online porn - almost certainly far more than all but the most extreme of the lipstick feminists - and I've never once just stumbled on porn of women being choked/slapped/etc. and extremely rarely do I even run into women being submissive. It's not my thing, so I don't seek it out, and as a result, whatever algorithm these sites are using don't make it visible to me.

Given that males and females both tend to prefer submissive to dominant roles in fantasy (if I recall the surveys correctly) the intended audience for that sort of thing might generally be generic women consumers of porn, rather than you.

I can't express just how penis-shrivelling this type of porn is. I wish the industry didn't cater to the other half of population so I couldn't see it even accidentally.

In terms of revealed preference, the NYT-type stance would be inverted. I guarantee the vast majority of NYT male writers and readers regularly watch porn. And the vast majority of NYT readers and writers of either sex would be quite upset if their 18 year old daughter came home and announced that she was going to be a professional porn star and needed a couple hundred dollars for anal training devices.

And a commonality among cigarette smokers is that they will tell you not to start. Reading too much into revealed preferences is as big a mistake as taking everything at face value.

No doubt most NYT readers and writers sit somewhere in the middle.

There's also 'former porn star, despite being forewarned, has trouble getting a normie job after exiting and isn't that so unfair'.

This makes me wonder if there ever was a male porn actor who got a normie job anywhere, for that matter.

My intuition is that no guy watching (straight) porn -- which is the overwhelming majority of its market, from what I can tell -- actually pays any attention to the male actors. I'd bet eye tracking would show a big lack of interest in that part of the screen, and I'd bet relatively few viewers could pick such a guy out of a lineup even an hour later if not prompted to pay attention beforehand. So I'd bet getting outed for that is much less of a concern, although probably not unheard of.

But I would be curious if there are any data or anecdotes the other direction.

actually pays any attention to the male actors

I will not tolerate this disrespect to the greatest american alive. Soldier, doctor, firefighter, astronaut, viking warrior, loving father, Johnny Sins has done it all.

Men are typically aroused more visually and often engage in sexual comparison.

Some examples that results in this engaging with the male participant in porn:

  1. Is my dick bigger? Smaller? Better looking? Also studies show men are more engaged with the penis in porn than woman typically (because again, visual). Lesbian porn is more popular with straight woman than you'd expect, and less popular with straight men than you'd expect for this (and other) reasons.

  2. In the case of amateur porn especially, "can I get this girl" which involves look at the involved male model and figuring out if for some reason the watcher can steal his woman.

  3. Self-insert. Sometime the fantasy is "I could be the one here." As with video games this involves observing the avatar for similarity.

A lot of this is unconscious behavior so people without an excessive amount of insight into their porn habits are unlikely to be aware, but eye tracking would likely be supportive.

There's also plenty of straight porn where the only parts of the male's body that's ever visible on screen are parts that are normally not visible except in extremely private/intimate settings. Even if someone paid maximal attention to the male in the porn, there simply isn't enough information in the video for the viewer to identify the male in non-intimate settings. And even in those, our brains are very well developed for distinguishing between and identifying individuals based on things like the shape of their face and, AFAIK, not very well developed for doing so based on things like the shape of their penis.

Not a normie job, but Sylvester Stallone's career went ok:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Party_at_Kitty_and_Stud%27s

That's a good point, although calling him a male porn actor is a bit of a stretch.

I haven't checked this factoid or watched the video, but the guy from the meme porn with a female pool guard in his bathtub apparently became a priest afterward.

Closest thing I can think of is Ricardo Milos of meme fame, who very much tried to distance himself from that moment in his life once people found him.

Part of the new puritanism fueled by feminist disgust at "sexualization" and "male gaze".

When was the porn industry seen positively? It’s a categorically sleazy business.

The culture used to be different. Today, the arguments that porn addiction is a big problem among young men which causes impotence and has wide-ranging negative repercussions (although I’m not sure the evidence from scientific research actually bears this out clearly, but anyway), that porn actresses have an unusually high suicide and drug addiction rate, that porn companies are exploitative and are closely intertwined with international human trafficking networks etc., that the expectations of teenage boys regarding sex are warped by online porn all find acceptance in mainstream discourse today. They aren’t even controversial.

But this wasn’t always the case. I wouldn’t say pornography was ever portrayed positively in mainstream discourse, but at least It was more tolerated and given much more leeway than today. Naivete and lack of foresight were probably part of it, because people generally didn’t assume that high-speed HD online porn will ever be freely available on touchscreens and become a widespread source of addiction. The industry was portrayed as just another branch of the entertainment industry which was actually doing a great job regulating itself voluntarily, it had mainstream crossover ability, it became normal to put porn actresses in music videos and invite them on talk shows etc. I remember there was even a time when Bill Clinton was photographed with a bunch of porn actresses at some PR event after his presidency and so on. The industry was also peddling a lot of BS about appealing to normal people’s tastes and becoming legit, creating “couples’ porn” (whatever the heck that is supposed to be) etc. Also, the idea that women should be able to live without sexual shame was getting normalized.

And again, this was all before the Culture War turned hot. Mainstream discourse used to feature less rage and negativity, the overall mood in society was less negative and dire, much more laid back, and there was no sense of malaise.

See e.g. the Friends episode where Phoebe discovers that her twin sister is a porn star. This is played for laughs, with the only shame being (some) men's enjoyment of porn and implicit inability to get the real thing. The idea of this being truly scandalous would be about as out of place in the Friendsverse as a serious episode about fighting communist infiltration or one of the women being kidnapped by cruel Native Redskins.

Indeed. Also, accessible online porn did not practically exist at the time of this TV series. Having a porn career and keeping it largely discrete was still feasible.

Depends by whom and how you define the porn industry. Playboy was mainstreamed through the 1970s. The 1980s saw somewhat of a reaction due to AIDS and the Traci Lords scandal that revealed that some (many?) pornstars were underage. Val Venis was a wrestler on children's TV, with a pornstar gimmick, in the 1990s. By the 2000s, Jenna Jameson was a celebrity who could be at a Holywood party without people particularly noticing. Nudity and simulated sex has long been common in Holywood films, with fairly artificial distinctions from "real" sex, and even then, softcore "porn" indicates that the difference was supposed to be a blurry line of genre/artistic merit. Wild Things circa 1950 would be regarded as a pornographic film, albeit one with high production values, yet it was a mainstream movie in the 1990s.

The timing might be coincidental. I soured on porn myself whereas I used to be for it. The woke also seem to be some of the most enthusiastic coomers.

did the wrong people agree with them

Absolutely yes. I heard about this on conservative talk radio. Just gift wrapping a message and handing it to conservatives.

The impression I got from the original article (which I read before anything else had been published) was definitely "oh no, the noble indigenous people are being corrupted by Muskrat and this white savior lady!" That mirrors comments I read elsewhere at the time.

I can't speak to what followed—and don't make a habit of reading tabloids—but I'm certainly amused.

Yeah, that was my reading of the whole situation as well, so it's bizarre to see them go fake news that misinterpreted us".

two mentions of porn in the original article https://archive.is/y6sa3 which is otherwise quite detailed

I don't think the NYTs is entirely in the wrong. the NY Post ran with the porn part. Technically this is true: they did watch porn, among many other things.


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