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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   34947 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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Left work late the other night to find a druggie going through in my car in the parking lot. First time that's happened, but should have expected it from seeing them stagger around after all the shops are closed down.
I'm assuming it's the fentanyl stumble, because sometimes you see them standing in weird positions staring at nothing, but maybe someone more versed in modern druglore can correct me.

The level of crime here is still low, but the jump from "literally absent" to "a general background level" has ruined the high trust that made this community great.
There are no more open cash boxes at vegetable stands (the last one got smash-and-grabbed a month ago). A friend had all his plumbing gear stolen out of his truck (you can't even fence that stuff locally!). I never used to carry a gun here, but started recently. I never used to lock my door while I was out, but started after my neighbor's place got ransacked. When I was a kid I used to leave the keys in my truck like everyone else, in case a friend wanted to borrow it.

All the petty crime here is carried out by dysfunctional scum who were attracted by the scraps thrown to them by do-gooders. Some of them were deliberately recruited in "rehabilitation schemes" and dumped on us when they inevitably failed. Those responsible quickly moved on to providing "safe drug use supplies" for their former charges at the local community center. All taxpayer-funded, of course.
In fact, I know all the people responsible for importing this biowaste to our community, and they all live in newly-built mansions down long driveways with automatic gates and security cameras.
Meanwhile I have a lot of my net worth in equipment that basically can't be secured right off a main road, relying on the fact that until now nobody just wandered in to steal your stuff.

It might seem stupid to complain about when we still have basically no murders, but it enrages me that we lost something precious, and it was deliberately inflicted on us by smug pricks who will never face any consequences for it. They won't even gain anything from having done it to us, other than the joy of seeing us suffer while they remain comfortably immune.

Not sure where I'm going with this, but like Goodguy's personal story the other week, it's a general reflection on the inadequacy of crime statistics to capture its impact on communities.
And a growing appreciation for the importance of meting out consequences in an equitable fashion.

This week we had a homeless woman fully evacuate her bowels in front of a kids museum, with families and children about. She is apparently known in that area for being aggressive and walking around with no pants. I briefly saw crap like this (haha but not really) when briefly visiting San Francisco, and it's the kind of thing you expect will stay only over there even though you know full well there's nothing stopping it from popping up in your own backyard. I thought I was being trolled when I heard.

The local subreddit has decided this is an issue with lack of public restrooms, and I feel the Hitler rising in me.

We are from the same place, I saw that on the local reddit as well. Glad my kid is old enough that we don't go there on a regular basis anymore, but I just cannot fathom how the entire community losing something of value for the sake of letting crazy druggies roam around being a problem is just accepted. "Whelp, nothing to be done about it other than just accept things suck now." But there are quite a few things that can be done about it, and it makes me feel like I am taking crazy pills to see people insist otherwise.

What should one do about it? I can vote for the most anti-crime candidate in every election (which I do), but they lose every time. If I live in a place like Seattle where 70% of the people are completely unwilling to address these problems, then I am effectively helpless.

From the perspective of my own personal safety, directly confronting a mentally ill person or criminal could result in personal injury or criminal charges against me.

Now, I am willing to risk some amount of personal safety for the purpose of making society better. But not when a majority of that society would actively view me as a villain for doing it.

Unless one is able to coordinate with other like minded people, there really is little to be done about crime and decay. I'll pick up litter on the streets and clean up graffiti but that's just a bandaid.

If I live in a place like Seattle where 70% of the people are completely unwilling to address these problems, then I am effectively helpless.

Suck it up, move out, become a criminal yourself, become a revolutionary. Those are the basic choices.

I'm choosing to suck it up because I'm rich and can afford to. The long term plan is to move out and join a more robust community. This might be a pipe dream.

I'll continue to vote for change and to try to convince sympathetic people to do the same. But I am just a man and not a hero.

Or organize a voting/activist campaign of some sort.

No, that's exactly what demonstrably can't work. Those are the weapons of the other side.

I think honestly the ideal solution would be to make those making those kinds of decisions have to live in the neighborhood so they have to actually literally worry about the crime problem themselves. Having the local mayor robbed on the streets would probably do more to get crime addressed than a million anti-crime votes. Alas, as was pointed out in the top post almost all the city leaders have long since fled the city to gated communities and likely live in mansions with gates at the end of their driveway and full security systems.

What should one do about it? I can vote for the most anti-crime candidate in every election (which I do), but they lose every time. If I live in a place like Seattle where 70% of the people are completely unwilling to address these problems, then I am effectively helpless.

move to less insane area?

If you have money, you could use a good chunk of it (on the order of tithes) to support political candidates (or oppose bad candidates) who see things your way (or not) . That's more effective, especially at the most local levels, than voting alone.

It is crazy how across the West that in the last decade or two it's just become increasingly normalized to have RPG Random Encounters with the insane/drugged.

Yea but the NPC guards are broken, so they only arrest you even though the actual criminals are committing crimes on you. Plus, you get negative xp buffs from social media fallout if you actually fight back. The worst is that this is actually a PvP encounter and not PvE, so you can't even build a counter. Your only option is to supplant the NPC guards with your own PvP lowsec guild, but I'm not sure the build allows for this setup.

Earthbound's "199x" was three decades early. But unfortunately, these aren't New Age Retro Hippies, they're a more modern equivalent.

Not sure where I'm going with this, but like Goodguy's personal story the other week, it's a general reflection on the inadequacy of crime statistics to capture its impact on communities.

me at party: well, the community feels unsafe

guy: crime isn't that high though?

me: so, what about the homeless people living by the train tracks? seems sketchy

guy: oh, I don't go there

me: what about being a woman and jogging the river path alone when it's dark?

guy: oh, yeah that sounds bad

me: the local Starbucks has sugar and stirrers behind the counter now. the Whole Foods doesn't dispense plastic utensils anymore unless you ask and only has a single entrance/exit now despite having been built with several

guy: ...

me: I had a baby stroller stolen off of my driveway because I left it out overnight

guy: ...

I'm glad we have below the median murder rate for the US but this shit sucks.

me: what about being a woman and jogging the river path alone when it's dark?

I've never liked this type of rhetorical device, as it reifies the notion that Women's Lives Matter More, that feral behavior of Persons of Unhousedness are only problematic to the extent women are Most Affected.

Heaven forbid a woman feels UnsafeTM when she's jogging alone in her sports bra and volleyball shorts at night.

In contrast, if a man is walking home after work and gets assaulted/battered by a Person of Unhousedness, he should just Deal With It for such experiences are Part and Parcel of Big-City Living. His Male Privilege should provide protection against bite, stab, and blunt wounds; he should be a Decent Person and have some Empathy for those less privileged.

I've never liked this type of rhetorical device, as it reifies the notion that Women's Lives Matter More

Women's lives do matter more.

I'm as anti-feminist as anyone, but the central lie that feminism has spread is that men and women are groups in conflict with each other. That's not reality - overwhelmingly, women and men are in cooperation with each other. That dynamic is at the heart of what family is.

Feminism also tries to tell us that the differences between men and women are minimal and mostly social. That's another lie, the differences are profound and biologically inescapable. And one of those profound differences is that men are vastly more replaceable. If you lose half of your young men, that sucks, but in 20 years you will have another generation of young men larger than the one that you lost. If you lose half of your young women, that is a demographic catastrophe that you many never fully recover from.

And beyond that, on the individual level women are better suited to the task of raising children - ideally you have both parents around, but if you have to lose one, it's better to lose the father. Meanwhile men are better suited to the task of courage and self sacrifice. If you force a married couple to decide on one of them dying, most of them will agree that it's the man who goes.

It is a good and noble thing that the men on the Titanic gave up their places on the lifeboats for the women and children. It is a good and noble thing that men go to war to protect their wives and sisters and daughters. It is a good and noble thing that men do the dangerous and difficult jobs that risk life and limb. This is our role, and this is why it is shameful for a man to be afraid of death and amusing for a woman to be afraid of a mouse.

I would much rather myself be attacked at night than it happen to my wife or my daughters. Any man of decency would say the same.

Any man of decency would say the same.

However, your position of being the one who takes the risks means you deserve additional authority to make up for that. Higher risks, higher rewards; that's just basic fairness.

The ultimate problem with feminism, and why it is destructive, is that it denies that premise; instead preferring to take "women's lives matter more" as a license for selfishness. Its fundamental contradiction is that women's lives only have value because men believe they do; treat them unfairly enough and the men will no longer do those dangerous jobs like "go to war and protect our society from an enemy that, should they win, will make life much worse for those women". (Conveniently for feminists, that enemy is nowhere to be seen, and the other dangerous/difficult/necessary jobs not being performed tend to be invisible until they aren't.)

Nah, the ultimate problem with feminism and why it is destructive is because independent, financially secure women in the labor force simply don't breed enough, and whatever political power they accrue is bent towards giving them more independence and financial security, furthering the problem.

Existence is on the line, not some vague idea of basic fairness. Fairness has never really existed since the dawn of time. Higher risks have only equaled higher rewards when the risks are considered necessary for things to continue to function (and are therefore priced in).

Women's lives do matter more, on a long enough timescale, due to the utility function of childbirth. It's got nothing to do with what men believe. Believing they're potatoes or exotic birds won't make you pregnant. If we science our way around it at sufficiently distributed scale then women's lives won't matter more. Until that day, however...

However, your position of being the one who takes the risks means you deserve additional authority to make up for that. Higher risks, higher rewards; that's just basic fairness.

Not really how the trade works.

Men give the physical self-sacrifice and commercial value, women give the ability to bear children in the first place plus additional care work. Depending on how good either of them are at these things, and how much demand there is for them, the balance of value may favor either party. The willingness to risk life and limb isn't worth a terrible lot in a safe, peaceful first-world country (or one that actively penalizes men who take physical action), noble as it still is when it comes to it. And a deadbeat man who doesn't work won't earn much respect either. Similarly, a woman's biological abilities aren't worth a damn when she doesn't put them use, say through contraception, and her care work needs to actually happpen for it to be counted in her favor.

I think it's entirely fair to look at each case individually to determine whether the man or the woman is more worthy of authority and/or better-suited to exercise it. In most cases it may well be the man, especially in this postmodern age in which most women seem to have been eaten by social media and social contagion.

Women's lives do matter more.

It is absolutely wild that the male group that says the above is seen as a blood enemy by feminists, whereas the group of males that is bought in to "men and women are 100% equal from the celluar level on up" are treated as either useful idiots by feminists or with outright suspicion (i.e. "nice guys").

I also like your remark about forcing a married couple to choose who dies. Every parent is (sometimes a little too) eager to state how they'd "die for [my] kids." The real truth of the matter is that, for societal stability and growth, there isn't choice in the matter. The father should die (in this hypothetical scenario) because it's incredibly important that the wife not die and continue to raise children - and potentially have more.

If a man says he is avoiding certain area because of the crime danger, he is a wimp for avoiding the area. If he does not avoid that area and is attacked, he is a fool for not avoiding it. Catch-22 was a documentary.

I'm not saying that. I'm saying that women are more likely to get attacked than men, and that the women feel unsafe running there unless there are men with them. I'm using a specific example from my city in a running group that meets at 5am by the river path, when it's still dark.

I started reading this without looking at your username and at some point I was like "wait, why is this guy turning this topic into a man/woman thing?" Then I saw the username and I was like "oh yeah, it's a Sloot post, he does that with 99% of all topics".

I'm sorry you had to deal with this, and you are of course permitted to share your experiences and your frustration. But referring to people as "biowaste" is over the line. Even "smug pricks" is sufficiently inflammatory that you should bring some evidence of smugness and maybe drop the "pricks" altogether.

Maybe I should I call them "witches" instead, which certain mods show us is an acceptable insult? With a bonus insinuation of "and we all know what needs to be done to witches"?

Why post on this forum if you don't want to abide by the rules around inflammatory language and speaking clearly? There are many other fora where you can describe in great detail what needs to be done to the homeless (in Minecraft).

I'll be happy to if they promise to follow the same rules. No more crap like "time to burn some witches before they run this town," and I'm all good.

And people seem to appreciate the info I bring to discussions, which is always encouraging.
Why would I not post when there are people who want to talk about gardening or medieval economic history or fringe political things I can dump evidence for that nobody else knows about? There's almost nowhere on the internet like that any more.

There only seem to be roughly 4-5 haters who dislike my posts, and I'd be happy to engage with them too if they'd speak up instead of downvoting and reporting everything.

And you? You post an awful lot of one line angry complaints about people, and don't seem to like being downvoted for them. What keeps you coming back?

I'll be happy to if they promise to follow the same rules. No more crap like "time to burn some witches before they run this town," and I'm all good.

You know he's earned multiple bans and is close to being permabanned for precisely those kinds of posts, right?

I also meant you, to be honest.

I'm sure you did, but like your constant reports demanding we ban all leftists, it's not an objection to be taken seriously. You think you're being persecuted and treated unfairly because I/"a handful of haters" don't like you, and this is observably, empirically untrue. You have posted some interesting things lately and we'd like you to do more of that. We'd also like you to stop flaming out every time you can't control your emotions.

I would not have banned you(and it looks like you didn't get banned), but having rules against referring to real people as biowaste while allowing another poster to refer to posters like me as witches who ought to be viciously mocked for our backwards beliefs isn't hypocritical, nor is that poster strictly speaking allowed to do so; he gets in trouble for it all the time.

Even if your position was entirely true, aren't you now taking the same actions as the addicts you dislike? You are deliberately shitting up the metaphorical sidewalks here, because you feel some other people get away with it?

Even if true that isn't going to get you a less shitty sidewalk. Just means more shit to be shoveled.

You're not just defecting against other defectors, you're defecting against everyone else. If you see two people shitting on the sidewalk or breaking into your car, does it matter one is only doing it because the other gets away with it? I would suggest you are likely to be pissed off at both and both are making the place worse.

The votes suggest people do not think I am "shitting up the place," I think you're just using that as a gaslighting tactic because you enjoy being manipulative.

I think you're just using that as a gaslighting tactic because you enjoy being manipulative.

Do you understand how this kind of direct personal attack fails to advance the foundation? This is unkind, uncharitable, needlessly antagonistic, contributes nothing of substance to the conversation, and just in general does not contribute to an atmosphere of open discussion.

You are not required to agree with others. To the contrary! Disagreement is an important part of what we do here. You are not even required to be pleasant or agreeable. If you demolish someone's argument, they might very naturally be upset by that, and sometimes they will even complain about it to us. But that sort of thing is not only permitted, it is probably essential to the advancement of the foundation.

By contrast, your disdain is unwelcome, unwarranted, and frankly unwise. Sneering and name-calling and making personal attacks simply antagonizes others. It's all heat and no light.

This particular comment is not the most antagonistic comment I've ever seen, but it is antagonistic enough--and engaging in this sort of behavior immediately after I've warned you against it is straightforwardly unrepentant. You didn't just lose your temper and have a bad day; you plainly decided to disregard my warning and double down on your rule breaking.

Your last ban was for a week. This one is for two. I don't know how to make this any clearer: moderate your tone or your bans will quickly escalate toward infinity.

Bud, anyone who writes a hate-filled screed about how much they hate leftists/Jews/trannies/take your pick will get a ton of upvotes, especially if it's long and detailed and filled with personal or historical anecdotes and not just "Fuck Those People."

You seem really fixed on the idea that "When I go off, lots of people upvote me, therefore my posts are good."

The ability to garner upvotes is often, but not always, associated with post quality, but we mod highly-upvoted posts very often. Sometimes even good posts that unfortunately have a bit of shit in them.

If you think it shouldn't be that way, find a forum, as others have said, where you can get seal claps for shitting on Those People. This isn't that place. Most people, even if they do sometimes applaud you for dropping a steaming turd on the "right" target, do not actually want steaming turds all over the place.

Yeah, no, I'm not buying it. I've seen you use this line on far too many good people.

I think all you're optimizing for is getting rid of "witchiness" as sneakily as you can without making people too upset about it.
Sorry to say this publicly, but you and sscreader are two of four regular posters who I completely discount, and would rather not see at all if blocking didn't disrupt the site experience so much.

If you want to call mentioning being the victim of a crime "dropping a steaming turd", go ahead. But I think people are sick enough of that reddit-mod manipulation tactic that it won't work.

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You may of course believe what you please. But upvotes are not the measure of that. Otherwise all the people who vote for thepoliticians who enact the policies about homeless people you dislike, would be proving those positions correct no? If popular voting is the arbiter.

But you yourself admitted to breaking the rules on prpose here because other people get away with it, so you do not have a leg to stand on here I am afraid.

Do better or don't, but if you post it is fair game for people to argue against you.

Otherwise all the people who vote for thepoliticians who enact the policies about homeless people you dislike, would be proving those positions correct no? If popular voting is the arbiter.

Not to "well-ackchewally" up the place, but voting for a politician who is an amalgam of dozens of policy positions, and who may or may not ever actually carry through on those positions doesn't actually mean that the voter endorses everything the politician ultimately does (e.g. tory voters who wanted less immigration to the UK and voted for politicians who repeatedly promised less immigration but still got mass immigration anyway). Up-voting a particular comment in a debate is a much clearer signal of what exact position is being supported.

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That's not really answering the question.

Edit since you edited after I responded:

Why would I not post

I'm not saying you shouldn't post here. I'm just wondering why you post obviously rule breaking stuff, then get huffy when you get (predictably) moderated when you could post that stuff elsewhere and get a round of applause.

And you? You post an awful lot of one line angry complaints about people, and don't seem to like being downvoted for them.

I don't believe I've ever complained about my comments being downvoted, and I don't even think that my comments are angry. I'd even say it's a little ironic that I'm being accused of being angry in this particular thread.

Preboonking: I don't vouch that I've never ever complained about being downvoted, but if it does happen, it's rare.

What keeps you coming back?

Force of habit, I guess. I've been here since the /r/ssc days, and sometimes there really is something interesting posted here.

Please accept the following in the spirit of cooperation and friendliness, even though I know it will probably not come across that way:

As we've now gone meta, I'd like to draw attention to your own comments.

A large percentage of your posts are one line drive-bys that refute other users. Moreover, when your own refutations are called into question or proven incorrect, you simply ignore and move on instead of defending your position.

While there is a place for calling other people on their bullshit, this critical behavior is what is referred to on Twitter as "being a reply guy".

If you want to improve our forum, post fewer one liners and more long form original content. Let us take down your belief system for a change. I think you have a lot to say, but are hiding underneath a protective shell. How about a top-level comment next week? Stop being the critic, and be the man in the arena. Tell us something good.

Moreover, when your own refutations are called into question or proven incorrect, you simply ignore and move on instead of defending your position.

This couldn't be more incorrect. If anything, I probably respond way past the point of zero marginal returns (example: this very comment).

Stop being the critic, and be the man in the arena. Tell us something good.

I made a poast about psychopaths a few months ago, but nothing good has come to mind recently. Writer's block, what are you going to do?

I support this ruling. I also think calling people "biowaste" crosses a big line.

I lost my beloved younger brother a few years ago to drug addiction. He was 35. He struggled for years (and I mean really struggled) to stop using heroin, with some periods of success. When he was using drugs, he would lie and steal. But even during those times, he was always a very generous person when he could be. He was very sensitive (in some ways, I think this was actually a burden for him), and he made friends easily. He was funny and smart (which was perhaps another burden). He had very serious depression and anxiety his entire life. I'm sure my parents will never recover from the loss.

My point here is that many of the drug addicts you despise are actually struggling desperately. Most have had difficult lives. Some have loved ones that care deeply about them and want to see them get healthy. Others don't have anyone in the world who cares about them, either because they never had a family, or because their families died, or because they alienated them through their behaviors.

There are important conversations to be had about whether drug addiction is more of a choice or more of a disease. And there are conversations to be had about the balance between community interests and the interests of those with substance abuse disorders, and how community burdens should be fairly distributed. And there are conversations about which policies or actions actually help individuals with substance abuse disorders, versus which policies are counter-productive because they just enable or encourage these disorders.

But calling someone "dysfunctional scum" or "druggie" or "biowaste" isn't the way to start these conversations. That's the kind of language people use to dehumanize others. I think you should be ashamed of yourself.

There are important conversations to be had about whether drug addiction is more of a choice or more of a disease.

The situation is darker and bleaker than that because of the third option: social contagion.

In Scotland, drug overdose deaths have soared to over a thousand a year in a country/(region of the UK) of merely five million. There is a big concentration of deaths in Dundee. The dynamics are rather like a contagious disease. How does social contagion mimic the in-person spread of an infection disease in the internet age? Junkies in Dundee are not going to Glasgow to buy their drugs; it is friend of a friend stuff with-in Dundee. The need to pass physical drugs from hand to hand creates geographically local dynamics.

But I'm old. I'm already familiar with the heroin cycle. Heroin is really cool. The fluffy cloud happiness of the high. The don't-give-a-fuck charisma of the users. The bodies piling up. And piling up. The rising part of the heroin cycle doesn't last. You don't introduce any-one younger to heroin use after your own funeral. And the occasion itself puts a damper on the whole scene. Soon heroin gains the evil reputation that recreational use deserves. "Nobody" uses any more. But every year, Mr Nobody grows a year older. Eventually the young people, who won't touch the stuff because they saw what it did to those ten years their senior, are no longer young enough to be at risk of starting. Those young enough to start, look to those a little older and see neither use nor warning signs. Some of them work out for themselves that heroin is fun. They tell their friends. The cycle closes and heroin in cool again.

I came of age during a low point of the heroin cycle, so I never tried it. But the micro-foundations of the cycle were evident in parallel matters. Things spread by word of mouth and from hand to hand. Friends warn against some things and endorse other things.

He was 35. Which brings my comment to the edge of the abyss. Back when needle sharing made Glasgow the AIDS capital of Europe, the prognosis for a heroin addicted was to become addicted around 20. Use for ten years. 50% die. 50% hit rock bottom (or just age out) and quit. 35 is old for an addict. Now that AIDS is treatable, the prognosis is probably better. Now that fentanyl is on the scene the prognosis is probably worse. I'm not keeping up with the statistics and don't know how it balances out. When some-one dies of drug addiction, we bury an "innocent victim". His "friends" in the drug scene play the role of his personal angels of death. And walking my comment over the edge of the abyss: did he take his curse to the grave with him, or did he manage to pass it on before he died?

I suspect that there is a missing demographic on the Motte: married with children. They are too busy to comment here. But I'm guessing that they want the junkies gone. They want the junkies gone before their children grow up and reach the age to be at risk. They don't want that to coincide with a high point of the heroin cycle. The stakes are much higher than a friend having plumbing gear stolen out of his truck.

I suspect that there is a missing demographic on the Motte: married with children. They are too busy to comment here. But I'm guessing that they want the junkies gone. They want the junkies gone before their children grow up and reach the age to be at risk. They don't want that to coincide with a high point of the heroin cycle. The stakes are much higher than a friend having plumbing gear stolen out of his truck.

Reporting in, and I post less largely because now that I have more skin in the game, When I imagine these issues impacting my daughter, I quickly become incandescent with rage. The least of my problems is getting modded here for being "uncharitable" to the monsters in human skin roaming amongst us. Far more worried about ending up on a watch list given that violence in my first, second and last reaction to the question of "What will I do when this arrives at my door?"

I second the sentiment about concern for kids. When childless I could not give a shit about drug policy or gender education, because let people live how they want. Now that I have kids, I waste time on asinine committees and boards because I want to guard against liberal crazies.

Its easy to not care if the only skin in the game is your own. Its much more personal when you actually give a shit about someone else. Vague secular humanist universalism has nothing on blood and soil.

I suspect that there is a missing demographic on the Motte: married with children. They are too busy to comment here. But I'm guessing that they want the junkies gone.

No, there are many mottizens who are married with children. Myself included.

And yes. I hung with a drug-happy crowd in my youth, though the heroin users were only peripheral to it. Enough people I knew on some level ruined and/or killed themselves through drugs, including an actual friend (of which I never had a lot).

Would I say that the most catastrohpic of them should have simply been made "gone"? Yes, absolutely, before they drag anyone else with them. Sad as it is, those individual lives are not worth the damage they cause. There are certainly edge cases where it may be worthwhile to have a conversation, but it's also by all means possible to drug oneself far beyond salvation and any reasonable expectation of tolerance by others.

And my thought there is not even "it would suck for my friends to have been Duterte'd", but "if only their predecessors' druggie careers had been cut short and the dealers strung up from lampposts, they might not have ruined themselves". I'm certain there will always be some level of drug use regardless of what society does, but a society that tolerates heroin junkies would better be some degree of libertarian. For a nanny-state, it's an embarassment.

Part of my own reckoning with the fecklessness of youth was nursing a 'good' friend back to health repeatedly. Having a slurring dribbling mess repeatedly collapse on your couch is fine if he cleans up after himself, but I asked him if he even enjoyed getting so trashed and his quiet 'I don't know how else to live' really shook me. Great family, loving relationships, excellent prospects, and he was throwing it away for diminishing returns because of a short circuited neurological reward pathway and a social system that enabled self destructiveness.

I left the states, abandoned my old number and ultimately lost touch with him entirely. His facebook page is a yearly 'Happy birthday ___' from the same few people, and I strongly suspect no one knows if he is alive or dead. I know the another guy is alive because he purged all his social media, but these autoupdated digital profiles might as well be tombstones.

I suspect that there is a missing demographic on the Motte

Reporting in. And yes I just want them gone.

missing demographic on the Motte: married with children. They are too busy to comment here

We read the QCs tho ;-)

Yup yup yup from one of those "married with children". I also model drug addiction as a contagion and it is clear to me that my own kids are better off if fentanyl is as prevelant as possible up until they reach the age where they might be exposed to it. And this is even moreso thanks to local decriminalization efforts - if you can't get junkies off the street with jail what's left?

A few years back, a junkie broke into my building's garage and smashed the passenger-side window in every car in the building. Whether his condition was a product of choice or disease really didn't make a whole of difference to me, as where the reality of someone doing ten grand in damage to try to steal fifty bucks seemed pretty salient. If someone else would like to discuss how best to treat them, that'll be up to them, but step one is removing people like this from the general population. If I could get people in power to agree on removing such people from the general population, I would be amenable to pretty much any amount of spending on providing them with high-quality rehabilitation or just permanent incarceration - my interests in not having my windows smashed, my park camped in, and my public square not filled with bums yelling at people. Whatever happens with the junkie downstream of that I will leave to people that care about that part of things much more than I do.

Unfortunately, these "important conversations" in practice just mean kicking the can down the road while things get worse. Feels like a stalling action. It's like having "important conversations" about immigration while holding the door open. Just keep the "important conversations" going until the thing being discussed has already happened.

Addicts deserve our sympathy. But society has forced many decent people into these harsh views about them, because institutions don’t take the necessary steps to protect these people from themselves, and therefore to protect us from them.

Your brother should have been taken to a psychiatric inpatient facility and have been kept there for 5+ years before being released. We can do this humanely. People do survive addiction, even to heroin, and go on to have happy, productive, drug-free lives. But it takes time, and it takes things that we no longer really do in the West.

Disparate impact is the meta for escaping accountability. Racism, mental illness, trauma (no longer restricted to acute incidental causes, with nebulous childhood and intergenerational traumas now accepted as equally valid) are unassailable escape clauses, and proximate trauma is now an accepted escape clause too. Censuring families for poorly managing their delinquent kin was socially accepted, but now it is rude to not consider every exculpatory clause for bad behavior.

The west has accepted self-declared victimisation as a social meta to extract goodwill and therefore resources from compliant populations. Whether this compliance will remain eternally subservient is currently unknown, but signs point to this meta breaking apart.

Are the progressives the only people to blame? I think the lack of any legitimate place to 大便 without spending money just might have a little bit to do with it....

Even San Francisco has public toilets, and there used to be more of them back in the day iirc.

There are important conversations to be had about whether drug addiction is more of a choice or more of a disease

I don't think it would be nice nor kind for drug addicts if we seriously started discussing drug addiction as a disease. Today we think diseases are treatable, but that is because the usual meaning of the word covers diseases caused by pathogens and relatively similar set of causes which the Western science can treat. Viruses that previously killed multitudes have been eradicated with vaccinations. Many of cancers can be fought and occasionally dealt with with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy (made possible because of the antibiotics). Even HIV can be managed with antiretrovirals. Common thread to all: sick individual receives treatment and is treated to effect they he or she is cured, gets better and regains functionality.

As evidenced by the growth of the problem of drug addiction, there is no equivalent of penicillin for addiction. If addiction is a disease, the medical science of addiction is at the level of the medicine of biological diseases in the 18th century or early 19th century: doctors often can recognize the disease you have, there is a scientific name for it, there are procedures to manage it, but professionals are in dispute how they work and which treatment works better than other, because none of them obviously and easily cures the patient or prevents its spread (the way antibiotics cure and vaccinations prevent). The methods that sometimes work often are radical, crude, painful, and often focus on preventing spread of the disease because the individual very rarely can be cured.

You get a wound that that is likely to become infected and septic? The treatment is amputation; there is a profession that is very skilled at removing your limbs quickly and efficiently, but it will be a painful operation and limit your functionality permanently. You catch leprosy (or a skin disease that looks like one)? There is no treatment, the public health officials will do their best to ship you to to a remote colony isolated from rest of the society, for life. Tuberculosis? You are encouraged to be shipped to a remote sanatorium isolated from the rest of the society, which can be a rather nice place if you are rich, but the treatments are no cures and you will eventually die there. Later revolutionary treatments include exposure sunlight and nutrition (which helps vitamin D intake, which may marginally help) and collapsing affected lung (possibly limiting spread of disease to other organs). Public health officials are concerned with sanitation to prevent spread of the disease.

Today we think diseases are treatable, but that is because the usual meaning of the word covers diseases caused by pathogens and relatively similar set of causes which the Western science can treat.

There are reports that Ozempic allows people to unhook to other stuff that they are hooked to - not only food. Like gambling. Chances are that probably we are somewhere in the neighborhood for penicillin for compulsive behavior.

It is left to the reader to decide whether this is good or bad thing and in what kind of jolly anti-utopia we will put ourselves into.

I have also seen these reports and man, I have trouble thinking that this stuff isn't fundamentally hollowing out people's humanity in some meaningful way. I can see that being a good tradeoff for people that are destroying their lives with food, booze, or gambling, but eliminating cravings seems almost synonymous with dampening drive and joy.

Cravings suck. Satisfying the craving provides a dopamine hit, but plenty of other things provide similar hits without having the escalatory cycle of requiring more to be satisfied. Indulging in the addiction loop is absolving individual agency to seek prosocial alternatives, and further incentivizes a nonacretive utility function.

If Ozempic means people ge their dopamine hits from more effective sources, then that is a net benefit. If people get less addicted to retweets and updoots for personal validation and find value in touching grass then we will have a much better existence than what we suffer now.

What makes you think Ozempic won't also eliminate any satisfaction from "touching grass" as well?

Possible. I have only my own personal experience with addictions to go on, and my personal conclusion is that the diminishing returns of autonomic biochemical release from satiating addiction was specifically pleasurable due to the novelty of youth, and minor psychological reprogramming allowed my personal utility calculation to value steak, lagavulin and VR porn equally to nicotine and cocaine.

Of course that could be due to physiological incapability limiting me from continuing to achieve the same upper highs of nicotine and cocaine use that sparked the initial addiction cycle, but post-hoc quantification of 'personal utility' is so useless that I might as well make up whatever historical valence I had assigned to the different contributory factors.

I am personally suspicious of modern 'research' into therapy and addiction, particularly the suspiciously high incidence of journals concluding moral expatiation for asocial behaviors. He had addiction/genetic trauma/ptsd/a bad day so of course he had no choice but to be an asshole. In this space of 'addiction cannot be managed' the criticisms of Ozempic as some form of permanent pleasure-depriving limbic path zombiefication drug seems more like concern trolling to encourage continual indulgence in bad behaviors rather than handwringing about motivation death. If ozempic causes the tweaker to rot in a lazyboy watching SpongeBob and chugging doritos instead of seeking means to score meth for that sweet sweet dragon, then bring on the apathetic skinnification of antisocial losers.

It doesn't eliminate them (after all, it's not like ozempic users drop to a bmi of 20), it merely lessens them.

Going the other way, do you think that people with more cravings for food, etc are more joyous and driven than normal people? To me it seems unlikely. I suspect that the thought patterns that drive addiction are different than those that drive joy, and inhibiting the first doesn't lessen the second.

As someone who used ozempic for aesthetic weight loss... It's pretty insane. Cured my nicotine habit and brought my borderline alcoholism to maybe one-drink-a-week.

It also killed my libido. I've not heard much about that as a side effect, but a model where it works by just shutting down pleasure circuits seems to be consistent with it as a side effect.

Also helped my anxiety and spouts with depression, though. I expect it'll be really hard to disentangle all these effects.

Scott offered a teaser for a forthcoming post about GLP-1 receptor agonists as a treatment for addiction. I very much look forward to reading that when it drops.

A breakdown in social order happens when ones extended charity is either repeatedly abused or actively harmful. Recalculating the benefits of extending unlimited charity have resulted in sober ssessments of 'rehabilitation' effectiveness especially when available rehabilitation resources are underutilized and ineffacious on the rare occasions they were used - see Portlands drug rehab program where no drug addicts using clean needles ended up going for rehab, and there have been no successful rehab outcomes in the program.

As much as we as social creatures wish to extend sympathy for 'there but for the grace of god go i' at a certain point we all acknowledge that some bad actors are continuing to act to the net disbenefit of everyone, no matter their sob story. In fact, the enablers are often the greatest sufferers of the bad behavior, for their internal world construction is massively tested by the evident failure present in their midst.

The usual method of mental reconciliation is simple denial, whereby enablers deny the criminality or antisocial consequences of their loved ones. This can work quite well when surplus resources exist to cushion said antisocial consequences, but breaks apart when scarce resources require justice, extralegal or otherwise. Families of criminals cry when their loved ones are incarcerated by a 'biased' justice system, but they cry at funerals when gang wars kill belligerents as well.

I used to think like you, but after enough experience with antisocial people, I ran out of fucks to give. Personally, I don't have anything against drug users, indeed I am very libertarian on that issue. For me it's not about the drugs. My attitude is, if you can do hard drugs regularly and still be a nice person, more power to you. Probably would be better to stop doing the hard drugs, but as long as you don't cause other people problems, I have nothing against it.

Basically no-one in the US is poor enough that they actually have to steal or commit violence in order just to survive. Poverty is not what is causing our crime problems. People in the US who steal or commit violence do it not because of socioeconomic factors or even necessarily because of their drug use. You can do hard drugs and still not be a thief or a violent sociopath. Obviously hard drug use does degrade the brain, but it is still the individual who decides to continue to do the drugs even if it turns them into an asshole.

The main thing causing people in the US to steal and commit violence is that they have bad character. Some more, some less, but at the end of the day they have bad character. Which is not to say that your brother was fundamentally or essentially a bad guy, and I am very sorry for your loss. But the thing is, the people your brother hurt by stealing matter as much as he does. We have a bad tendency in this country to focus most of our attention on the antisocial person instead of on his victims. But the victims are important, in fact they are much more important than the antisocial person. Remove the antisocial people from society and society will be just fine. Remove the pro-social people and society would collapse instantly.

Should we call anti-social people "dysfunctional scum" or "biowaste"? Well, it depends on just how anti-social they are. I am perfectly happy with calling thieves and violent people biowaste, human garbage. Is it the best way to have the conversation? May be not, but the terminology is not simply insulting, it is also accurate. At some point it is good to call a spade a space. Some people really are human trash. Your brother at least did some good things, but there are people out there who do nothing good that even comes close to making up for the damage that they cause. The people who are like that, yes, I will happily call them biowaste. I am sick and tired of people like that. The world would simply be much much better if they did not exist. They are worse than literal shit. At least literal shit just sits there, it doesn't hurt anybody unless they step on it.

I am no longer interested in rehabilitation. Due process? Sure, I'm into that. If we remove someone from society, I want it to be for actual reasons, not because some cop made a mistake. But rehabilitation? No. My attitude now is, just remove them from society as soon as possible and if they really want to rehabilitate, they can do it on their own time and using their own resources. I am not interested in giving them a single second of my time or a single penny of my money. There are so many good, kind, genuinely wonderful people in the world that I could give my time and resources to instead. Those are the people who actually deserve it. They are the people who make the world a beautiful place. And in this society, we should talk more about them, and we should valorize them, but as for the anti-social assholes, screw them. I owe them nothing other than my contempt, and the only thing I want to give them is a ride to a cage where they can be kept away from hurting nice people.

Rehabilitation is a modern cheat code word employed to pretend that curing the original sin of (someone else who is really to blame) is what will turn someone into a productive member of society, absolving the criminal/delinquent of their crimes by the magic of blaming someone else and pinky promising that rehab has made the desire to commit crime go away.

In truth crime is simply a balancing of incentive structures, and just because people are bad at making their own calculus does not absolve society of constructing poor incentives to begin with. Criminals may not necessarily understand the meta of rehab program + therapy sessions to get better in-prison treatment and get lesser sentences from DAs, but repeated interactions and information transfer surely leads to convergent evolution. The existence of lenient alternatives to incarceration serve to incentivize criminality, since legal economic avenues are not nearly as socially emotionally or economically rewarding as bipping cowardly suburbanites.

Crime is what soured me on legalizing drugs. The thing is that while “broken windows” policing doesn’t reduce crime the reverse isn’t true either — being more lax in policing makes things actively worse. When you could get a longish jail term for marijuana possession, it worked quite well to keep drugs and drug related crimes down simply by what I call “bouncer rules”. Sure, marijuana by itself is pretty tame, but since police knew who were the antisocial drug users and sellers, you could arrest them just for pot and prevent them from doing worse things. What decriminalized drug use did was push the cops away from preventing crime in a sense. You can’t just bust a guy for possession because we’ve decriminalized drugs, so now that cop has to wait until a guy he knows is a drug dealer and a thief steals from another person or a business and even at that, it now has to either involve an injury or a large amount of money. That allows problems to fester and get worse, and removes any incentive to curb the openness of the crime. There are open air markets for drugs— in full view of the public. Shoplifters go into stores and basically loot the place knowing that the cops can’t do anything until they hit $1000 per person. So now it’s impossible to get that element under control because we keep giving away the tools.

Narcan makes legalizing opiates impossible.

Probably. But I don’t see how that deals with the problem of open air markets that exist now and the criminal elements attracted by them. The cops have their hands tied because even if opioids are illegal, most drug offenses are not being prosecuted to the full extent. And the gateway drugs are legal which makes it less of a problem for sellers.

In some of the articles I’ve read on the opioid crisis, cops were using narcan to revive different people multiple times a day in small WV towns. Hard not to think that implies the problem would resolve itself if it didn’t exist.

Are pot users criminal because they're antisocial, or are they antisocial because pot is criminalized? Seems pretty intuitive to me that pot in itself isn't the kind of drug that people steal, rob and kill for. Alcohol is vastly more "antisocial" in that regard.

Ok accepting this logic ad argumentum, why would we stop prohibition short of alcohol? Why does the line run precisely between Marijuana and Whiskey?

I think there’s room for arguments around where exactly to draw the line on drugs. But I think the harder drugs should certainly be illegal simply, as I said as a way to keep the junkies from stealing and harassing people and from openly doing drugs on the streets. The problem is that as the do gooders continue to move various social norms toward the bottom, it creates a rot and quite often that rot ends up harming those who, unlike the do gooders who just want to be compassionate without a thought that such compassion might be making the problems worse.

I think the worst idea is decriminalized drug use for a lot of reasons. First of all, since most hard-drug users tend to either be thieves or fencing for other thieves, you can keep a lot of street crime down by giving jail time to drug users. You can’t always catch a thief in the act, but finding a dime bag is a decent enough proxy. Having drug use be illegal (and again, I’m thinking more of the hard stuff) also means that drug users will be much less likely to use openly, and if they do, you can arrest them for that. As it stands now, you can’t walk down some streets in major cities because homeless drug users harass people, rob people, shit on the streets, and build huge eyesores of cobbled together houses in the sidewalks. This obviously kills business near those areas because believe it or not, nobody with money to spend wants to go to drug alley for anything. This reduces the value of property within walking distance substantially and creates more poverty and more despair and ultimately more drug use and more crime. The monied flee fairly quickly as crime slowly climbs.

My point here is that many of the drug addicts you despise are actually struggling desperately. Most have had difficult lives. Some have loved ones that care deeply about them and want to see them get healthy. Others don't have anyone in the world who cares about them, either because they never had a family, or because their families died, or because they alienated them through their behaviors.

But calling someone "dysfunctional scum" or "druggie" or "biowaste" isn't the way to start these conversations. That's the kind of language people use to dehumanize others.

Career criminals often have difficult lives, and sometimes have loved ones who care deeply about them and want to see them get healthy. Others embody the stereotype of someone who turned to crime because the street was the only place where they could find community and a semblance of social contact.

None of this changes the fact that most crime consists of profoundly a-social acts which are a plague to the good order and function of everyone else around the criminal class. The community of those who do comply with the law, who do not prey on their fellows excessively, retains the right - indeed, arguably the obligation - to expel such people from their midst in order to preserve and safeguard the benefits that compliance with law brings. Yes, declaring the criminal hostis humani generis or homo sacer - is a type of dehumanization - it is a declaration that they criminal is someone whose deeds have been adjudged to be wicked and thus set outside the social order. They have been expelled from the community, and no longer receive the benefit of the community's promise of collective defense and care.

In a well-worn metaphor, it is the social body rejecting criminals and siccing its immune system on it. Of course, this response can be deployed too aggressively - a social auto-immune disease. But that a system is capable of malfunction does not mean the system has no function, or that one must be ashamed of it.

Many of these people are poor unfortunates.

But every society in history has figured out that harsh views about people who are merely unfortunate is a necessity of having a functional society. You can have the public and public institutions be unfair to people- indeed, it's impossible for them to be perfectly fair- they just need to work. And unfortunately being nice to drug addicts doesn't work.

Yes, some people fuck their lives up beyond redemption in this life and it's deeply unfair to them that their efforts to reform are for naught. I'm not saying it isn't. But other people don't need to be made to suffer because of it. Most heroine addicts never really get clean, try as they might, and when they get a batch with fentanyl in it and OD many other people breathe a sigh of relief and that's not because they're monsters. It's because that heroine addict, even a well intentioned heroine addict who really struggles to get clean, is creating negative externalities for everyone else, all the time. Asking us to deal with it is even more unfair; after all, we stable functional people didn't recommend him to get into drugs, and probably told him not to.

It's a rather bad idea to give wide masses of average people the impression that society will be harsh towards them should they simply have bad fortune. The view that society is merciless and unforgiving incentivizes drug addiction, crime and all sorts of social degeneracy.

What you punish you get less of, what you subsidize you get less more of. If society is merciless and unforgiving towards drug addicts, we will get less drug addiction, not more.

And calling drug addiction obtained through chasing a high "bad fortune" is spitting on those who really have experienced bad fortune.

What you punish you get less of, what you subsidize you get less of

That second "less" should be "more" instead, no?

Yes, oops.

What I disagree with is the proposition that "harsh views about people who are merely unfortunate is a necessity of having a functional society".

It is, though. The mechanism is that as soon as you decide that it's unacceptable to have hard views about the unfortunate, everyone in a bad spot gets called "unfortunate" because it would be arrogant and rude to say otherwise ("There but for the grace of God go I"). So because you cannot protect "unfortunate" from the creep of inclusion the self-destructive, you must allow harsh views of the unfortunate or people will assume you'll save them from their own self-destruction.

That is far from obvious to me. I could see the possibility that falling on harms times sans safety net leads to drug use, but I can’t see the causal mechanism of “if I don’t have a social safety net then bad times will follow so might as well drop out and drug up ensuring bad times”

I’m increasingly aware of just how much suffering and sin is caused by our belief that the world is hard and merciless. This belief—which can express itself as despair, or as the fearful drive to protect oneself above all else—makes it impossible to trust others. It makes social solidarity and even marriage extraordinarily difficult. The belief that we will be brutally punished if we set a foot out of line, that nobody will look out for us or help us or try to understand where we’re coming from, promotes abortion. It fuels addiction, by making us unwilling to admit where we’re needy, weak, or at fault.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-stillborn-child-leads-to-a-murder-charge-with-threat-of-life-in-prison/

"Unforgiving" would imply that society would remain harsh even after you got your act together, and I don't see anyone advocating for that. As for the rest I really don't see how it would incentivize it.

So does the view that society is endlessly tolerant and supportive of destructive behavior, and the view that society owes a debt to each meritless individual and deserves destructive behavior as a sort of retributive justice. And right now I'm fairly certain that various western societies are failing on the side of being excessively tolerant and enabling.

But the soul is still oracular, amid the market's din/List the ominous stern whisper, from the Delphic cave within/They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.

"It’s not a ‘compromise with sin’, per se, just discarding certain people who happen to be a net loss to us."

"Exactly what do you think a compromise with sin is?"

It's sin all around. It's a sin of omission to allow these people to prey on others and generally shit up the place (often literally). And it's a sin of commission to use the power of government to protect those people from their victims.

Enshittification of public spaces has massive knock on consequences regarding social cohesion that are unquantifiable by econometrics. Diminished prosocial trust in neighbours to look after ones property and kin willingly, much less competently, results in private sector security and care solutions that take away theoretically optimal agglomerated public services. Property value disparities due to unspecified 'concerns' (crime. its crime) about neighbourhood populations cause inefficient capital utilization and rectification measures, or outright capital destruction. Worst of all, faith in public institutions faltering causes underinvestment and thus under capability of theoretically optimal outcomes.

Good outcomes flow from good societies. You can't build a utopia and bring in street trash and expect them to magically shape up. There are no CCS chargers in shitty neighbourhoods because tweakers steal the copper, and there are no grocery stores in food deserts because shitheads keep stealing stuff.

I certainly do not condone anti-social behaviour in public, nor the ignoring of it by municipal officials. However, the response to it needs to be one that acknowledges all people, including the least of these, as human beings.

That passage just demonstrates that Christianity is indeed at the root of these problems. None of those people is Jesus Christ, and taking them in and feeding and clothing them will result in nothing but destruction of one's home, food, and clothing. Certainly one can acknowledge they are human beings; that makes them worse, not better, because they didn't have to become what they are.

One of these days I'm going to have to type up some stories from my time living and working in [urban center you have heard of because of crime].

Please do. People just don't talk about this stuff and it's insane what they just put up with silently, assuming it's normal.

Here I am! AhhhhhhTheFrenching up in your shit. But I am here to support you! Fuck this shit. Society has abandoned responsibility and we are no longer allowed to institutionalize people that will chop you head off on a greyhound bus and start eating it. (lead to a cop committing suicide and the flesh eating decapitation guy getting released without supervision, as long as he pinky swears to stay on his meds). Fuck these homeless maniacs, something must be done.

Are you talking about the Vincent Weiguang Li guy? If so, then it seems like a very non-central example of a homeless bum. Guy had a degree, used to work steadily until his schizophrenia worsened, used to be married until his schizophrenia worsened. Wasn't on drugs. At the time of the happening was living with his ex-wife, so wasn't even homeless. And seems that he was in fact institutionalized for several years afterwards (up to nine, depending on how you count).

I'm taking those facts from Wikipedia, so grain of salt.

Mental illness is one of the ways we get the homeless who are particularly likely to cause problems (the other is drugs). So I wouldn't call that a noncentral example.

I never used to carry a gun here, but started recently.

From a practical perspective, what's the best self-defense weapon?

Lately I've been thinking it's pepper spray. The problem with a gun is that even if it is "successfully" used to stop a would-be assailant you could be facing criminal charges. It also seems harder to use then pepper spray.

But where on one's person do you even carry a gun (or pepper spray)? Surely not in your pockets, and digging through a bag to find a weapon seems difficult. I'm not sure you need to carry a weapon anyway. I live in Seattle, the land of the drug zombie, and even though people do occasionally get attacked by schizos, the odds are pretty small. As a man, I tend not to be hassled either. So I see no need to carry a weapon.

Sorry to pick out one small line from your post...

I mentioned it in the last thread, but having a large protective dog breed with you will generally make you safer around anyone with a shred of rationality left in their brain.

Dogs of course aren't practical for all use cases. But I feel like they fill the most needed gap for some of these cities.

  1. Dogs are a more sympathetic victim. I don't know why but someone who assaults and nearly beats another person to death can get all sorts of excuses made for them, but that same person beats up a dog and everyone agrees they are scum.
  2. Dogs are more likely to injure someone in a fight. A gang of ten people can safely beat someone up without any of them getting hurt. With a dog though at least one of them is likely gonna get bit.
  3. Dogs have more plausible deniability for violence than all other weapons. You can still get in trouble, especially if you are irresponsible and get some kid bitten. But we treat dogs as having some degree of agency, so they will shoulder some of the blame for any incident.

I find it weird that I keep talking up owning a dog. I don't actually own one, and don't want to.

Well, maybe because many people believe dogs don’t belong in most places and get annoyed when people decide their precious little doggie should go to what were once people only locations.

As I said they don't fit in some circumstances. But outside on the street is fine and that is also a place with a lot of crime. Buildings that are secure enough to prevent a dog from entering are also secure enough to prevent obvious trouble people from entering.

Just carry a gun. I use an iwb holster in summer and owb in winter. Honestly, I've used a hard pocket holster in a jacket pocket, works fine.

Lighting is another issue. If I'd needed to shoot, I would have had to reposition my flashlight grip at the same time as coming up from one-handed low ready. Which I know how to do, but not instinctively enough to pull my light in the correct grip in the first place.
Something to train on.

Side note, thanks to this I found out my immigrant boss also carries. Some of these guys become more American than Americans.

A gun. Assuming you don't dress in skin tight clothing and/or in a hot climate, it's not that hard to conceal a small pistol.

The most common self defense scenario is that zero shots are fired. Surveys put it as high as 95% of DGUs involve merely brandishing the gun to scare off an assailant. (Of course in certain circumstances that could also lead to charges or social opprobrium) The advantage of a firearm is that you'll never find you're at the wrong point on the escalation hierarchy. I mean you don't want to find yourself at the ok corral with an lcp, but a knife or pepper spray become useless if they pull a gun.

Pepper spray keychains are also widely available. Practice with it if you're going to carry it. My wife used to carry pepper spray in her purse, then tried it to see if it worked, INDOORS FOR SOME REASON, and called me crying because it got in her face after hitting the wall.

In general don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I only carry rarely, when I feel I need to to. If I had to carry every day or never, I'd pick never. But I pop it in a jacket pocket when I'm going somewhere I might need it.

From a practical perspective, what's the best self-defense weapon?

From a practical perspective, it depends on the context. Priority one is always going to be avoiding conflict rather than dealing with it when it comes. The order of operations for that are:

  1. Don't go to dangerous places. Seriously, these are usually pretty obvious.
  2. Be aware of your surroundings.
  3. In the event that there is potential for conflict, be ready to deescalate or flee as needed. Both are superior to engaging in a conflict if they are realistic options.

In service of these the advice from @Lizzardspawn below is quite good! Being fit will tend to make you a less appealing target and allow you to flee from most potential conflicts.

If you're thinking about situations where outright preventing conflict is not feasible (e.g. home invasion), the correct weapon is an appropriately suited firearm. The appropriate firearm depends on local risks from overpenetration and the geometry of your property. As a broad generality, you can't go too far wrong with whatever your ergonomically preferred 9mm pistol with hollow-point rounds is. If you have the budget and inclination, my own preference would be a short-barreled, suppressed AR-15 chambered in 300 BLK with subsonic rounds, but this probably not realistic for most people.

From a practical perspective, what's the best self-defense weapon?

Best is living in Singapore. Second best - pair of good running shoes and being fit. Third is complicated and depends on local rules.

Yeah I’m very pro-second amendment, but practically speaking if you’re in any situation where you have to pull out a gun you’re already half-screwed.

I'd like to correct your intuition and say that you're going to face charges for pepper spray as well.

Who's going to report a defensive pepper spraying? Like blast the ne'er do well in the face and get out of there. He doesn't think they're on his side so he won't call the cops.

We live in a world where everything is potentially videotaped and reported. The place you are most likely to get randomly assaulted is outside a business. They have cameras on the doors, in the store, and in the parking lot. If, for example, you are approached in the parking lot by a person menacing you and pepper spray them then leave, thats on video. His flailing and screeching is on video. Some progressive do gooder will start filming you if you aren't quick, and even if you are they will film him and call for an ambulance for him. Then the auto reporter auto reports that he got pepper sprayed.

If you are thinking carrying pepper spray is a good idea, you live in a place where the system is set up against a person carrying pepper spray is a good idea. It might still be a good idea, better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6 and all, but you still have to be aware you aren't the favored class here.

Yeah but who's going to report it? Do gooders are going to shut up about it awkwardly, your assailant won't report it, the business owner won't either. Most pepper spray victims probably don't seek medical attention and the police rarely follow up on it anyways; they've got their hands full dealing with serious injuries.

I think there are many people who will report it. Why would the "do gooders" shut up? They sympathize with the bums.

Probably not murder charges though.

Why would I accept a stranger's intuition over my own?

Because people get assault and malicious wounding charges for pepper spray.

It is a lot lower bar than people think it is.

The best self defense weapon, in jurisdictions where it is legal, is an indifferently-concealed full sized handgun. I carry a 1911 and print away. Never gonna need it when you have it, might if you don't.

Sorry, what do you mean by "printing"? Having the imprint of the weapon/holster visible through your clothes?

Yes.

If you actually care about printing (and comfort!) I'd recommend the Sig P365. Best balance between size and ammo capacity. I appendix carry and the only time it gets uncomfortable is when I bend down.

The printing is the point- ne'er do wells know I have a gun on me without open carrying.

I also carry a sig P365 and recommend it.

But where on one's person do you even carry a gun (or pepper spray)? Surely not in your pockets, and digging through a bag to find a weapon seems difficult.

I use the urban carry holster. Like everybody else, I was put off from getting one after seeing this gif, but I finally caved because the ankle holsters I kept buying would only last a couple of months before the Velcro became unusable. It's wonderful.

+1 to urban carry holsters. I love mine and have convinced 2 other family members to buy one.

The best self-defense weapons is one you will actually carry and are trained to use.

A Kubotan is high on the list because it can be attached as a keychain and is easy enough to deploy with a bit of practice. No excuses not to have it with you almost anywhere.

The primary consideration in my mind is also whether it is suitable for multiple attackers, and either allows you to deter a whole group of attackers at once or inflict enough damage quickly enough that you can escape.

Pepper spray kind of works here but I really, really dislike that it is easily defeated by goggles, or just covering your eyes.

A compact handgun still reigns supreme, to me. Not too big a fan of 'subcompact' or 'micro' styles as they start to trade off too much ammo capacity, accuracy, and stopping powah. Anything is better than nothing, though.

And perhaps above all, having a buddy or two who know how to handle themselves trumps all. Makes you less of a target to start, massively multiplies the force you can bring to bear, and can patch you up or drive you to a hospital if you do get injured.

Surely not in your pockets

Some pistols are small enough to fit in a pocket.

A flashlight and pepper spray. A flashlight can temporarily blind an individual at night, be used as a blunt weapon, and be brandished without issue unlike a bat, a baton, brass knuckles, a gun, or a knife. Pepper spray can temporarily incapacitate, and, more or less, be brandished without issue. Both can be concealed in a hand, or clipped to a belt. Less likely to escalate a non-fatal situation into a fatal one. Less likely to find yourself in a civil and/or criminal case.

It doesn't hurt to have an old bricked phone, decoy keys, and/or a decoy wallet to distract a thief. And, ultimately, it's best to avoid dangerous areas.

You can have a gun, but you really need to be aware of all the legal and physical risks you could encounter, and regularly train with it.

I never used to carry a gun here, but started recently

I'm not assuming you have, I'm not assuming you haven't. Just a friendly reminder from Gun Bro to Gun Bro to check your state and local regs on carrying and transportation regulations of firearms. They can change without you noticing. Doubly so if you're in a concealed carry situation.

Stay safe

Start or join a local nightwatch? Go uuuh, "help" the druggies out of your neighbourhood, either they get lost or they start shit. Either way the problem will be solved.

Where's 'here', out of curiosity?

The hollowed out ruins that were Western civilization

I was thinking of a particular city or region.

And OP was probably thinking of deliberately not providing that information for fear of it becoming identifiable.

Well, sure, but I would have thought that the name of a city by itself wouldn't be enough to make him identifiable, and since the content of the post is a complaint about his local neighbourhood, I feel that knowing where that neighbourhood is, at least in very broad terms, is relevant to understanding the complaint.

Well, sure, but I would have thought that the name of a city by itself wouldn't be enough to make him identifiable

What's the benefit for him, of narrowing down his identity from 1 in 300M to 1 in 10K - 1M (probably a lot less given the other details he brought up)?

I feel that knowing where that neighbourhood is, at least in very broad terms, is relevant to understanding the complaint.

I don't. The nature of his complaint is crystal clear. I can understand the value of the extra info in verifying that what he's complaining about is actually happening, but it's not like proving that conclusively will change anyone's mind in about the wider implications.

Nothing in the top-level post indicates he's in the United States - I don't even know which country he's talking about.

Which only means that his relative exposure would increase even more, if he told you the city he's at...

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You are glowing.

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...I feel that knowing where that neighbourhood is, at least in very broad terms, is relevant to understanding the complaint.

While I share some curiosity about the matter, I don't know that it's relevant. Have we not all experienced basically the same thing across many different cities? Deranged and drug-addled bums coddled by NGOs that make endless excuses for them aren't unique to a single city. This is so common that it would be more interesting to me if someone called out a city where they've never seen such a thing.

This is so common that it would be more interesting to me if someone called out a city where they've never seen such a thing.

Basically any city in Poland? You get some homeless but they are not aggressive. And most they smell, and you have trouble with that maybe once a year. In last 20 years the most aggressive were touts, when I was with foreign friends and speaking in English. Once I was slightly kicked by someone but that was some drunk woman and not homeless/drug bum.

(secret recipe is likely being poor so migrants will go elsewhere)

Goes for at least the parts of Stockholm I'm familiar with as well (which isn't too much admittedly). And migrants definitely do come here.

My best guess is that this is more of an American problem due to drugs coming through their southern border.

It's not something I've experienced personally, though I've heard enough similar stories about urban decay in the United States that it's not an unfamiliar genre to me. The stories I have heard, though, suggest to me that the region is relevant, insofar as it lets us draw some conclusions around different states, governments, and policies.

So I guess I think it is relevant, if only because I can't think of much to say about the idea that an unknown city in an unknown country with an unknown government and unknown social fabric has a problem with drug addicts. That's not even a data point, surely?

The top level poster is under no obligation to tell me, of course - though then I'm free to find the initial complaint rather pointless.

Have we not all experienced basically the same thing across many different cities?

No, I haven't. Currently living in Denver, CO and I have yet to see the kind of things OP described. I agree with @OliveTapenade that it is beneficial to the discussion to say where one is talking about. No shame if someone declines to specify, of course, but it's perfectly reasonable to ask

I just google Denver, CO homeless camps and got tons of articles, videos and photos of them(I suspect Denver was not always like this, my city wasn't). I then googled Denver homeless crime, and while I will admit it is very narrow in its focus, the article titled

Crime calls up 2,900% at hotel converted to homeless shelter in Denver

stood out.

The OP mentioned a car break in, so I tried to google that,

DENVER — After leading the nation in stolen vehicles, including a staggering 98 percent increase over a 5-year period the latest data show Colorado vehicle thefts dropped in 2023, a trend that has continued into the current year.

I tried to find stats on just breaking into cars to steal stuff, but all my google searches were swamped with, leading the nation in auto theft, articles (I even checked page 2)

Which is all to say, for all I know OP lives in Denver.

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In fact, I know all the people responsible

Name them, or at least DM me their names.

I'm not too excited about doxxing myself, sorry. I've probably said far too much already in terms of information bits.

If any motteizean cares enough to dox me, they can almost certainly narrow it down to a few people(probably less than five, although there's one person in particular that I don't think you could clearly distinguish me from based on the information posted on the motte) just based on information I've already posted. I've never had any problems.

UK, are you OK?

Labour councillor calls for people to 'cut the throats' of 'Nazis and fascists'

Suspended Labour councillor arrested over video ‘urging people to cut throats’

Probably anyone reading this is familiar with the story so far: three gradeschool children in Southport were knifed to death, and ten others injured, on July 29th at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club. The alleged perpetrator, Axel Rudakubana, is reportedly the son of Rwandan immigrants and was 17 years old at the time of the incident, but has apparently since passed his 18th birthday. The events, allegedly in part as the result of some false reporting concerning Axel's identity, led to a number of protests, which led to a number of counterprotests.

Why would you counterprotest a protest against the knifing of schoolgirls? Well, apparently the original protests were racist. It's pretty important to not be racist. Sufficiently important, I suppose, that people would rather talk about that, than about the dead schoolchildren who, but for recent immigration from Africa, would likely still be alive. Not that Axel is an immigrant, of course. He was born on the magic soil of the UK, so it's apparently racist to notice that his parents weren't. I saw one article suggesting he might be autistic? Good sources are hard to find.

That brings us to the current events! Labour councillor Ricky Jones apparently found some inspiration in Axel's extracurricular activities, as he is very clearly articulating additional knife violence as the proper response to people protesting the murder of little girls. I actually had a surprisingly difficult time finding the original video; most of the articles throwing around the word "alleged" did not judge me fit to judge for myself. I assume Ricky was born tone deaf because throat cutting seems like an especially poor choice of words given the circumstances--though I guess I don't know for certain that Axel managed any literal throat cutting in the process of (EDIT: ALLEGEDLY) butchering schoolchildren. The UK does not have any particularly meaningful or toothy Free Speech legislation, either, though in this particular case I can imagine Mr. Jones facing consequences even here in the United States. Remind me, is it still okay to call for the punching of U.S. Nazis? Was it ever? I seem to have lost track.

Axel's knifework is not being treated as a terrorist attack (yet?), but here's where things get weird.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:

Taylor Swift shows in Vienna canceled over alleged planned terrorist attack

Suspects in foiled attack on Taylor Swift shows were inspired by Islamic State group, officials say

Will we hear more about Axel's motivations? I suppose Taylor Swift is just so famous that at this point any plot to kill large numbers of people would, statistically, run into Taylor Swift events eventually. But now I'm wondering if Axel was just, you know, reading the same weird terrorist handbook as the Austrian terrorists. They were even the same age--the two arrested in Vienna are 19 years old and 17 years old. If I had a nickel for every time a 17 year old boy tried to murder Swifties en masse, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice!

I'm sure much smarter and well-connected analysts out there are way ahead of me on this one. And probably it's nothing! And it wouldn't really matter if it was something, beyond maybe bankrupting a handful of Taylor Swift event ticket scalpers in the near future. But it's all very weird.

Especially the part where counterprotesters started literally calling for and cheering on more knifings.

Not that Axel is an immigrant, of course. He was born on the magic soil of the UK

Reminds me of a tweet to the effect of "He's Welsh, but I'm still on stolen land after hundreds of years? How does that work?"

Anyways, pleasantly surprised the councilor was arrested.

beyond maybe bankrupting a handful of Taylor Swift event ticket scalpers in the near future.

A tinfoil hat large enough to cover Everest take: Extreme guerilla marketing to reduce the popularity of her concerts.

"He's Welsh, but I'm still on stolen land after hundreds of years? How does that work?"

Huh, that's interesting. I never thought about that before. How does that work?

Moreover, why have I been anti-leftist and interested in anti-leftist modes of thought for a decade and I've never heard this argument before, and why does no one else seem to see that sort of obvious double speak when examining leftist stances on immigration vs leftist stances on colonialism?

I wouldn't mind hearing pro and anti arguments for that particular argument. I mean, it is a "gotcha", but it sounds to me like a thought provoking gotcha.

Moreover, why have I been anti-leftist and interested in anti-leftist modes of thought for a decade and I've never heard this argument before, and why does no one else seem to see that sort of obvious double speak when examining leftist stances on immigration vs leftist stances on colonialism?

I was once in a dumb argument about whether or not chicken tikka masala counted as British food. My interlocutor, a leftist, was arguing it was invented by indians who just happened to be living in Britain, so the UK shouldn't get credit just because it happened on their soil. And then decorated the arument with some stuff about it being another example of colonialists claiming something that wasn't theirs blah blah.

I responded by quipping "I see you agree with Mr Farage that immigrants aren't really British." He conceded the point immediately.

It's fun of course to win an argument with one line, but it's only possible when your opponent has an internally inconsistent worldview and hasn't noticed yet. So many people switch easily between frameworks depending on what casts [favoured group] in the best light and they don't even realise they're doing it.

The retort doesn't work on people that aren't already sold. If you buy into general left-leaning positions, the relevant dynamic isn't about how long someone's been there, it's about the oppressor-oppressed axis, and you're the oppressor even if you're residing in the homeland of your ancestors.

Leftists use the oppressor oppressed axis to force their chosen enemy as the source of all ill regardless of provenance. The Hutus murdered Tutsis because of Belgian colonialism, the Turks genocided Armenians because of the Crusades, the Indonesians killed East Timor at US direction. There is no sincere belief in the oppressor oppressed axis, merely an exploitable meta founded in conspiracism and justified by postmodern dialectics.

There is no sincere belief in the oppressor oppressed axis

That's not true. I know enough progressives to tell you this is something that's sincerely believed by at least a lot.

I agree that they employ this rhetorical device constantly. I disagree that they believe it, at least in any permutation where belief relies on understanding. The contorting of reality to ensure their chosen pets are ALWAYS oppressed regardless of their active exercise of their own power lays bare the hollowness of their oppressor/oppressed framing. Copts are oppressed by Egyptians because of British colonialism, ISIS had no choice but to enslave and murder Yazidis because Islam was corrupted by Israel, the Janjaweed are executing Masalit boys (actual neotenous prepuberty boys, not 17 year old bearded 'children') because of western imperialism. The chosen oppressed have no agency when they exercise said agency actively and openly, the oppressor is somehow ALWAYS someone the progressive hates.

The meta is quite clear: be absolutely shameless when committing crimes and always blame white people. It is a useless strategy in actually developing your cultures capability and income, but it is a cheat code for unlimited cover to continue being brutal to your enemies.

I disagree that they believe it, at least in any permutation where belief relies on understanding.

The progressive information environment is extremely good at weeding out people who Notice, and also extremely good at keeping people too angry to Notice themselves. Also, have you met IQ 100 people? If you require a full understanding to accord "belief", most IQ 100 people have no political beliefs.

Yea the internal curation of progressives is impressive. Wrongthink is immediately excised, and more impressively their adherents default to shibboleths. Fundamentally I maintain it is displaced religiosity, promising moral absolution for existing as long as unlimited support for Social Justice is maintained. My progressive friends posted articles about Israelis investigating prisoner rape in response to my highlighting of the ISIS Taylor Swift attempted attack. I honestly think Swifties would have been happier to be attacked and murdered since they get to proclaim #hopenothate. Instead their concert gets cancelled and they get no opportunity for performance.

Turks genocided Armenians because of the Crusades,

I hadn't heard that one before.

Rightists DO point this out. Loudly and often. 'Dog born in a stable is nor a horse' is an extremely common refrain. The problem is that Rightists also say crazy shit that gets amplified by a media ecosystem intent on portraying right wingers as stupid loonies lacking intellectual rigor.

Leftists are adept at playing games with numerator and denominator to stuff up statistics as they see fit. Count every criminal instance committed as endemic to the nation, count every good action as particular to the community. In the Manchester Arena bombing the media kept talking about how immigrants were specifically offering free rides to victims, while highlighting how Salman Abedi was the UKs responsibility since he was born in the magic UK dirt.

Yes, they point that out, but they don't specifically juxtapose the seeming disconnect in leftist thought that for some reason in their mind, immigrants have the full privilege of movement, but Europeans don't have the privilege to live in the lands they've lived in for half a century

Europeans used violence, which is the big difference. These foreigners were actually 'invited', and exploited lawfare for their benefit. As such, no complaints are valid. It does not matter that the inviter and the sufferer are not the same person, just like how the Algonquin invited the French to attack the (someone). The only thing that matters is that the Europeans played the game competently and won, and the inviters lost the game.

The simple counter-argument would be that 'stolen' land remains 'stolen' no matter how much time passes, wheras 'gifted' land (or rather, 'gifted' citizenship) is fair and legitimate.

All land is stolen so it's nobody's to give.

The plain and evident truth is that some people believe in ethno-nationalism for everybody that specifically is not Western.

There was an interesting argument I heard that, because the fall of Constantinople (1453) and the colonisation of the New World (1493, Hispaniola) are near contemporaneous, anyone who thinks that the colonisation/conquest of the Americas is fundamentally illegitimate is basically arguing that 'historical conquest' became 'illegitimate landgrab' sometime in that very specific 40 year window.

IMO the Reconquista (1492) also fits in quite interestingly here.

There are a number of leftists trying to claim the reconquista was islamophobic and keep citing the caliphate of granada as a tolerant multiracial polity that had to be crushed by racist Christians. For leftists muslims must both be eternally present in Europe and free of all sin in order to justify mass importation and displacement of locals powers. Once the muslims are in place they will loyally vote in socialist feminists to bring forth the anticapitalist paradise where childless intellectuals are the final arbiters of justice and resource distribution. Nothing for proles, tokens for pets, everything for themselves.

Why "anyone"? There are plenty of people who think that both of those conquests were illegitimate.

My ears will be open to this argument when they start doing land acknowledgements in Turkey.

"We stand today on the ancestral homelands of the Ionian Greeks"

But if the land is stolen it's not theirs to give.

Aboriginal activists have a mantra that Australia "Always was, always will be" Aboriginal land. That necessarily implies that Vietnamese immigrants have no right to be here - it was the white people that let them in.

Gifted by the illegitimate Norman government of Britain?

Gifted by the democratically elected governments of Britain since the early 1950s, presumably.

The only moral action is to use Neanderthal DNA to bring back some Neanderthals and then abandon Europe to them.

Well, this brings up one interesting counter argument (which I don't particularly agree with). When I argue with people about land acknowledgements, and bring up that I think that they're stupid because every land is stolen land, the only interesting argument I heard in return is that since the native Americans's descents are still around, it's important to give land acknowledgements at events for native Americans as a sign of respect. Basically respect for the living. However, the people the native Americans had long ago slaughtered to get their land are long gone (as are the neanderthals), so there's no reason to acknowledge their previous ownership.

To me this sounds like they're saying we only need to apologize for the past if the descendants of the victims are still around. This quickly gets to a repugnant conclusion, which is that in some ways it's better to have killed off an entire population then leave any descendents, because if there are no descendents, there's no need to apologize.

I think this also sounds similar to another argument, which is that the only reason white people are held so guilty for slave owning is because previous slave owning populations sterilized the slaves, or the slaves otherwise went extinct before the modern era. This makes it sound like the real "sin" of white people which makes them distinct from other slave owning populations, is that they freed the slaves, and gave them enough resources that their descendents lived to the modern age. Once again, no descendents, no guilt. And white people are demonized as "literally the worst", when in fact they were one of the few groups of people noble enough to end slavery.

This makes it sound like the real "sin" of white people which makes them distinct from other slave owning populations, is that they freed the slaves, and gave them enough resources that their descendents lived to the modern age.

Copenhagen ethics strikes again. This also naturally applies to sexism and racism.

noble enough to end slavery

Yeah, now it's the people that solved the problems that are more bound than those for whom they solved the problems for. And while you could argue that it's not really nobility that ended these practices, and more just good business sense (slavery is not economical in the face of industrialization, and the British were the most industrialized leading to them being the most anti-slavery) with a side of taking the comparatively-unindustrialized colonies down a few pegs (which also applied to the southern US), that is not the argument most of the nags use. They do it just to nag as is their nature.

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Yes, terminating competing land claims if there are no survivors, but not terminating land claims if there are survivors, encourages leaving no survivors.

Thus de-extinction - the land claims return even if there were no survivors.

Truly ethics for dead people.

Non-Africans have what, 3% Neanderthal? I daresay there's more Neanderthal DNA in those lands than there ever was under the rule of pure Neanderthals.

Yes but did native britons (not those of Saxon or Norman or Dane decent) vote for that?

Adverse possession is an ancient legal principle because at a certain point title being clear is more important to everyone’s wellbeing compared to determining who is the moral owner.

Hah yes. The simple counter-counter argument would be, do the people who stole the land originally (as the natives of America did) really have much of a leg to stand on when they tell us we shouldn't have stolen it from them?

Many of the native Americans who died or were displaced as a result of the European conquest had never personally conquered anything, they simply happened to be descended from people who had conquered the land earlier. Should an entire ethnic group be held responsible for the actions of some of its members, many of whom are not even members of the present generation?

In some ways it's even more complicated than that: I learned relatively recently that the Black Hills famous for the Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee incidents weren't traditionally Lakota land, and had, at the time, been recently taken by the Lakota from the Cheyenne in 1776.

History is full of incidents like this.

People naively assume the Incan and Aztec empires were thousands of years old. In fact, they were both only about 100 years old at the time of the conquistadors.

Innumerable conquests and genocides must have happened in the New World before Columbus showed up. We don't know about them simply because they were never written down.

I see you also listen to The Rest is History! Brilliant podcast.

Should an entire ethnic group be held responsible for the actions of some of its members, many of whom are not even members of the present generation?

I would guess that most people here would say "of course not." Concepts like race guilt and blood guilt are noxious. (I'd actually be interested in hearing from someone who believes in them earnestly).

It's almost always brought up, though, in response to claims that white people bear collective race guilt for their ancestors winning against indigenous people. And that's kind of a pretty weird standard: why should race guilt only start applying once the crimes that impart us with race guilt have stopped?

Honestly, it's sort of dehumanizing to historical Native Americans. It reduces them to little fairy children dancing in the forest, totally innocent of all sin until the evil Whites came and ruined their utopia. They become dumb creatures lacking all agency, only existing to function as symbols in internecine white conflict.

Noted liberal professor proves your point. And then, probably, masturbates

Before Columbus the Americas had a low disease burden meaning the check on population had to be war and starvation. I'm guessing they fought before they let their kids die of starvation so there was probably constant war over food.

I'd say absolutely not. But you must know that that argument applies to us as decendents of European settlers, too. @shakenvac was bringing up an argument that the amount of time and generations that pass do not matter.

Personally I disagree with the notion of race guilt and I also disagree that stolen land remains stolen no matter how much time passes. I see no morality in judging the innocent descendants of conquerors for what their ancestors did. It's another matter, I suppose, if the descendants revel in the actions of their ancestors and plan to continue acting in a similar fashion themselves. But that does not apply to most modern Europeans.

Should an entire ethnic group be held responsible for the actions of some of its members, many of whom are not even members of the present generation?

This isn't about "holding responsible". It merely means they* should get no claim on what was never rightfully theirs in the first place.

Aside from, as others have pointed out, this being a response to just the same argument in the other direction.

*"they" meaning "the ethnic group". This is assuming an ethnic group may have land claims, but if not, there naturally isn't a claim either.

I definitely think they shouldn't be. But unfortunately, some people think it is OK to hand down guilt through the generations like you describe, which is why we have the land acknowledgements to begin with.

A sign that, when they aren't thinking about it, even the left are natural rights libertarians rather than social constructivists about property rights.

Or, like a lot of people, consistency matters much less than vibes and being right™

That's a good explanation, though I suspect that the identity/oppression framework is still more fundamental than this. Many of the same people who claim that white Americans still deserve to be called colonialists would probably fiercely defend the Americanness of recent non-white illegal immigrants.

My only observation is that I have been told many times by smug Europeans and Australians, on this forum and many others, that they have found a way to "true multiculturalism" and "peaceful cohabitation" that continues to elude American society, with our polite segregation and constant miasma of racial tension. To which I have always pointed out that the only reason they are able to believe this nonsense is that their societies are still less diverse than ours, with national populations that are still, for the moment, supermajority white. They will learn better, one way or another.

The future of European cities won't be pretty if what happened to the U.S. in the 1960s is any indication.

Lately, I've developed a grim fascination with the 1950/2024 comparison shots of various American cities, both large and small. In 1950 they were bustling centers of activity, with well-dressed, thin, professional people scurrying to and fro. In 2024, they are just like an intersection with giant parking lots and maybe a payday loans store.

Ignorant Redditors like to blame car culture for the collapse of American cities, but cars merely enabled people to escape the crime and urban decay. The process of ceding productive areas to the least productive citizens is now beginning in earnest in Europe as well, although in this case the cities are rotting from the edges inwards.

Like a receding glacier, the genteel areas of a city like Paris get smaller and smaller. Soon, the scowling male faces of the banlieue will reach the heart of the city and the City of Love will become the city of trying not to get sexually assaulted as you wander down the once-thriving boulevards.

blame car culture

American cities were bulldozed for cars in the 50s. American cities looked like European cities: https://i.redd.it/mn45jsmhowna1.jpg https://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8605917/highways-interstate-cities-history

Never forget what they took from you.

Yes. Perhaps my comment implied that whites were chased out of cities starting only in the 1960s. In reality, the process started much earlier.

Between 1950 and 1960, the black population of Detroit increased by nearly 60% while the white population fell by nearly 25%. But as early as 1920, mass immigration from the south was changing the character of the city.

The race riots of the 1960s are crystalized in our memory, but Detroit and other northern cities were already experiencing population replacement decades before, long before the first interstate was built.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of car culture, but it wasn't the cause of the decline in American cities. It was black crime.

I still don't understand why having highways that go to the places worth going to is bad. I guess some people hate driving, but once we get self-driving cars this will be seen as obviously correct right?

Anti-car activists have a mental model of an ideal world with a level of density they believe is incompatible with typical roads, and often think even moderately car-traversable areas are Literally Causes Of Death.

I'm... not a fan, and to be blunt their underlying claims range from merely misleading to outright malicious lies, but they're a pretty common viewpoint.

A large part of why ‘the places worth going to’ are worth going to is that there isn’t a highway going through them!

Highways are cool! But they demolished beautiful buildings downtown instead of building highways in less dense areas.

IMO, the money spent on highways and other car-related infrastructure since 1920 should have been spent on maintaining and increasing urban public transit and passenger rail service (anyone remember interurbans? Like streetcars, but they traveled between towns rather than within a city).

It seems unlikely Axel was an Islamist, Rwanda is only something like 2% Muslim and he’d likely have an Islamic name if he was born to a Muslim family. I suppose he could be a convert, but again that would likely have come out by now.

It seems unlikely Axel was an Islamist, Rwanda is only something like 2% Muslim and he’d likely have an Islamic name if he was born to a Muslim family.

All the reporting I've seen that mentions it says his dad, at least, was nominally Christian. (I've also seen a number of people on reddit gloating about it, as if it proved anything. "The child of African immigrants who murdered these little girls was a Christian, you bigots!" is not the W they seem to think it is.)

I suppose he could be a convert, but again that would likely have come out by now.

If he was radicalized by anyone other than right-wing Christian nationalists, I cannot imagine a world in which the UK government would allow that to come out under the current circumstances (though if sufficient evidence existed, of course, they may not be able to stop it)--but maybe I am too accustomed to the American approach to reporting such events.

Of course there's no need for him to have been radicalized by anyone, sometimes people do just go totally off the rails without provocation or even any evidence of motive at all.

I just found the Taylor Swift connection to be an interesting coincidence.

any evidence of motive at all.

I'm sorry but the idea that some dude lugged around a bunch of guns he didn't use without raising any suspicion and picked a specific venue with more security than average when he didn't have a discernable motive beyond killing people is still goofy.

The assassination attempt theory seems most parsimonious given the nuclear glow the whole thing is coated in. Few things look more suspicious than the Las Vegas shooting. JFK is an open and shut case in comparison. So using it as evidence for anything else is just a bad argument.

Oh, I agree! That link was included with a heavy dose of irony.

Another loss for my reading skills or the ability of text to convey irony. I'm going to blame the tool. As is tradition.

A much simpler explanation is that Paddock was simply a psychopath who relished the idea of killing people. Getting the guns into the hotel room was trivial, they do not inspect people's bags. As for whatever security was present at the venue, it did nothing to stop Paddock, so was it really more security than average in any meaningful way? The large number of guns that he brought is a bit weird, but can be explained simply by him having a gun fetish or him overestimating how long he might be able to hold out against police forces.

The idea that there are actual psychopaths who hurt people simply because they enjoy it is disturbing, but it is obviously true. I do not see why it would be so unlikely that Paddock was simply one such person, whether he had always been that way or whether something turned him into one.

Him being that crazy doesn't square very well with the rest of his life history.

My theory is that somebody (likely the FBI) set up a fake arms deal and he realized it a bit too early but equally too late to get out, so being faced with life in prison he decided to just lash out and went the murder suicide route.

The FBI, hid their involvement for the obvious reasons, which is something they've tried to do in the past in response to various fuck ups.

Is large illegal arms deal supposed to be better squaring with the rest of his life history?

Yep.

Lots of people commit crimes and scheme in various ways. Mental illness that would result in this behavior (like Schizophrenia) appears earlier in life the vast majority of the time. The personality structure we usually see with this kind of thing, outside of explicit ideology (ex: religious extremism) tends to boil over earlier in life, see: school shooters. Personality disorders of all kinds dial down later in life, in part because the people with the worst manifestations get killed, kill themselves, or end up more or less permanently engaged with the legal system.

He could be the exception that proves the rule of course, but the usual stuff is less likely given what we know about his life history and success.

He doesn't pattern match to a serial killer, someone struggling with psychosis, cultural bound attacker (or other ideologue/extremist).

It's very, very weird.

Well it's not unheard of for depressed people to decide to kill some random people on the way out. There was that kid who flew a small plane into a building (didn't kill anyone) after 9/11 who claimed to be inspired by islam but was probably just bullshitting.

Paddock was simply a psychopath who relished the idea of killing people

This is a possibility, but people like that don't tend to be effete accountants whose most prominent vice is gambling. He self evidently didn't have the low inhibitions that type of person typically displays.

There's various theories of how his increasingly erratic or depressed behavior could explain or motivate the shooting, but I haven't seen one that doesn't have a big hole in it.

can be explained simply by him having a gun fetish or him overestimating how long he might be able to hold out against police forces

The sheer amount doesn't square with either of those explanations. Or the fact that he killed himself.

A gun nut fantasizing about using his collection so badly that he feels the need to bring that much stuff around just shoots himself without actually using much of the hardware? How does that add up?

A gun nut fantasizing about using his collection so badly that he feels the need to bring that much stuff around just shoots himself without actually using much of the hardware? How does that add up?

Crazy people do things that make no apparent sense to outsiders.

This isn't the general purpose argument you're making it out to be.

It's like he's a badly written movie villain who's somehow both extremely competent when the plot needs him to be and insanely disordered when that's required.

There's no pattern of behavior, which, in the real world, would lead one to think that more than one person is involved.

Now it is possible that he was insane in the specific way that makes this whole thing happen the way it does, but how likely is that versus another explanation is all a reasonable person should care about. You can explain away any crime with convenient bouts of madness.

The assassination theory also doesn’t add up if you spend more than thirty seconds thinking about it, though.

Not saying it's not also full of holes. But it's got the least holes in my opinion. This whole thing reeks of spooks being involved.

Something suspicious happened here. We don't really know what, I'll easily admit.

This is a possibility, but people like that don't tend to be effete accountants whose most prominent vice is gambling. He self evidently didn't have the low inhibitions that type of person typically displays.

"don't tend to be" does not mean "cannot be" and people for various reasons blow up lives own and of others.

Who was Paddock attempting to assassinate in this theory?

The theory on the Las Vegas shooting is that Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was in Las Vegas at the time and that the concert shooting was a diversion to draw most of the law enforcement resources in the city to the other side of town in order to give assassins easier access to Mohammed. In this theory Paddock himself was a patsy who believed he was at the hotel for a large illegal arms deal, and was shot in the head just before the massacre started. That would explain the rather excessive amount of arms in Paddock’s room, but I don’t know if I necessarily buy that myself.

The initial theory was that Paddock was targeting MBS under contract or whatever, then when it was quickly shown that the Saudis were on the other side of town it morphed into this distraction thing. It all seems implausible - officers assigned to guard VIPs don’t go running when there’s a mass casualty event for precisely this reason; his security detail wouldn’t run if they got a report of this incident on the radio.

And what's the motive?

Is the American approach to reporting such events to broadcast things loudly? I just read a manga (Don't Call It Mystery) which claimed that America doesn't broadcast crimes that could invite copycats. Which seemed wrong to me.

If a manga says anything about America or any country outside Japan, it is guaranteed to be hilariously wrong. Outside of the mechanical details of WW2 guns and tanks anyway, they nail those.

I just read a manga (Don't Call It Mystery) which claimed that America doesn't broadcast crimes that could invite copycats.

American journalistic "ethics," when they are not being rode over roughshod by the rise of clickbait culture, has inconsistently but occasionally in the past taken a "don't promote this" approach to some topics. More often on suicide than crime, though.

These days what the corporate news media avoids reporting is anything that might damage the Narrative--but often they get dragged into reporting it anyway as "alternative" news stories get the scoops and start eating into their revenues.

The media cares more about clicks and keeping advertisers happy than about staying on message in this particular area, especially in these desperate times as ad revenue continues to fall and a lot of media brands are firing people and seeing valuations cut by large amounts.

It’s kind of like that impressive Trump fist picture taken by the NYT photographer after the assassination attempt, the photographer being presumably a Democrat - his job was more important to him than politics.

If only the United Kingdom had a free press that could have informed the people of that fact.

though in this particular case I can imagine Mr. Jones facing consequences even here in the United States. Remind me, is it still okay to call for the punching of U.S. Nazis? Was it ever? I seem to have lost track.

Watching the clip. It looks like Jones's comments would be pretty close to the line in the US. Advocacy of violence is explicitly protected in the US by the 1st amendment (well, by supreme court precedent interpreting the 1st amendment, see Brandenburg v Ohio).

The two things that are more radioactive (legally) are that he's doing it in front of a crowd and pretty immediately goes into a chant (which generally has the effect of shutting off certain parts of the brain). This goes a long way to satisfying the "immediacy" requirement of restricting speech in the US. But you would still have to prove intent, which is really hard to do.

TL;DR: I'd expect a < 25% chance that this would result in legal consequences in the US. Social consequences, on the other hand...

The anti-immigration argument expressed in this post seems too strong. It seems to be along the lines of if there is any kind of downside from immigration then immigration is bad. But I don't think this is a realistic benchmark for any government policy. The positives have to be weighed against the negatives. Maybe certain classes of immigrants are net-negative and a better immigration policy would be able to discriminate against these people but I don't think the UK is at the point where all immigration is net-negative.

The positives have to be weighed against the negatives. Maybe certain classes of immigrants are net-negative and a better immigration policy would be able to discriminate against these people but I don't think the UK is at the point where all immigration is net-negative.

There's a bit of a weasel going on with this argument.

I am actually willing to admit that immigration taken completely as a blind, nonspecific, aggregated economic phenomenon is probably a net positive, although this assumes an overly simplified utility function/value system. And perhaps ignores likely long-term second-order effects.

But the negatives (increased housing costs, increased crime, depressed wages for low-skill labor, and loss of social trust) are almost entirely borne by the middle and lower economic classes. They can't afford to move to native enclaves and they have much less political influence to keep immigrants out of their existing communities.

The positives will disproportionately accrue to the upper class professionals/elites whose skilled jobs are not threatened, who can send their kids to selective private schools and can use their clever NIMBY policies to keep the actual immigrants away without triggering accusations of racism. And the neighborhoods they live in are already too expensive for immigrants anyway so it doesn't even put much upward pressure on their housing costs. Cheaper labor and goods and political influence and the warm and fuzzy feeling of giving a disadvantaged minority a leg up are all unalloyed goods for them, so of course they will continue to support the same policy.

And this is of course exacerbated if the government's formal or informal policy is to favor immigrants for monetary handouts, jobs and/or slots in the good schools. Or if they implement policing/justice policies that treat immigrants with kid gloves while natives get the full force of the law.

Cheaper labor costs is generally a benefit to a nation so long as it translates to lower prices for critical, basic goods and services. But the specific kind of labor immigrants provide in this case is almost universally unskilled, which means both that high-skilled (i.e. the kind that produces the most value/unit!!!!) labor does NOT become cheaper... and in some cases demand for skilled labor like doctors or bankers will increase with immigration which will push those prices UP! Immigrants need medical care and financial services regardless of their contribution to society.

So the phrase "immigration is a net positive" can be true in a broad sense but still not accurately describe how the actual citizenry experience it in their day-to-day lives.

If it turns out that it's a net negative for ~50% of the population, an almost neutral factor for another 30%, and then a MAJOR benefit for that last 20%, overall it could be characterized as a positive if you collapse it down. But then the question is *why should 50% of your countrymen be forced to absorb the costs?"

And more to the point, if 50% of the country absorbs the cost, they may be motivated to vote against immigration, but if the other 50% of the country believes its a net positive, they'll vote in favor of it happily... and in a democracy that probably means the half who are getting the shit end of the deal keep losing the votes.

There's also the question of whether or not you count the wellbeing of the immigrants themselves in the equation. Because a third world migrant moving out of a hellish ghetto in their home country to a slightly-less-hellish ghetto in a wealthy country where they get a small welfare check is indeed better off, and so including them in the equation makes the case that immigration is good stronger... but also feels like cheating.

"If we import 1 billion foreigners who are each made 5% better off by migration, and 10 million natives are made 25% better off by migration, but the other 90 million natives are made 50% worse off, its a massive net positive to the group as a whole and thus morally required!"

"Okay, but explain the assumptions about why the 'import 1 billion foreigners' step was necessary at all? Surely there are other options we could try that don't impose such costs on the natives?"

"I just told you, it makes them better off on average."

"Right but it seems like you're conflating the interests of the 1 billion foreigners and the 100 million natives even though you don't have to?"

"Shut up, bigot."

"Also, I can't help but notice that you are likely to be one of the 10 million natives whose life is better off..."

The positives have to be weighed against the negatives.

Okay.

What positive does the average Brit see from mass migration into the UK?

Is it their wages being pushed down? Is it the difficulty in unionising when infinite scabs are on the table? Is it the pressure on housing? The NHS? The welfare state? Is it the vibrant sectarian conflict we now have on our streets?

The usual answers given revolve around economic prosperity, which doesn't exactly seem to have materialized.

The other argument is around caregivers for the NHS and the aging population. Which doesn't have to map well to prosperity.

But I'm not sure just how many of the migrants are selected for that specifically.

You don’t need actual immigrants to fill specific jobs like that, you can just bring in guest workers who know UK wages will go a long way in Kenya or India and so they’re willing to go home afterwards. The UK chooses not to do this, maybe to prop up the general population of low-skill laborers so they have their delivery drivers and the like.

I will speak specifically to Singapore, though to be honest the USA had a version of this previously: guest workers are a fantastic deal for everyone involved.

Short term migrant workers for the most part do not want to live in the new land they are working in. Earning 3x their home salary is still 1/2 the required salary in their work country, so they prefer to suffer temporarily then go home to their families and live like kings there. It is the surplus of exploitable social resources that incentivizes staying on and bringing the family over. Guest workers certainly are exploited relative to local standards, but willing buyer willing seller. Even the UAE kafala has improved significantly since 2016, and for all the complaints of slavery there is still no shortage of applicants for construction and care jobs in these places.

I will speak specifically to Singapore, though to be honest the USA had a version of this previously: guest workers are a fantastic deal for everyone involved.

Except displaced citizens. If there are citizens who would do the job the guest workers did, but would charge more for it (because their cost of living was necessarily higher), they're going to lose out from a guest worker program. Sometimes this isn't true because the if you had to hire people at citizen prices, the job just wouldn't get done, but it's hard to tell in many cases.

That certainly is true for the PMC here, where we are constantly reminded of our inferiority by an endlessly imported class of Chinese and Indians and Malaysians, but the cultural dissonance is only moderate, with no welfare resources to be exploited by foreigners and lead to local resentments.

Guest workers here are primarily in the construction and domestic worker segments, where there was never sufficient local population that existed to service that demand. Singapores status as an entrepot colony meant that most civil construction works were conducted by Chinese and Indian (by nationality) labourers, with little local populations that were displaced economically. This continued into the modern era, where rapid industrialisation saw most labourers (Chinese and Indians stuck here after the chaos of the Civil War and Partition) in post-independence Singapore prefer to work in sheltered factories instead of outdoor construction. We had Malaysians and Taiwanese imports at first, then now it is Indians, Thais and Burmese, with Filipinos preferring to work in middle office roles. Locals certainly bemoan the presence of foreigners, but even with outsize pay for locals they still leave some jobs unfulfilled, so the companies appeal the Ministry of Manpower for more foreign worker allotments and said allotments are granted.

To extend this scenario to the west, the main example I would use is farmhands. These men were never the locals of the farm area who want to work in backbreaking outdoor work, and instead have historically been displaced itinerants seeking shelter and employment. Farm owners certainly bitch about having to rely on foreigners now, but in olden days a drifter from Oklahoma is as much a foreigner in California as a Mexican was, and doubtless similar disparaging would occur for Buffalo vs White Plains New Yorkers. Hell, even the family the next farm over with one too many hands to work their own plot might as well be barbarians as far as a homeowner is concerned.

My point is that guest workers are a historically tested solution to the problem of 'I need cheap labor but I want to kick them out when I do not want them anymore.' Some domestic populations would lose out, but compared with 'bring them in and they will also bring in their family and we give them citizenship in 20 years time' guest workers are a clear winner.

You could just have 0 immigration as well, and I think we can look to Japan and Chinas eager embrace of gynoids for a model on how that would pan out, but we are still a few years away from that. More research is going into making human form factor robots fuckable instead of workable, and what that says about humanity is for a different thread

Brits get cheaper deliveroo and chip shops open past 5pm. This offsets the loss of social cohesion and local employment, and to claim otherwise is to prove ones fealties to Farage.

The anti-immigration argument expressed in this post seems too strong.

Why?

The positives have to be weighed against the negatives.

Why?

I mean, I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse. As I've already stated in this thread, I am myself pretty ambivalent about immigration, insofar as it (A) tends to benefit me, personally and (B) tends to economically benefit nations, on average. But when immigration yields a specific, horrific crime against the indigenous population and people get upset about that, telling them to weigh the overall positives against their negatives seems like a non-starter, argument-wise.

In other words--I actually agree that the positives have to be weighed against the negatives. But I disagree that this is the sort of thing that can be resolved by aggregating the relevant interests. If the costs imposed on, say, working class Britons is sufficiently high, then they have good reason to reject immigration even if the aggregate utility rises--for the same reason that the government cannot permissibly harvest your organs against your will when doing so would save five or twenty or even a thousand lives.

I mean, I'm not trying to be deliberately obtuse. As I've already stated in this thread, I am myself pretty ambivalent about immigration, insofar as it (A) tends to benefit me, personally and (B) tends to economically benefit nations, on average. But when immigration yields a specific, horrific crime against the indigenous population and people get upset about that, telling them to weigh the overall positives against their negatives seems like a non-starter, argument-wise.

You could replace everything in this argument with the case of George Floyd. When policing yields a specific, horrific crime against black Americans and they get upset, telling them to weigh the overall positives of policing against their negatives seems like a non-starter, wouldn't you agree?

And yet, I don't recall you ever making that point five years ago. Perhaps you were just silent, perhaps I don't have Gattsuru's eidetic memory and you'll correct me, but I think it much more likely that you'll split hairs about how the UK rioters are morally justified while BLM was not now that the shoe is on the other foot.

I'm personally ambivalent. What you say is true, and the statistics people give about police brutality and immigration are also, presumably, true. It's not particularly surprising for people to react this way, but at the same time, western democracies need to find a way to adapt to the viral nature of the internet, social media and ubiquitous cell phone recordings without sliding into chaos or authoritarianism. Violent crime has decreased significantly since the 90s in the USA, but it certainly doesn't feel like it given the constant sensationalism in social media and news feeds. And yet, any centralized effort to block production or consumption of viral news is antithetical to our values. Millenials and boomers are probably screwed; maybe the zoomers will become sufficiently desensitized to snuff and viral videos that we'll return to equilibrium after people born before ~2005 die off.

If we didn't have police George Floyd would have likely been killed far earlier by one of the people he had wronged.

If there were no police, and a man pointed a gun at my pregnant wife to rob her, I would kill that man. Not even as a matter of immediate self defense, but as a preventative measure. I can't in good conscience risk his continued existence. Most of all for the safety of my family, but for others as well.

Without police, people take justice into their own hands. A police free existence is not one where everyone lives in harmony free of police oppression, it is one where racialized small communities wage eternal war against the enemy living across the block.

The crips and the bloods are literally the modern ur-example. There was no police to defund, and in that void the racial black utopia of mutual community uplift manifested itself in gangsta rap monies being funneled into West Hollywood real estate.

You could replace everything in this argument with the case of George Floyd. When policing yields a specific, horrific crime against black Americans and they get upset, telling them to weigh the overall positives of policing against their negatives seems like a non-starter, wouldn't you agree?

Yes! In fact I thought of this exact example as I was writing my comment, as well as some other, more hyperbolic ones (imagine saying of the Trail of Tears, "but look at the aggregate economic benefits of forced relocation!").

And yet, I don't recall you ever making that point five years ago.

No, I can't imagine that I would have done, though like you, I do not memorize my own post history. At a guess, I probably posted something critical of the rioting, and BLM specifically seemed to clearly be a grift from the word "go." However while I am not quite an "ACAB" person I am actually pretty negative on policing generally (I am weakly anti-death-penalty, I am firmly opposed to private prisons, I am strongly against militarized police, etc.)--though in cases where greater policing seems clearly called for, I am also unimpressed with extant alternatives. So I probably just didn't say anything about that particular part of the unrest at the time; in general, this space has always been very bad at guessing my politics.

Long story short--if I should have been making this point five years ago, why aren't you agreeing with me now? Or if you are agreeing with me now, why dwell on some past possible disagreement that may not have even occurred?

but I think it much more likely that you'll split hairs about how the UK rioters are morally justified while BLM was not now that the shoe is on the other foot

Not at all! But please do note that I've never deliberately made any statement, in this thread or elsewhere, justifying or excusing or even sympathizing with rioting. I've kept my discussion here strictly to protests and counterprotests (and one very explicit call to violence from a counterprotester with a modicum of clout). I'm against rioting; in fact I do not even particularly care for public protests. I don't attend them, I have sometimes been inconvenienced by them to no positive end. But I do not oppose protests, provided they are peaceful and do not interfere with my commute to work. I just so rarely understand them; the people protesting almost always seem confused and contradictory and self-sabotaging.

Millenials and boomers are probably screwed; maybe the zoomers will become sufficiently desensitized to snuff and viral videos that we'll return to equilibrium after people born before ~2005 die off.

I am reminded of something said much, much longer ago than five years:

Well, I said, and you would agree (would you not?) that what has been said about the State and the government is not a mere dream, and although difficult not impossible, but only possible in the way which has been supposed; that is to say, when the true philosopher kings are born in a State, one or more of them, despising the honours of this present world which they deem mean and worthless, esteeming above all things right and the honour that springs from right, and regarding justice as the greatest and most necessary of all things, whose ministers they are, and whose principles will be exalted by them when they set in order their own city?

How will they proceed?

They will begin by sending out into the country all the inhabitants of the city who are more than ten years old, and will take possession of their children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents; these they will train in their own habits and laws, I mean in the laws which we have given them: and in this way the State and constitution of which we were speaking will soonest and most easily attain happiness, and the nation which has such a constitution will gain most.

Yes, that will be the best way. And I think, Socrates, that you have very well described how, if ever, such a constitution might come into being.

though in cases where greater policing seems clearly called for, I am also unimpressed with extant alternatives. So I probably just didn't say anything about that particular part of the unrest at the time; in general, this space has always been very bad at guessing my politics.

Perhaps this space is very bad at guessing your politics because what you choose to reveal is inevitably right-coded, modulo my perspective being skewed towards top-level posts as I rarely dig that deeply into the comments.

Long story short--if I should have been making this point five years ago, why aren't you agreeing with me now? Or if you are agreeing with me now, why dwell on some past possible disagreement that may not have even occurred?

Would you agree that the majority of opinions on this site regarding BLM and the George Floyd riots were negative? And would you agree that the majority of opinions expressed on this site are positively disposed towards the UK riots? I perceive this as hypocrisy, as I agree with you that black Americans rioting over George Floyd are conceptually similar to white UK citizens rioting over the stabbings. How else can I point out this hypocrisy? I suppose I could make my own top-level post, but I'd inevitably be forced to link to specific examples, and drag you in regardless...

Perhaps it's disseminated hypocrisy, and everyone has internally consistent views, but then...why? I know your answer is that I'm just overly sensitive to right-wing viewpoints after years of coddling, but given that you received only mild pushback to your post (and the back-pushers were immediately dogpiled by multiple people), and I can't remember the last time anyone said anything remotely charitable about BLM (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), where are all these ideologically consistent people? And why do they censor themselves so strictly along partisan lines?

I neither agree nor disagree with you on the object-level. I'm sympathetic towards the people who protest and riot after this kind of violence, but I've also been convinced that the decrease in policing over the last several years has been worse for most of these communities. I just want ideological consistency.

Not at all!

In that case, I anticipate that the median person here would make the argument that the BLM protests were illegitimate because Floyd was a criminal drug addict who died of COVID and Fentanyl, whereas the UK rioters are justified. Do you disagree?

I am reminded of something said much, much longer ago than five years:

True Republicanism and rule by philosopher kings has never been tried.

That being said, I think my prediction of boomers and millennials dying off is much more likely to come true than a plot involving the kidnapping and brainwashing of a couple thousand Mediterranean slave-children. The argument isn't that the zoomers will be wise philosopher kings, but having been raised in an age of social media and ubiquitous cell phones, will be better adapted to the current environment than we are. In the same way that my generation is much better at using Facebook in a sane way than most Boomers.

Undoubtedly there will be some other future shock involving AI and VR that gen alpha will be better positioned to weather, but one problem at a time.

I don't want you to think I'm ignoring your post; I've read it, I just don't have much more to say about it. I don't really want to get into a lengthy relitigation of the BLM stuff. I do think that I see a ton of hypocrisy from the left right now, and flipping that into accusations of hypocrisy on the right is probably warranted on many of the particulars. But this is something I really hate about politics: the unapologetic and consistently deployed meta-hypocrisy of people being intensely hypocritical in the act of accusing the other side of hypocrisy. Every accusation of ideological hypocrisy carries within it an equal and opposite accusation. If anyone who was openly praising BLM rioting wants to now come forward and openly praise the anti-immigration rioting to demonstrate their ideological consistency, I have yet to meet them. That is why I tried to highlight what I felt was being buried under the bullshit: several children are dead.

I just want ideological consistency.

I say this with warmth in my voice and a sad smile on my face, but... you should probably get used to disappointment.

Chris has me blocked, so this is more for the record, than anything, but I guess there's things I can't let go of...

You could replace everything in this argument with the case of George Floyd.

Ok, let's try:

Maybe another part of the polarization in this country is that you have to dial it up to 11 to ever change anything whatsoever. If the left had listened to us years ago, would we have had the riots we had? Will the left listen to us now on trans rights, or is it going to take a detrans girl getting raped or murdered on camera and more rioting before we can do anything about that issue?

On one hand: sure, this isn't fair, Chris has moderated his views since then, and his comment can be read as a warning for us not to make his past mistakes. On the other: it's not like people here are defending riots, like several high-profile progressives used to, so it's just a tiny-bit rich to hear have him try to hold people accountable for what they did or didn't say 5 years ago.

It isn't an economic issue. It is the UK no longer being British. It is the loss of a people, an identity, a culture och sovereignty. The UK belongs to the people who built it for the past thousand years and those who will inherit it for the next thousand. It isn't up to the current people to give it away to strangers.

It isn't up to the current people to give it away to strangers.

It actually is. For better or for worse, having a democratic society means that the people get to make such decisions.

It actually is. For better or for worse, having a democratic society means that the people get to make such decisions.

The people have voted for lower migration at every election for as long as I've been alive. It has never once been delivered.

Sure, I'm not saying the elected representatives necessarily correctly deliver on the will of the people. Lord knows they rarely do in the US. I just think it's inaccurate to claim that the people living in the UK don't have the right to decide to let in a flood of migrants.

Have they? At the last election 14.3% of voters put their support behind the party who most credibly promised to stop immigration. Many more voted for the Tory and Labour parties, who have demonstrated no interest in doing so.

Every Conservative prime minister since Cameron said immigration is too high and promised to reduce it. Tony Blair said immigration was too high and promised to reduce it (in 2005!). Kier Starmer said the same. I think we agree that these parties lack credibility on the issue, but you can hardly argue that voting for politicians who promise to reduce immigration doesn't count as voting for lower immigration. Especially since UK Prime Ministers usually resign after they lose an election, which means that in each election, the voters are voting for a different potential government.

Plus, a general election is not a single issue referendum on immigration. It's voting for MPs under a massively undemocratic electoral system which essentially forces voters to choose between the two main parties. The fact that Reform didn't win a majority is in no way evidence that people support higher immigration.

I don't dispute that people in the UK want lower migration. But as you say, elections are not single issue referendums and tradeoffs need to be made. People also want lower taxes, more services, less debt, and free ponies. You can't get everything you want, and you have to discern who is going to make the tradeoffs you want.

A growing number of people are deciding "no, actually, I really do want lower migration at the expense of other priorities" and voting accordingly. But clearly it's not yet enough to force the UK parliament to give it to them.

That is because the people living there are the current stewards of the country. That doesn't mean self interest. Just like parents make the choices for a family doesn't mean that the choices purely reflect their needs.

In any society, democratic or not, it is only the current people, by definition, who get to make such decisions. Not the dead or the unborn (whether the right sort of unborn or not).

The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.

If the English lower classes don't want mass immigration, they have to find a way to stop it. Voting for people who pretend to care about it clearly doesn't work. Protesting in the streets about it or on twitter clearly doesn't work. The judiciary is firmly against them so that won't work either. And they are all disarmed so terrorism is not a realistic proposition.

I don't really see any recourse there. Looks to me like these people are fucked.

And they are all disarmed so terrorism is not a realistic proposition.

The UK has readily available petrochemicals.

Because they also want and vote for economic growth. And both parties internal projections show limiting immigration prevents economic growth and also that the economy is most people's driving issue.

It's a simple straight forward calculus. When we did (when I worked for the Tories) internal polls and asked people would they accept an overall lower standard of living in exchange for reduced immigration they said no. Overwhelmingly. Over and over and over again. Everywhere.

So the recourse is to start actually valuing lowering immigration over other factors. Just like the Tories flipped on lockdowns in record time they will do the same on immigration. They aren't attached to it for principled reasons. Simply practical.

both parties internal projections show limiting immigration prevents economic growth

Those projections showing that immigration would benefit economic growth have played out so well, haven't they? I guess economists can still appeal to "but imagine how much worse it would be," but I can't imagine that's a winner either.

I guess economists can still appeal to "but imagine how much worse it would be," but I can't imagine that's a winner either.

Well there is a reason that those supporting Brexit had to make sure to blast how it wouldn't impact the economy. Even though it probably has. Which just made politicians even more scared of cutting off immigration ironically.

When we did (when I worked for the Tories) internal polls and asked people would they accept an overall lower standard of living in exchange for reduced immigration they said no.

That's a bit of a rigged poll, though. You let people project their worst fears into "lower standard of living", and the only thing economists can actually back is "GDP line not go uppy anymoar".

Well I am paraphrasing form a whole bunch of polls and focus groups and the like over near 20 years. It is true you could reduce how much people valued the economy over immigration by rewording the questions and because the Tory part has internal splits on immigration, we often had different polls with different skewed wordings. But on all of them even worded to try and side with immigration as much as possible, people always valued essentially "line go up" over reducing immigration.

Even in focus groups where you might run through various scenarios in detail, and in some cases where we trying to see under what circumstances people might give different answers, it was pretty much always "It's the economy, stupid".

Now part of that might be because the Conservatives are seen as the party of being good with the economy. Or were at least, so Labour might get a little more leeway with their supporters. But they also have a much smaller (though still existent!) anti-immigration faction, so they aren't even looking at the question as hard in the first place. And of course some of their supporters are very pro-immigration. So it will have to be the Conservative party if anyone I would suggest. Though some of their anti-immigration faction has boiled off into UKIP and then Reform nowadays, so the internal faction balances has likely shifted.

But essentially if Tory modelling indicated they would win more votes than they would lose from cracking down on immigration, then they are likely to flip. There are few pro-immigration idealogues within the party. Though the farming lobby comes close I suppose, for many of the same reasons as in the US. Low-paid Eastern European labor helps British farms be competitive.

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I don't buy it.

Immigration is something the blue tribe just wants.

The blue tribe didn't start from the position of, how do we improve the economy, and then searched around and found immigration as a good policy for promoting economic growth. The blue wanted immigration and looked around for ways to justify it. Sure, they also believe the justification(trust the science), but the justifications are not to convince themselves, they are to convince those damn red-tribers.

They really want to live in a 'diverse' world, with ethnic restaurants, and friends who speak English with an accent, who have weird fun customs, different clothing, and different skin tones.

They are absolutely attached to it.

We are talking about the UK here, while there is an urban/rural divide it isn't as significant politically. London/Home Counties vs North/Midlands is probably more salient, although that is also complicated by coastal malaise as well. Alongside Upper/middle/working class divisions of course.

I can assure you the English Tories I worked with 10-25 years ago did not fit the blue tribe stereotypes you are mentioning here.

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I can buy that blue tribe is driven by an ideologically motivated positive outgroup bias.

But it isn't just blue tribe or it would have ended when they lost elections. What about the Tories? What about the business owners?

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Wouldn't this same logic hold for all sorts of other policies that did and continue to get enacted? I'm thinking of stuff like carbon taxes, tariffs, tax raises etc. It's plausible that economic considerations held back anti-immigration measures, but if that were an essential part I'd expect more or less total gridlock on a large number of issues where, in reality, there don't seem to be any hesitations at all for the Western political class in comparison to immigration.

It's plausible that economic considerations held back anti-immigration measures, but if that were an essential part I'd expect more or less total gridlock on a large number of issues where, in reality, there don't seem to be any hesitations at all for the Western political class in comparison to immigration.

Well it depends on what the voters think the trade off is. If the voters buy that carbon taxes will get them less pollution, then that may be a trade off they are willing to accept, to an extent. Especially if they believe the bulk of it will fall on say corporations rather than themselves. Likewise if you say to voters we will tax you more in exchange for better services or more NHS hospitals then that may be a trade off they will accept. Or not (see below).

And I am not saying that there is no ideological commitments that override what voters might think, but that even these are often subject to practical considerations. In general Labour prefer higher taxes to pay for more or better services. That is one of their ideological cores. But Blairite style neo-liberalism still won out because voters were simply fed up of the more blatant tax and spend policies combined with union problems through the 60's and 70s. Whereas even though the Tories generally ideologically prefer to cut taxes, Liz Trusses budget tax cuts were very unpopular to the extent that it ended her leadership.

If the Tories as a whole were anti-immigration at their core, then they may have been willing to risk economic issues and loss of voters in return (though big business is a significant bloc for them), but they aren't really. They just aren't really pro-immigration either ideologically, except in the neo-liberal sense that free trade and cheap workers are positive economically.

There are some things the parties care a lot about they are willing to risk losing votes over to an extent (though the shift to the economic right under Blair and back again under Corbyn, and then back again again under Starmer) shows that even some of the pretty fundamental beliefs are up for grabs if they are unpopular enough. But they definitely are not going to risk votes/the economy for things they don't really care about.

I don't understand how that disagrees with what I said?

It doesn't, it's an addition.

The positives have to be weighed against the negatives.

The anti-immigration position starts with endorsing the claim that when Chopin moved from Warsaw to Paris, that benefited the French, and when Marc Isambard Brunel fled France and ended up in England, that benefited England. What makes it the anti position is the additional claim that you can tell whether Chopin can play the piano; you don't have to admit half the population of Warsaw to get the musician. And you can tell that Brunel knew about civil engineering; you don't have to admit any Jacobins to get your tunnel under the Thames.

So no, you don't have to weigh positives and negatives. Let the positives in, keep the negatives out.

The core of the pro-immigration position is "You cannot tell whether Chopin can play the piano. If you want the positives, you have to accept the negatives, so weigh them and choose."

Given that the argument here is about crime committed by the British-born son of immigrants, we don’t get to choose at that level of detail. (You get to choose the parents of your 2nd-generation immigrants, but anyone who has raised kids knows that only gets you so far.) If your goal is zero serious crime committed by descendants of immigrants, the only way to get there is zero immigration.

The UK breaks out crime statistics by folk racial categories which don’t distinguish between “Black” sub-populations (Jamaicans and Somalis are the high-crime groups) in the way you would need to do to answer this question properly, but anecdotally immigrants from Christian Africa in the UK and their descendants are better behaved than the natives.

Similarly in the US, Nigerian Americans will happily point out that African Americans are the ones being 13/52.

Nigerian Americans

I don't actually think I have ever met anyone in my life that had anything bad to say about the Nigerian Americans.

Mass migration as exists in Britain blatantly violates the rights of the native people, to national existence and self determination and leads to violence that is covered up and downplayed by the establishment, in addition to discrimination against the native Britons which is happening in terms of AA and in general transforming are lower caste. Especially where the issue has to do with ethnic group relations.

Britain is also an incredibly totalitarian police state were opponents of this are being arrested and were serious crime is prioritized over persecuting dissent.

At such, you are essentially supporting the eventual destruction of the British people and their current and increasing mistreatment and violation of their rights. That is a transformation into increasingly oppressed second class citzens, until they become a small minority, and under threat of even more radical parties acting worse, or no longer exist as a group.

Of course if rules of the multicultural Britain, about racism were enforced equally, the consequences of advancing such notions would be severe. But one sided application is part of those rule. But even if the absurdly draconian and one sided rules weren't enforced consistently and equally, there is a problem with that position and its influence and with the existence of a network with worldwide adherents whose agenda is to harm groups like the British. There is also a national security lens. Britain has a national security obligation to suppress the faction that promotes mass migration that is so enormously destructive and racist against Britain and the British people.

Outside of the interest of Britain in particular, there is a universal value and an international justice interest in supressing anti european extremism that denies native europeans their legitimate rights and supports their national destruction and transformation of their country into ones were until they are second class citizens with their historical homeland putting Muslims, Blacks, Jews and others above them. Although this interest isn't numerical, the way I see it, international institutions should be captured by people who don't think Europeans are exempt from the national rights that other group deserve. And then enforce a punishment against the networks promoting the opposite agenda, and of course not allow such people to rise through ranks of running things and remove this moral hazard. I would advocate as superior to a situation where it is worldwide group vs group limitless conflict, that we try to impose reasonable reciprical rules worldwide.

Part of this should of course include deportations of plenty of people who got paper making them fake X nation from cultural marxists who are hostile against their own nation (and timing also plays a role, with most mass migration being relatively recent), such as foreign supporters of mass migration, and affirmative action type politics who have been used for the crime of purposeful demographic displacement and replacement but not to deport everyone of foreign background. Not only mass migration ought to stop but the one that already has happened is of an illegitimate nature and a policy that already violated a) the opinion of native majority b) even more importantly than their opinion against mass migration, their interest and right, not to be replaced in their own homeland. Which also comes along with their interest not to be replaced by hostile foreign tribes that retain a foreign identity which is part and parcel of mass migration of a foreign ethnic groups and can't be separated.

However some level of limited migration can be legitimate. Britain should have net negative migration at this point and for quite some time. But you can have a few into the many, who respect the nation of the many, and understand it is the homeland of the natives and willing to make a life there without deconstructing the nation and its legitimacy. Nor are they in sufficient numbers to screw them over, and nor are they being disrespectful. So mass migration of hostile foreigners is inherently an illegitimate agenda that violates the human rights of the native people, which is why it isn't an accident that anti-native ideologues support it, because it helps them do all of their agenda to screw over the native ethnic group, and put above the migrant ethnic groups.

Moreover it is possible for a certain nation state and limited civic nationalism to coexist, provided the later recognised the first. Opposing any nation state leads to communist like soviet new man oppressive societies, and in the current context also comes along with putting migrants first, something that those supporting or oppossing mass migration, should be aware of, and have a duty to be aware of. And a random observer would expect them to be aware of.

Current Britain is one of the more exemplary failure of the ideology of war against nation state.

Anyhow some migrants can be closer to host nation and more easier assimiliable, in addition to the case of others who are small in number and selected for human capital and more important than IQ, friendlyness (with ethnic similarity also working as proxy for that in many cases). The few can more easilly mix and become the many, provided they have the mentality of doing so and don't retain an identity hostile to the natives. Paper Brits like the stabber and many of the rioter counter protesters should not be in places like Britain, but in their actual homelands that they hold greater connection with than they have towards the English, Welsh, Scots, etc people.

Supporting mass migration should qualify as a criteria for recognizing an individual as putting the interest of foreigners first and disregarding the interests of the natives and their ethnic groups. It is a very hostile act. Should matter when considering deportations both in terms of patterns of groups and in terms of specific individuals.

On the other side, it is a prerequisite of a good migrant, or descendant of migrants to support shutting down the door behind them and to like the native nativists more than foreign migrants outside wanting to come in. The state should control such sentiments not only by inviting far less, deporting people after the criminal error at expense of its own people of letting too many whcih inevitably have these hostility, but also should both select those with pro native sentiments, but also try to enforce and encourage among migrants the duty to respect their host nation and their people. Over the sadistic disregard of them that we see as the rising sentiment today. Hence, the kind of people who ought to be prioritized, those more likely to be net drains, criminals but also those who are hostile and make things into a two tier society, even if they are otherwise economically competent.

Additionally, good migrants of foreign ethnicity who proportionately to the natives have to be a smaller proportion, because mass migration of foreigners is itself is a hostile and immoral act should support some level of deportations against the bad migrants that are taking over the country of the Britons and part of the disrespect and two tier society. There is certainly a problem of native, antinativism though that also deserves attention. There is also a possibility for some migrants being in their sentiments of less severe form of extremism and deradicalized. Although too many numbers is it self an issue but I don't care to promote the specific minitia of how this should be enforced since I don't really have a strong opinion on that, but the general template is the obvious response to antinative policy, sentiment being enforced and colonization.

Indeed WW2 provides lessons. The problem of the mid century Germans wasn't that they opposed migration, or didn't like the genuinely evil and european hating Frankfurt school and familiars, which should never have been allowed to take root in USA and from then elsewhere, but that they tried to invade and greatly replace other nations and also disallow them from being nations, having national independence and institutions. Disrespecting legitimate rights of other ethnic groups including atrocities relating to that. Ironically there is a shared element between Frankfurt school types who see their outgroup nationalists as authoritarian personality insane and evil and Germans who were saying that the Russian or Polish nation is a threat, and even modern types like Soros and fellow travelers who consider modern European nations a threat to Jews, Muslims and other so called minorities who actually some of them are worldwide not quite such a small minority.

Well, there were also deportations, including through violence which isn't an example to follow at end of WW2 from places Germans have been there for long, but also there was a reversal of the agenda of Germans to Germanize parts of Europe and replace the non Germans. The later element which was about stopping colonization is the lesson here, not to follow the course of any side fully from WW2 since a lot of bad behavior around even among the less badly behaved parties. And of course in age of decolinization, Europeans left from many countries which also took property restrictions in addition to in some cases, deportations which included a more violent nature than what I advocate.

But Europeans aren't seen as wronged by this, and in fact people claiming to support decolonization claim that mass migration is the new form of decolonization which is of course about colonizing Europeans. In general the correct idea of national rights as part of international justice is commonly accepted, and in fact even plenty of strong reactions can be excused. Well, I am not looking for that, but looking for rules that are consistent in general and protect Europeans and others affected by this too (like perhaps Japanese might start to be targeted), but also with special attention towards those targeted for destruction, to the extend this network is active. International organizations like Amnesty international that pretend that Europeans aren't indigenous, should not exist and that is the fig leave of those who either pretend the rules don't exist, or come with excuses not to apply them to Europeans, or simply don't understand their value.

The agenda to end the existence of Europeans in their homelands is a criminal extremely racist agenda that is against international justice, and the crime of trying to diminish Europeans as a hated dhimni minority is a crime against humanity. Which definitely means that the media who are an organ of masisve power and massive responsibility promoting "mass migration", or a political party having such an agenda, raises to the level of advocating and implementing the kind of things that should not be allowed and makes perfect sense to consider treason. Same for ideological NGOs, or ethnic supremacist organisations advocating on behalf of other groups and expense of Europeans and the general network that makes those working together for such agenda.

Even for laypeople, they have a moral obligation, whatever their ethnicity to not advocate for this, but things escalate when one reaches important institutions where such agenda should not be promoted. Internationally oriented perspective and institutions and also nationally oriented ones where it affects theirs, and people who have both perspectives in a certain mixture, should reject agendas to destroy Europeans or any particular group of ethnic groups, and assert the protection of peoples and their homeland as an obvious core value. So, not only in Britain but international NGOs, or the agenda that results from the leaders of EU, UN, NATO, etc, etc, should of course support the rights of Europeans in their own homeland.

I keep entertaining the idea of buying up a shithole island like Crypto Island and declaring in its sovereign charter that literally everyone in the world has automatic citizenship in Anarchyisle. No one would EVER want to move there of their own volition, but every country struggling to deport noncompliant migrants can just pay the dropoff fee to dump Anarchyisle residents here*. None of this stateless bullshit, everyone has jus sangui from mitochondrial eve.

Right now MENA migration is not waves of invaders swarming a fence, but family imports or rubber boats offloading two or three people every few minutes across vast unmonitored territories. The slow invasion is not Noticed at the borders, and Noticing concentrations is just proof of racism. Anarchyisle solves the meta of origin falsifiability by simply saying no human is illegal.

*For the extremely low fee of USD1000/month per 100 residents I will throw in internal border enforcement as well, hiring Mindanaon or Ugandan private security who have no qualms about hitting malcontents and extremely lax body camera maintenance procedures.

The positives have to be weighed against the negatives. Maybe certain classes of immigrants are net-negative and a better immigration policy would be able to discriminate against these people but I don't think the UK is at the point where all immigration is net-negative.

Do you see this "better" immigration policy on the horizon anywhere in Europe? Is anyone calling for cutting out sub-Saharan Africans or MENA migrants specifically while maintaining your hypothetical improved immigration system?

If not, why not?

Denmark specifically has stricter requirements for MENA countries afaik.

Poland welcomed $BIGNUM Ukrainians while having limited enthusiasm about other migrants and being poorer than Germany, Sweden and UK and therefore migrants themselves preferring to go elsewhere?

Note also border wall and illegal pushbacks of migrants imported by Łukaszenko and Putin (with illegality ignored by basically everyone, including EU).

Is anyone calling for cutting out sub-Saharan Africans or MENA migrants

EU is busy bribing countries in north Africa and Turkey so they will apply violence to keep migrants out.

Poland is a great example, thanks.

I suspect that’s going to bite Poland in the ass eventually, but for different reasons.

Do you have specific predictions in which way it will go wrong?

  1. It creates a large revanchist pressure group that will be spoiling to drag Poland into a war with Russia.
  2. Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials are already laying the groundwork for a Dolchstoßlegende, blaming NATO for dragging them into the war and then leaving them high and dry without sufficient support to win. Which is true, but in any case I suspect it will lead to a spree of revenge terrorism and assassinations by Banderite groups throughout Europe in the late 2020s and early 2030s. Probably using leftover NATO weaponry.

It creates a large revanchist pressure group that will be spoiling to drag Poland into a war with Russia.

they are selected for "we run away from war", and for "fuck Russia" part there will be no to little disagreement

no idea why they would activate after Ukraine loses (and I guess that if they want they could go to East as partisans)

Which is true

nope, it is not

It is Russia who invaded because they could not accept not being a superpower anymore

alternative (helping Russia to be superpower or pretending it is) would be worse

Banderite groups throughout Europe in the late 2020s and early 2030s

what would be even motive, reasoning and strategy here?

Probably using leftover NATO weaponry.

Which one? Because it ranges from "utterly impractical in covert terrorism" and "they had it already" with side of "trying to do MH17 will end with partitioning your country if you are Ukraine, not Russia".

nope it is not

Well, the United States overthrew their government to replace it with one less neutral to Russia, then they pressured them to be more and more militant towards Russia while arming them to the teeth, then after the invasion Boris Johnson scotched the potential peace deal, then the lead Ukrainian negotiator got mysteriously shot in the head, then NATO law makers procrastinated for 9 months before sending any of significant armaments they promised, so I would say it’s true.

What would even be the motivation, reasoning, and strategy here?

Anger when they realize they got their country destroyed based on a bunch of fake promises from people who didn’t really care about them at all.

As for your first point, the normal people will all have to stay behind and suffer but the ideological hardliners like what’s left of Azov Battalion will probably make it out. Those types usually do.

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Maybe certain classes of immigrants are net-negative and a better immigration policy would be able to discriminate against these people but I don't think the UK is at the point where all immigration is net-negative.

I think we'd need to see a counter-factual of a Western European country that hasn't allowed mass immigration.

The better parts of Eastern Europe are shaping up to be this counterfactual. For what it's worth, places like Poland and the Czech Republic have little crime and no ethnic tensions, and maintain their culture.

Those are good examples and Poland and Czechia have also seen high economic growth. The one caveat is that much of this growth is simply catching up with more developed neighbors in the EU.

My theory is that a fully developed country like say, Germany, would not suffer lower economic growth if immigration was reduced by 90%. I just don't see how importing low human capital workers from dysfunctional societies can be a positive.

At this point though, the damage is done. Even if Germany and France cut immigration to zero, they now have a sizeable racial underclass much like the U.S. does. They are finding out how thorny of a problem that can be.

Note: it remains to be seen how Ukrainian migrants/refugees will work out long term in for example Poland. Now we are up a bit from "literally zero ethnic tensions", but still relatively low on overall scale.

Haven’t Ukrainians who managed to convince much wealthier countries they’re refugees been largely a net positive in those countries? I’d think more culturally-similar Poland would benefit even more.

"net positive" does not eliminate ethnic tensions, especially in country that used to be monolingual and monoethic.

For start, there are some people who lost on the changes or at least perceive themselves as losing or just hate that someone else benefitted more than them.

And there are some conflicts but more of "call with speaker enabled in train" rather than "create organised rape gang and blackmail police for years". Still, induces nonzero ethnic tensions what is noticeable when we used to have basically none.

For example https://konfederacja.pl/ (party on right, with most significant enti-EU, for free market, pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine, with bunch of clowns but has enough support to be elected) has constant anti-Ukrainian content, including attacking people in Poland.

That’s fair, but Ukrainian refugees are pretty much all women and children and the languages are pretty close to mutually intelligible, right? Like if holland got invaded and all the Dutch women and children moved to England I predict they’d assimilate pretty well, and that’s about my mental model of the difference here.

languages are pretty close to mutually intelligible

close to but not mutually intelligible

pretty much all women and children

And among Polish women (who are more likely to compete with new people) acceptance of Ukrainians is markedly lower

they’d assimilate pretty well

so far it goes relatively well

note that "some ethnic tensions" is from perspective of place that had none of them, where violence/racial/ethnic tension are far, far, far below USA ones and so on

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Does Hungary count?

It's not Western.

Switzerland maybe?

Switzerland literally has the highest percentage of foreign-born population out of all Western European non-microstate countries.

Switzerland literally has the highest percentage of foreign-born population out of all Western European non-microstate countries.

Yes, but 85% migrants are from Europe, and 44% are specifically from other first-world countries like France, Spain, Germany, Austria, the UK and Italy. Also, there is no low-skilled foreign helot class being imported as in the US and UK. "The admission of people from non-EU/EFTA countries is regulated by the Foreign Nationals Act, and is limited to skilled workers who are urgently required and are likely to integrate successfully in the long term. There are quotas established yearly: in 2012 it was 3,500 residency permits and 5,000 short-term permits." Further, the Swiss don't appear to have nearly the problem of islamic radicalization that France and the UK do, and aren't shy about tackling it when it looks like it might become an issue.

Switzerland has very high rates of EU and non-EU immigration.

I mean it is pretty silly that there were race riots against migrants because a british-born son of Christian immigrants mentally snapped, although the police/govt response would have been the exact same if it had been the most stereotypical middle eastern channel crosser.

But it was also pretty silly when there were mass protests because an american cop kneeled on an american guy. Hell, apparently their sportsballers are still fucking kneeling - even we stopped doing this after like a year.

Isn't it clear that these proximate causes are mostly Schelling points for coordination? The same people rioting have also been upset by thousands of other smaller incidents. Same for the Floyd riots.

I mean it is pretty silly that there were race riots against migrants because a british-born son of Christian immigrants mentally snapped

When the riots started I don't think it was widely known the (alleged) stabbist was either British-born or Christian. Based on the little twitter discourse I saw, the assumption appears to have been that he was a migrant/Muslim because of the reluctance of the government or press to say anything about his identity. But if there's any better info out there I'll gladly yield to it.

Even though I think kneeling is stupid and I also strongly dislike it, I'm inclined to have more respect, not less, for people who continue to kneel even after it's the issue of the day. Though yes, international bleed-through of American cultural issues continues to amaze me.

Just a quick point which has been bugging me in several of these Motte threads about the issue...

Isn't it definitely worth mentioning that if he were born in the UK, it's not at all a "recent" immigration? That's just flat out wrong!! Objectively! I don't know why all the comments seem to conveniently gloss over this. Even if we're playing the counterfactual game, which is always epistemically suspect in the case of individuals, the debate would be about immigration policies 18 years ago, not current immigration policies. Now, given, the PM at the time was Tony Blair, who was Labour, so maybe there's a connection there, but still (it's not like Labour has been in charge for long enough to meaningfully affect immigration policies themselves, and instead it's the Conservatives who were in power for much more than a decade). The situation also pretty much requires asking "how well does assimilation work in the UK"? Answering that is pretty much required context if you're going to connect it to immigration, because otherwise the local UK culture is presumably just as much "to blame" as his parent's upbringing.

But yeah, Taylor Swift being repeatedly brought up is a little odd. But if your goal is to create maximum media attention to an act of terror, choosing as your target a bunch of sympathetic young people and even kids at a Taylor Swift event ( a figure who has a ton of built in attention already) is probably close to the "ideal" target. Now, of course, this kind of terrorism is consummately counterproductive, but to the more delusional kind of terrorist (such as a 17 and 19 year old) it might seem attractive.

Isn't it definitely worth mentioning that if he were born in the UK, it's not at all a "recent" immigration?

Replying to both of your comments here--I'm not wed to the word "recent." But the consequences of immigration can surely take decades and even centuries to play out, depending on the details. As I noted to FiveHourMarathon,

The children of recent immigrants are often targets for radicalization; indeed, crime rises among second-generation immigrants as they assimilate, though I've seen some recent (I suspect politically-motivated) attempts to muddy the waters on this.

As for whether it's really Labour's fault, I'm not sufficiently keyed in to British politics to say much about that. Very generally, I suspect that people who are broadly anti-immigration will often be the sorts of people who also use words like "uniparty" or "globalist" to describe the way that progressive and conservative elites always seem to be able to set aside their differences when it comes time to screw the average nobody.

Immigration has often been recognized as precisely this sort of thing. Bernie Sanders' opposition to immigration is grounded in the idea that it hurts poor Americans, and the people who disagree with his take tend to just be so globalist that they're willing to accept the tradeoff. From the linked article (emphasis added):

Maybe such harm would be justified if it prevents a major harm from befalling native-born Americans. But immigration does not harm native-born Americans on average. It helps them.

Immigration is indeed good for Americans (economically), on average! But if you're one of the millions of Americans for whom it is actually bad, how should that make you feel? Personally, if I were working class, I cannot imagine being happy to hear that, thanks to increased immigration, people already better off than me were going to, on average, benefit more than I was going to suffer.

If someone can't protest the direct result of immigration policy twenty years after the fact (old news! proximate cause!), and can't protest the immigration policy proposed today (racist!), even when the same party is in control today as was in control twenty years ago, then where does that leave them? I am myself somewhat ambivalent about all this; I know enough about economics to know that trade and immigration are big contributors to prosperity in much of the world, but I also try to be empathetic with people who are clearly harmed--whose well being is being consciously sacrificed by government actors for the "greater good." So I've been a little stunned by the apparent absence of anything approaching sympathy in the UK counterprotests, particularly considering, you know, the murdered children.

But yes: the Taylor Swift thing is weird!

EDIT: I forgot to say! There is a joke: what is the difference between Americans and the British? Answer: Americans think 200 years is a long time, and Brits think that 200 miles is a long way. "Recent" immigration could be a hundred years ago, depending on your culture. Americans of European ancestry are sometimes accused of being recent immigrants even if their ancestors arrived on the Mayflower...

Modern western secular humanism is meant to be an anodyne soup appealing to everyone, further diminishing the power of traditional religious and socioeconomic gentry. That the recent immigrants fins secular humanism unappealing and continue finding succour in retrograde political beliefs is inconvenient and ignored by pro migrant class aspirants.

In aggregate, cheaper consumer goods and cheaper services results in net utility increases. That said utility increase is uneven is ignored and the common response from urban professionals is to sneer at the stupid proles who dare display unhappiness with their imported replacements.

Urban professionals have made it clear that importing migrants for their personal comfort matters. So what if tens of thousands of girls are raped or dozens of girls blown up by muslims, or stabbed by imports that never contribute economically. These stupid proles should know their place beneath the benevolent auspices of the professionals, and anyone who objects is a wrongthinker whose throat should be, as white-sounding Ricky Jones said, slit in the name of antifascism.

To the cheers of Free Free Palestine, for good measure. The presence of that damnable slogan with all manner of terrible activities conducted by the protected classes is something to consider too.

Urban professionals have made it clear that importing migrants for their personal comfort matters.

I think this is unrealistically conspiratorial. I am an urban professional, and it's clear to me that refugees and anyone coming from say, Haiti is not a net contributor to my or any of my countrymen's comfort [EDIT: on average]. But I don't talk about it often for fear of being fired or ostracised.

I know some definite positive contributors from Haiti. Doesn't mean I'd invite the whole island (or even just the Haitian half) over of course.

Whoops, edited for clarity. I meant on average.

I know some definite positive contributors from Haiti.

Huh?

Edit: see below.

There are, in fact, Haitian immigrants to the US who aren't cannibal gang members, mud-eating Voudon practicitioners, or the like.

I misread your comment as "positive contributions", my bad. I'll also point out that the OP was specifically referring to net contributors.

Having access to very cheap labour makes my life more comfortable even as it rots society.

Well yes, but as a blue collar and not bottom of the barrel worker- it does mine too. There’s a reason for the massive class based divide in immigration and it isn’t whether roustabouts benefit you, personally- a plumber knows that the existence of roustabouts means he doesn’t have to dig his own trenches.

Participation in a conspiracy of silence means consenting, if not encouraging, this state of affairs.

Failure to hold peers to task when they advance false utopias is wrong when it is white supremacist, why is it wrong to state that importing millions of Indians to be Tim Hortons staffers or Guatamalans to pick fruits illegally has a net negative effect, much less bringing in islamist mirpuris or MS13 salvadorans.

Your peers being stupid is no need to make yourself stupid as well. Plenty of white people express relief when someone else speaks up to decry the obvious. Be the bigger man and speak what others dare only dream.

I have to pick my battles. I spent some political capital pushing back on the particular progressive rot infesting the institutions I'm part of. Bringing up immigration in professional settings apropos of nothing seems like a bad use of everyone's time.

I'm not proud of not bringing this up, but I'm saying that this is a very different phenomenon than keeping quiet because I'm secretly glad that my country is being ruined by mass immigration because it benefits me in the short run. And I think my colleagues who champion mass immigration are doing it mostly for altruistic or signaling reasons, not because it improves their position materially.

So I've been a little stunned by the apparent absence of anything approaching sympathy in the UK counterprotests, particularly considering, you know, the murdered children.

Directly calling for the murder of [your opponent's] children with impunity is a fantastic way to demonstrate power so long as the people you're demonstrating to aren't intelligent or serious enough to do anything about it. Sam Hyde's observations about the people calling for this appear to be trivially correct.

And sure, doing this increases the chance someone serious enough actually does something; judging by the last time the government was directly responsible for high-profile child murders (though in the UK it's "just" murder by proxy, which probably changes the calculus some) in a Western country they apparently needed to murder 30 children before a kulak revolts and goes after the bureaucrats. Granted, the UK in 2024 is not the southern US in the early '90s so it'll probably take a few instances of that, if they're even permitted to hear about them, that is.

Directly calling for the murder of [your opponent's] children with impunity

He was almost immediately arrested and charged.

How stern do you expect his sentence to be if he is convicted? Versus, say, that of someone calling for his execution on social media?

Very lenient, of course.

While the OKC bombing probably had a bit of a deterrent effect on federal law enforcement going forwards, it was widely perceived as retaliation for ruby ridge and not the Waco cult(which most people had little sympathy for).

I realize I'm doubling down a little, but I feel it's justified. As an example, we can ask a LLM (here, Claude): "If I say "recent immigrant" what time-frame would people most expect that to mean?"

The term "recent immigrant" doesn't have a universally agreed-upon timeframe, but it generally refers to someone who has immigrated within the last few years. Most people would likely interpret "recent immigrant" to mean someone who has arrived in the country within approximately the last 1 to 5 years. However, the exact interpretation can vary depending on context:

In casual conversation, people might consider "recent" to mean within the last 1-3 years. For statistical or research purposes, "recent immigrant" might be defined more precisely, sometimes covering a period of up to 5 or even 10 years. In some government contexts or for certain programs, "recent immigrant" might have a specific legal definition, which could vary by country or purpose. The perception of "recent" can also depend on the speaker's own frame of reference or the immigration patterns in a particular area.

We're probably within the realm of "casual conversation" ranging to "research purposes" so lo and behold, exactly what I said. In politics, "recent" usually means at most the recent election which even in the UK is only at most 5 or 6 years in the past. Even a follow-up question to Claude about the UK turns up that some media would use the word to mean a decade, at most. I'm glad you can acknowledge that the word might not make sense but the fact you used it in the first place is, if not an indication of outright dishonesty and manipulation (which given you as a mod I'm going to say no this is not the case, let's be charitable :) ), at least a major warning light that should be going off in your head about bias creeping into your language. And bias to the point it's leading to what I still insist is objectively an outright and blatant misrepresentation. If your word means 95% of the time (or more! I think textual analysis would produce 99% or higher) something that is factually false, using it is just straight up bad, no two ways about it.

Stepping back from the brink a little, I suppose you could see the context as "is immigration writ large any good"? In which it makes a little more sense. I do quite like your point about being caught in a double bind between not being able to critique 20-year-old policy and also not current policy. And yes, I think the European model of combating racism has its clear drawbacks here -- my general observation is that Europeans like to pretend it doesn't exist and sweep it under the rug when possible, while Americans talk about it much more directly and often. I'm sure both have their merits, but (despite my bias) I think the American model is still better. In psychology, we've sort of learned that it's usually better to err on the side of "talk about your feelings" rather than "bottle them up" even if there are actual risks of talking problems too much (and there are). I think the same idea roughly applies to politics. So the UK approach of trying to keep things bottled up is fundamentally doomed.

The term "recent immigrant" doesn't have a universally agreed-upon timeframe, but it generally refers to someone who has immigrated within the last few years.

I'm not sure how much I want to go down this road. I have... let's call them vast and boring... objections to any use of statistical language manipulation, corpus linguistics, LLMs, etc. in arguments concerning law and politics.

And I did say I'm not wed to the term!

But FWIW, ChatGPT agrees with your assessment.

Until, that is, you ask it "Could an Indigenous American describe white people as 'recent immigrants?'"

Yes, an Indigenous American could describe white people as "recent immigrants." European settlement in the Americas is relatively recent compared to the thousands of years that Indigenous peoples have lived on the continent.

When Indigenous Americans use the term "recent immigrants" to describe white people, it serves to emphasize the long-standing presence and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples in the Americas before European colonization. This perspective can underscore the impact of colonization on Indigenous cultures, lands, and societies, and challenge the dominant narratives that center European settlement as the beginning of American history.

Hmm, maybe there's a political bias here? How about "Could native Britons describe citizens of African descent as 'recent immigrants?'"

Native Britons could describe citizens of African descent as "recent immigrants" if they are referring to individuals or communities who have migrated from Africa to the UK within the last few decades. In this context, the term "recent immigrants" would be used in the same way it is applied to other groups who have migrated to the UK in modern times.

However, it is important to consider historical context and sensitivity when using such terms. The UK's relationship with Africa is complex, involving colonial history, migration during and after the British Empire, and the movement of people due to conflicts and economic opportunities. Describing someone as a "recent immigrant" can sometimes oversimplify or overlook these broader historical connections and the contributions of African-descended people to British society over many generations.

It's also worth noting that the term might not apply to all citizens of African descent in the UK, especially those who have been settled for several generations, or whose families have been in the country for a long time. The term "recent immigrant" is most accurately used for those who have migrated within a relatively short timeframe, typically within the last few years or decades.

(Emphasis added.) With no special prompting from me, ChatGPT spontaneously volunteered timeframes ranging from decades to centuries for "recent immigrants," and very specifically volunteered "decades" in a question about precisely the context we're discussing. While I do see some political bias (no reminder of "historical context and sensitivity" in the Native American version, no caveats about white people who have lived here for years or decades), these seem like pretty comparable answers. They also seem absolutely concordant with the idea that Africans who moved to the UK "within the last few decades" are "recent immigrants."

So like... if refusing to accept "decades" as a reasonable timeframe for "recent" immigration is not an indication of outright dishonesty and manipulation (which you have given me no reason to suspect), should "at least a major warning light . . . be going off in your head about bias creeping into your language?"

And really--I think no! I think your question was perfectly fair. Which is why I thought about it for a bit before coming to the conclusion that no--"recent" is probably a fine word to use in this context, and probably also a fine word to not use in this context. Ultimately I don't think the substance of my argument is significantly impacted either way.

I do quite like your point about being caught in a double bind between not being able to critique 20-year-old policy and also not current policy.

This is actually something I think about a lot, in a lot of contexts. It's weird to live in a world where perfectly good arguments often go out of style, simply because everyone has heard them before. The extent to which fashion so often drives philosophy is frankly maddening. But I don't know what else to say about it; it's not a fashionable observation to make, so essentially nobody wants to talk about it.

Hey since you're a mod, can we get a rule banning "I asked ChatGPT about this" type posts? I don't guve a damn what some Chinese Room statistical regression engine "thinks" and I could ask it myself if I did.

I'm absolutely opposed to this because the Chinese room statistical regression engine (and more specifically its HR manager shoggoth mask) is a priceless window into the mentality of our ruling priesthood.

And right now it's not capable of lying and dissimulating as well as they can in a conversation: you can get it to say the quiet part loud where even a Darwin would clam up and lie or ghost you.

If the discussion's about LLMs I think quoting their output is highly relevant. The "Gemini shits on historical accuracy when asked for pictures" issue, for instance, needed Gemini outputs to demonstrate.

Getting them to outright write arguments probably falls under "low effort", and certainly has the same if not worse effect on discourse quality.

Using one as an authoritative source, like here... well, it's dumb. Not sure it's worth banning in the general case, although in this one there was enough text that it starts to cross into the "you plugged me into an LLM, you contemptuous monster" reliable rage generator.

The mod team has discussed this a little and while we've not arrived at a blanket ban, we have dropped "low effort" warnings on posts that were nothing but ChatGPT. I suspect our responses to generative AI will continue to evolve as technology and general use evolve.

I had seen the phrase show up two times, maybe three, in the thread and it seemed a little too systemic for me not to mention it. It's all about the "context window", and yes it's true that LLMs are very sensitive to that (sometimes in a helpful, human way but not always) (and aside from of course the sometimes clumsy attempts at making the output PC). A fun example is I put your version of the question (which frankly I consider to be slightly more of a leading question due to the word "native" having strong connotations, but to some extent all LLM questions are leading, so what can you do) into chatbot arena. I got one answer that said not usually, but sometimes for individuals in "years and decades" maybe (and gave some context about the "Windrush generation" who came in the 50s and 60s), and a second answer that said it would probably be offensive, briefly mentioned it might be occasionally accurate, but then ended by saying that using the term would be a "microaggression". The first turned out to be a ChatGPT variant like you used, and the second was Gemini (lol). I still think my question phrasing gets more to the meat of the issue, but yeah, you can only get so far with LLMs. Asking "If we're having a conversation about immigration policy, and someone started talking about "recent" immigrants, what do you think would count as "recent"?" produced yet another answer that said usually 1-3 years and sometimes 5-10, and a second answer that basically said "bro that's actually super duper subjective, here's some things that might influence that". *shrugs*

I still think it's misleading. The news articles we're usually slinging around here usually employ the phrase to mean a few years at most. If "recent" introduces a significant misunderstanding, doesn't offer any advantages over the more generic "immigrant", and a better alternative "second-generation immigrant" exists, to me that's three strikes.

This is a little off topic, but along the lines of thought about how good arguments sometimes lose their power over time.... I actually do give good stock to the theory that CBT specifically as a psychiatric tool has lost a lot of its effectiveness because it's seeped into the water of the common understanding and provides almost a type of immunity to it.

Definitions. Who/whom.

"Recent" has very different meanings to different people.

To the Japanese, a gaijin who has been born, lived and died of old age in Japan will never, ever, ever be Japanese. This is understood by all Japanese.

To Americans, uniquely, everyone within their borders is American. This is understood by (nearly) all Americans, and even those who don't understand it assume American values are universal and extend beyond their borders, often with disastrous implications for their foreign policy.

Isn't it definitely worth mentioning that if he were born in the UK, it's not at all a "recent" immigration?

Location of ones birth being a factor on determing if a person is an immigrant or not, is a New World concept, not a universal one.

Even if we're playing the counterfactual game, which is always epistemically suspect in the case of individuals,

This proves way too much. Any crime commited by an immigrant, is a crime which wouldn't have happened had the immigrant been prevented from entering the country. Your general dismissal of "counterfactuals" leads to erasure of immigrant crime.

The situation also pretty much requires asking "how well does assimilation work in the UK"?

Assuming that the receiving state should invest in assimilation, is begging the question that people who require assimilation should be let in anyway.

because otherwise the local UK culture is presumably just as much "to blame" as his parent's upbringing.

If indigenous peoples if the British isles murder and rape children at lower rates than people who are of foreign ethnic extraction, it is ludicrous to blame the British values for the crimes of the latter. because the later will surely on average adhere to them les

This proves way too much. Any crime commited by an immigrant, is a crime which wouldn't have happened had the immigrant been prevented from entering the country. Your general dismissal of "counterfactuals" leads to erasure of immigrant crime.

Here's one for proving too much: 99% of all crime is committed by descendants of Genghis Khan. Any crime commited by a descendant of Genghis Khan, is a crime which wouldn't have happened had Temujin been strangled before he was old enough to ride a horse. Your general acceptance of "counterfactuals" leads to a superexponential mess of hypothetical actions which would have prevented any arbitrary incident via the butterfly effect.

I thought only ~.5% of the world was estimated to be descendants of Genghis? Which is still a massive amount, but nowhere close to high enough for your argument.

I saw some content recently that contests the idea that the common Y-chromosome haplotype previously assumed to come from Ghengis Khan actually does. Apparently new reasearch can trace it back further than him and his direct descendants share a different haplotype.

Not that this is relevant to your point. Presumably, there's still some historical figure that you could slot into the same argument. Just a fun fact I picked up recently.

It almost doesn't matter. Anyone from that long ago who got around across Eurasia is most likely a direct ancestor of the bulk of the human population.

I don't think Genghis Khan is quite long enough ago; he was 12th century. If he'd been 500 years earlier I'd maybe believe it, but 12th century is AFAIK not long enough to get most of Eurasia (the base of the exponential drops below 2 at large generation numbers because descendants don't always marry non-descendants).

I understand your point but this is almost certainly not true- blacks(least likely to be descended from genghis) commit orders of magnitude more crime than orientals(most likely).

Location of birth mattering or not is, yes, a unique cultural concept that differs across time and place. The simple fact however is that the parents did not give birth, move back to Rwanda, raise their child there, and then bring him back to the UK right before the murders. Much of the conversation in this thread makes it sound like this is the case. No, AFAIK, he spent all 17 years of his life in the UK. That's 100% of his life, and also, a pretty substantial chunk of time. So if we're playing the blame game, we have to ask about UK culture at least to some degree. That's why I bring up assimilation. You can't just ignore it. Insofar as it makes sense, there's a reason that sometimes in for example a legal examination of a car accident, we sometimes go so far as to talk about "percent of blame" due to different parties. That's the broad idea I'm getting at here. He, himself, is not an immigrant in most meaningful senses of the word. He must be understood as a second-generation immigrant, a term which exists as its own, different "thing".

Please note I was fairly careful in my wording, and for good reason. I talk about counterfactuals as applied to individuals, because there's a big risk of bias interacting with numerical/scientific issues in latching on to the wrong thing. We can still have a conversation about counterfactuals, but they need to be grounded in larger, more visible, and more real effects, perhaps using statistics. To say nothing of the fact that making conclusions about large populations from the actions of one or a few child murderers is already a bit suspect. Again, we can have this conversation. Your last paragraph even starts one! But it requires nuance. And it requires at least some degree of rigor which I'm not seeing. A point you make quite clearly when you dismiss counterfactuals so easily without an understanding of why they are problematic in any sort of evidentiary or logically consistent sense.

So if we're playing the blame game, we have to ask about UK culture at least to some degree. That's why I bring up assimilation. You can't just ignore it.

This is not really an argument I think the pro-immigration side wants to be making: if even a second-generation immigrant raised-in-Britain can't assimilate (an uncharitable HBD-pilled poster might phrase it as "being unable to overcome his genes") then it's an indicator that there might be a deeper issue with the UK's immigration policies. First Google result suggests 10k-15k Rwandans in the UK (https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/mapping-the-rwandan-diaspora-in-the-uk.pdf), and while I don't know the rate of stabbing sprees among native white Britons, my suspicion is that this incident alone places Rwandans well above the base rate. Giving the surprisingly helpful "List of mass stabbings in the United Kingdom" Wikipedia article a quick look (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_stabbings_in_the_United_Kingdom), the perpetrators for the 2020s are:

n.b.: If the news article didn't mention nationality or immigration status, I assumed they were British. Now, I'm no noticer, and the Wikipedia article that I cribbed these cases from does state that it is an "incomplete list", so I'm not going to generalize. Nonetheless, if you're going to assert that we have to "ask about UK culture" then it is perhaps worth considering the demographics of these perpetrators and how reflective they are of "UK culture".

Thanks for bringing the receipts!

we have to ask about UK culture at least to some degree

There's nothing unique to the UK about Subsaharan Africans committing massive amounts of crime. It's true in the USA, it's true in Sweden, it's true in Brazil, it's true in France, and of course it's true in Africa and the Caribbean.

The rioters know this. They also know they are being ethnically replaced. Trying to muddy the waters by saying things like 'Axel was born in Cardiff' (as if he might be a Welshman called David Llywelyn) is asking them to ignore their own lying eyes, and all the crime statistics.

Do you think there is any meaningful difference between first and second generation immigrants from these countries, and do you think the median Briton would agree?

See ArjinFerman's answer basically. There can be a difference between second and first generation immigrants, and a difference between second generation immigrants and natives.

The fact that SSAs commit boatloads of crime wherever they are in the world suggests that the causes of this are genetic, rather than cultural. That is to say, whatever British cultural norms 2nd gens adopt, they clearly aren't enough to reduce their crime rates to the native average. British culture also seems incapable of causing Chinese people to drink as much and commit as much crime as the natives. The British-born Chinese stubbornly remain model citizens no matter how much integration they experience.

Of course, even that assumes that it is only possible for 2nd gens to adopt the culture of their home country. The existence of UK-born jihadis (adopting wahabi islamist ideology) or drill music (adopting African American hip hop culture) demonstrate otherwise.

As for the second part of your question, I think the answer the median Briton would give would depend on how you define 'meaningful difference'.

The fact that SSAs commit boatloads of crime wherever they are in the world suggests that the causes of this are genetic, rather than cultural.

Just to be clear, that was not my angle. I was going more with: pro immigration people assume integration happens automatically, and that by the time you reach 2nd generation immigrants, they absorbed all the same cultural norms, to the same extent as the native population. I disagree with that assumption.

The reason I asked is because I feel that if the median Briton does agree, it makes it more important to properly distinguish between the two rather than lump all immigrants in a group. That means if the phrase "second-generation immigrant" is available, "recent immigrant" makes no sense to use, no matter if it's born from linguistic laziness or excessively biased language. At least here, because I know my limits and I don't actually know that much about the UK's overall relationship between culture/immigration/politics/etc, I'm definitely not trying to do any kind of persuasion in "the other direction" but rather just insist on precision of language where it makes sense. Ignoring the use of a relevant word and idea when most people would consider it important context only hurts the discussion. Frankly I don't really know how well or poorly integration goes in Britain, but it's worth noting that genetics still isn't the only plausible explanation. For example, it's possible that the British culture just sucks in the first place, or that it doesn't transmit well, or something like that. Again however if you put a gun to my head I don't know if I could quite express what British culture is, really.

I will concede that, on a meta level, I am more concerned with "precision of language" than the median person, of course :). I think it still makes sense here to insist on it. As an interesting aside, I think The Giver had it completely backwards -- rather than linguistic precision being a tool to hurt and restrict and direct thought, I think it actually helps communication when people say more precisely what they think and pay attention to the connotations words carry as well as being careful to select the word with the closest matching denotation.

Sure, but there's also a meaningful difference between second generation immigrants, and the median Briton (with which, I think, the median Briton would agree).

Any crime [committed] by an immigrant, is a crime which wouldn't have happened had the immigrant been prevented from entering the country. Your general dismissal of "counterfactuals" leads to erasure of immigrant crime.

That is only relevant if one already assumes the ethnonationalist world-view; namely the propositions that countries exist for a select group defined by blood, that moral concern is rightfully extended only to that group, and that anyone else being allowed to exist in their territory is a supererogatory courtesy.

As someone with a more pan-humanist world-view, I don't see 'immigrant crime' as a category that carves reality at its joints; and excluding immigrants does not prevent the crimes a few of them would have committed, but merely moves them to another place; lowering the crime rate in England, while increasing it in Rwanda by the same amount, for no change in the total, at the cost of the stifling of opportunity (and infliction of indignity attendant on any form of discrimination) for countless innocent Rwandans, does not, in my view, seem advisable if one considers an umpteenth-generation Englishman and a Rwandan immigrant (or his son) to be equal in terms of moral worth.

lowering the crime rate in England, while increasing it in Rwanda by the same amount, for no change in the total,

This is only true if there's no change in birth rates downstream of immigration relieving/causing crowding. At the opposite extreme where birth rates/death rates totally compensate for the population transfer, then the cashed-out result is that instead of a Rwandan in England and a Rwandan in Rwanda you have an Englishman in England and a Rwandan in Rwanda, and if Rwandans in England commit more crime than Englishmen in England then there's less total crime.

Now, of course, there's not perfect compensation, particularly on the European end (on the African end there potentially is enough food scarcity to compensate). But I don't think it's zero on the European end either; housing prices would be lower with less immigrants, and housing affordability seems to be related to white birth rates.

Isn't it definitely worth mentioning that if he were born in the UK, it's not at all a "recent" immigration? That's just flat out wrong!! Objectively!

Feel free to believe it, feel free to argue for it, but this is consensus building. If you're one generation away from your family being in the old country, that's pretty recent.

I'd even say that insisting on your definition of "recent" implicitly makes the argument that is explicitly disproven by these incidents - integration is possible, but it takes more than being born on a particular patch of dirt, as pro-immigration advocates kinda-sorta implied, and sometimes stated openly.

Even if we're playing the counterfactual game, which is always epistemically suspect in the case of individuals, the debate would be about immigration policies 18 years ago, not current immigration policies.

Uh... ok...? If you're saying the current immigration policies are better than they were 18 years ago, you're free to argue that, but I think this instance supports the claims of current immigration opponents.

Now, given, the PM at the time was Tony Blair, who was Labour,

Please, none of this is about partisan politics.

Answering that is pretty much required context if you're going to connect it to immigration, because otherwise the local UK culture is presumably just as much "to blame" as his parent's upbringing.

Yeah, the "local" UK culture that assumed integration is going to happen automatically, and anyone opposed to immigration must be motivated by bigotry.

argument that is explicitly disproven by these incidents - integration is possible

There's also the issue that 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants frequently have worse outcomes and lower integration.

From the point of view of the Britons, the Saxons and the Normans are recent immigrations, recent meaning in the last thousand years. The Romans only get a pass because they immigrated before the time of Christ.

The British upper class are Saxon and Norman, who violently invaded the isles and won through conquest. If you’re implying that the brown migrants to the UK are invaders, then just allow for mutual combat.

Right, of course context matters, but in the realm of politics two decades is almost never recent. You usually mean something within the last few months to a year, and sometimes 5 years at most, 10 if you really stretch. This holds true virtually 90% of the time, probably even higher, 99% wouldn't even surprise me. A simple search of literally any news article will demonstrate my point quite succinctly. Or even books.

If you use "recent" to mean 20 years ago it's almost explicitly dishonest.

For example, if I tell you that I "recently" moved -- even if I am catching up with an old friend I hadn't seen in like, 40 years, you'd still probably assume recent = last 5 to 10 years at most. I struggle to even come up with any sort of comparable example outside of literal world history where recent would acceptably mean almost two decades ago.

And in terms of ethnogenesis, centuries pass in the blink of an eye.

There's an unfortunate saying that goes something like this: 'a dog born in the stables is not a horse'. I am Chinese in origin, and I can confidently say that if outsiders moved in and learned and spoke Chinese and did so for a thousand years, they would still be foreigners. (No one thinks that Mongols are Chinese.) That is the problem when creedal New World colonial nations cross-pollinate their civic nationalism into the old. They simply do not understand that a nation is more than a mere economic zone of free association.

For the British, they still haven't gotten over William the Conquerer (the difference between the posh and chav class distinctions in England is largely how much francophonian loanwords each uses). Anyone else is an outsider to this culture-struggle. Their cosmopolitan rootlessness precludes them from partaking of a nation's blood and soil, of which nearly all Old World states are in their essence.

I can confidently say that if outsiders moved in and learned and spoke Chinese and did so for a thousand years, they would still be foreigners.

I'm pretty sure nobody can tell Manchus apart from Han anymore without looking at the ethnicity listed on their ID, and they were assimilated less than 300 years ago.

I remember an incident from a Chinese culture class in college, where the professor was Han, and talking about how Han are the majority... then asked a Chinese student, assuming he was also Han. Surprise: he was actually Manchu. Unless there was some subtle unstated communication going on that I missed, I'd call that at least one thorough assimilation.

I've heard (anecdotally) that the Manchus are still something of an upper class in China, sort of like the Normans in England.

I am Chinese in origin, and I can confidently say that if outsiders moved in and learned and spoke Chinese and did so for a thousand years, they would still be foreigners. (No one thinks that Mongols are Chinese.)

Yes but no one thinks the Mongols immigrated "recently".

The point here is that it's not people saying "we don't like foreigners" but rather criticizing policies that are not 20 years old.

You say context matters and then proceed to ignore the context that this is a discussion of immigration to Britain and that "recent' in this context is a lot longer than you seem to assume.

Recent for a tiny sliver of Anglo ethnats, perhaps. 99% of the British public certainly don’t consider the Normans or Saxons ‘recent immigrants’. They don’t even consider the royal family recent immigrants lol.

When it comes to women being able to open a bank account on their own, 1974 is 'shockingly recent'.

Recency is contingent on the subject.

There is a certain kind of young man who finds Taylor swift incredibly annoying. I’m not certain why, exactly- she seems not appreciably more annoying than other pop stars of similar ilk, at least- but it is a thing. And both of these involved young men.

I think it's because she seems to have her own gravitational pull that swallows everything in her immediate surroundings. There was a minor controversy this year in the US where it seemed like there was more more interest in her dating Travis Kelce than anything related to the Super Bowl. And it has whiffs of the ongoing 'female encroachment into male hobbies/interests' dispute.

I don't watch sports generally and have little interest in the Bowls, so I don't know how much there is to that. But it kinda appeared that way to me looking at passing headlines around that time.

There is also a very obnoxious subset of her fanbase that can't seem to stop gushing over her and will heatedly defend her honor at the mere suggestion that she's overexposed, and this includes women in their 30s and 40s. But eh... fanbases are fanbases.

Personally, I just don't see the talent matching the success. I think artists like Lady Gaga and Madonna in her prime had more to them, where I could understand their popularity. Swift is a big gray zone in my mind where I can only recall 'Shake it Off'? But at my age and level of disconnect from Pop music generally, that take might as well hold as much weight as my deceased grandfather's.

There is a certain kind of young man who finds Taylor swift incredibly annoying. I’m not certain why, exactly- she seems not appreciably more annoying than other pop stars of similar ilk, at least- but it is a thing. And both of these involved young men.

Topically enough, five years ago I wrote a post on Taylor Swift's Awokening in the Culture War thread. I think it was one of the last AAQCs I got before becoming a moderator.

Truth be told, I still enjoy most of her music.

Taylor Swift is basically the queen of white girls, so frustrations towards white girls get channeled into her.

I think it’s the herd mentality that’s annoying. She is popular to woman A because women B and C like her.

I remember the sane thing was true with Beyoncé about a decade ago.

She’s is to white women what The Beatles are to redditors/college freshmen men.

Imagine no religion

Its easy if you try

Wow poetry.

Ironic to mention the Beatles given how Beatlemania was driven by young white women too

Not a Beatles song though

It is however a Beatle song.

She's a typically annoying Democrat lipstick feminist and pretty much a grifter with rather effective cash-grabbing methods. I'd say her huge popularity among single women of her age (mostly) largely stems from her singing about a lived experience they can strongly relate to, namely serial monogamy, which I'd define as promiscuity as preferred by women (as opposed to harem-building and plate-spinning, which is promiscuity as preferred by men). This surely makes her annoying to many young men.

In Islam and Hasidim, women can’t sing in public to others. This to me is the real misogyny. Misogyny isn’t telling women to fulfill their biological duty, misogyny is restricting them from fulfilling it. Singing is a biological duty, it is social and sexual expression. This could have something to do with the attacks as an Ariana Grande concert was also targeted.

it is social and sexual expression

Exactly.

The thing about Islam is that it's a religion from a place that has basically zero natural resources; it's starting from a condition of overpopulation and permanent, complete dependence on resource-gatherers (i.e. men) with very little to invest in industry or other secondary development (men extract, women refine, but refining can't happen without extraction, they have no way to increase extraction, and are barely extracting enough as-is).

Thus women in that religion remain a mere resource to be managed and controlled; time and resources spent on their desires and flourishing is in that context a deadweight loss. And because this has been the default state for all but the most recent ~15 generations of humankind (for Europeans and their Consequential Industrial Revolutions, less than that or even 0 for other parts of the world), this default state is baked into male biology and requires some effort to overcome (and note that it's only "misogyny" if the surrounding society is advanced enough to make running on pure biology maladaptive; everywhere else just calls that "normal gender relations").

Religions that have their genesis in lands of material plenty without relative overpopulation tend to be able to cope with women able to act as men through technological advancement much better. Islam succeeds when areas become more populated and less technologically advanced, which is probably why the European elite (who uniquely have technological devolution as a core tenet of their own religion- their desire to murder their fellow citizens and otherwise degrade their standard of living is universal) get along with them so easily.

I followed you up until the point you lost me. Islam as a religion-as-meme uniquely suited to areas with low resources makes intuitive sense to me.

However, the meme might break down a bit once you look at the oil-producing gulf states awash in plenty. Maybe their inclinations towards religious extremism is toned down by the generous state handouts.

And finally, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to call the European elite technological devolutionists, but saying they have a desire to murder their fellow citizens and otherwise degrade their standard of living is probably pushing it. I think it's altogether more insidious; it's vibes. They are bound to a vision of technological devolution because they're attracted to a future where they can recreate classical paintings of bountiful farmlands of plenty, vs the banlieues and urban hellholes of depreciated industry, it's an aesthetic and a fad. They'll loop back to something else just as insane in a few decades. They don't want to murder their fellow citizens, they don't even think of them as fellow citizens. I fall on the side of believing their misery happens entirely as a side effect of the European elite's quest for vibes, not out of any active desire to see them suffer. The elephant doesn't consider the ants it crushes.

However, the meme might break down a bit once you look at the oil-producing gulf states awash in plenty. Maybe their inclinations towards religious extremism is toned down by the generous state handouts.

The Gulf states not being awash in oil money is still in living memory in those places- they have liberalized a bit, but they're going to need more time. Countries that did technically speedrun those changes (thinking mostly of the Asian ones) still took a hundred-ish years to see major changes and their culture didn't start in the desert.

They don't want to murder their fellow citizens, they don't even think of them as fellow citizens

But they still do want to murder them, proof upthread. Also, that's pretty funny, considering the elites' entire problem with the riots is that the natives pretty clearly don't see the new imports as "fellow citizens". But then again, citizenship is for subjects.

Enh, he was a former councilor and he was arrested. A proper elite wouldn't have been arrested. This is a clown playing to his audience misreading the audience a bit. If this man was anywhere close to elite, he would have actually murdered his fellow citizens if the urge struck, and gotten away with it.

Until the industrial revolution everyone in the long run was either (1) in a Malthusian trap, (2) had a lot of war, or (3) had a lot of disease. Before sustained economic growth and birth control, something bad was always the check on population growth.

But the same is true of almost all other cultures. Even China had pretty strong control over women (look up foot binding) and most of the rest of us have long since ditched those controls. Some of the results are obviously good — women can contribute to earning money for the household, they can make and sell art, and aren’t restricted in communication with the rest of society. And some are quite obviously bad— children essentially raised as daycare orphans, single mothers, the denigration of the military as it must loosen necessary requirements to accommodate women who aren’t and cannot meet the standards, the growth of welfare state benefits out of proportion to the growth of the tax revenue collected, safetyism.

I thought foot binding was a largely upper-class phenomenon as a result of a Versailles-esque status-game gone bonkers, which then spread among the general population?

Same reason people hated on Twilight and most boy bands and hell, things like Transformers for that matter.

Some people just like to hate on the popular thing and some tend to find enthusiastic teenage girl squeeing particularly annoying.

She’s more or less a hack. Her music is generic pop with lyrics that say nothing interesting. It’s what I would imagine would come out the other end if I asked AI to write a breakup song. Her dancing isn’t anything spectacular either. To me she’s sort of corporate pop music that I don’t like. I want music that has something to say, I want music that’s interesting in some way.

I think there's an element of old high-school social dynamics that she brings to the 'adult' world,

She's the popular girl with who is mildly talented but is also pretty and somewhat charismatic. And so the mere fact of her being popular means all the girls like her (or wish they could be her) and thus she can do no wrong even if her behavior is actually toxic in many ways.

Guys who didn't function well in the high school social environment probably have a reflexive dislike to seeing this dynamic recreated. I know I feel a bit of that when I hear about her dating the Football star who could have any girl he wants.

(I don't hold this theory strongly as I try not to have strong opinions on Taylor Swift)

Ah, so you're saying she's cheer captain and you're on the bleachers?

I kid. But there is this feeling I get from Swift where she's a massively popular and famous artist, but tailors (heh) her music to this sort of disaffected, underdog-feeling woman who's actually, if she could evaluate her life honestly, doing just fine in the world. It's the constant insecurity-feeding of it I don't like.

And it's that she's the most famous female singer in the world who sings normie songs about normie problems, but releases albums with titles like "The Tortured Poets Department" like she's some sort of radical high artist crafting poetry from Reading Gaol.

I still don't get the "not like other girls" meme, but insofar as I get it, it's that there's a huge cadre of young women who think they're different and creative and original and unique, but are actually just extremely conventional in an environment where bohemianism is conventional (and may God save us). That's what annoys me about Taylor Swift.

My girlfriend is one of the only women I know who doesn't like Taylor Swift -- but I think in part that's because she likes real country, and sees Swift as one of the pop-country sellouts who helped destroy country music. The coal miner's daughter can sing about being the underdog, the pretty girl born of stockbrokers can keep her fantasies of being downtrodden to herself.

she's cheer captain and you're on the bleachers?

Jesus, that is a Swift song, isn't it.

But yeah, she sells songs about emotional turmoil resulting from, bluntly, questionable decisions in life from the position of somebody who has never had to actually suffer any real traumas that I know of. This doesn't invalidate her art, but you do wonder how a normal person actually identifies with her.

I admit I like the music video, but the Song about a toxic falling-out with an old friend seems like one of the most female-coded passive aggressive screeds with the least constructive message imaginable. "Some unstated bad thing has occurred, and now we are sworn enemies for life, also I hate you."

EDIT: Wait, I forgot that she surpassed that one a couple years later, with an even MORE passive-aggressive screed with even LESS clear motivation.

Compare that to, say N'Sync's classic Bye Bye Bye (also a neat music video) which is also about the termination of an established relationship which it carries with it pangs of regret but stating a clear determination to end things because it is necessary for one's own well-being, and desiring to make it as clean a break as possible. Undertones of desire for vengeance and bubbling spite are nowhere to be found.

And it's that she's the most famous female singer in the world who sings normie songs about normie problems, but releases albums with titles like "The Tortured Poets Department" like she's some sort of radical high artist crafting poetry from Reading Gaol.

I'm laughing because I was driving home from work this week thinking about how "The Tortured Poets Department" sounds like it would be some high-concept, lyrically complex compilation of musical artists digging deep into their soul to perform their most profound songs with serious emotional weight.

But from what I gather, its a collection of the most privileged-white-girl laments possible set to basic guitar and piano melodies. And even the fans have it rated as her worst album overall.

But yeah, she sells songs about emotional turmoil resulting from, bluntly, questionable decisions in life from the position of somebody who has never had to actually suffer any real traumas that I know of. This doesn't invalidate her art, but you do wonder how a normal person actually identifies with her.

Sounds like a good description of many of those who can afford a ticket to her concerts, honestly.

I'm laughing because I was driving home from work this week thinking about how "The Tortured Poets Department" sounds like it would be some high-concept, lyrically complex compilation of musical artists digging deep into their soul to perform their most profound songs with serious emotional weight.

But from what I gather, its a collection of the most privileged-white-girl laments possible set to basic guitar and piano melodies. And even the fans have it rated as her worst album overall.

Just to repeat another comment though, this is an ironically titled album and a clearly ironic lyric when read/heard in context.

The lyric (and the song specifically) is semi-ironic. There is something self-effacing about it, but it’s more of a mockery of her ex than it is her laughing at herself. ‘Look at the ridiculous characters you made us into’ is the message, it’s a diss track more than anything else.

And it's that she's the most famous female singer in the world who sings normie songs about normie problems, but releases albums with titles like "The Tortured Poets Department" like she's some sort of radical high artist crafting poetry from Reading Gaol.

I hate to defend someone who needs no defending but that title is purely ironic if you listen to the lyrics. It's about not being some tortured poet but a modern idiot.

if you listen to the lyrics

Well see there's the issue. I won't listen to the lyrics, so any irony is quite literally lost on me.

But I'll take your word for it.

pop-country sellouts who helped destroy country music.

Pop country had already destroyed "real" country music either 10 years ago, 20 years ago, or hell, 30 years ago depending on what generation you are. Unless your girlfriend's into some real obscure alt-country honkytonk sort of stuff, whatever she considered real country that might've been playing on the radio in 1995, 2003, or whenever she was younger was considered as 'ruining' country music by the next generation up.

I'm old enough to remember Garth Brooks being seen as the Taylor Swift of his time by country music fans.

That’s fair, I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the discourse surrounding country music and I was just speculating why she might not like Taylor Swift. When she sends me music she likes it’s usually… well, “honkytonk alt-country” probably isn’t the right word, but there are a lot of old hymns, though I think she enjoyed 90s country even if she thinks more classic folk music is better. I think the point for her is music that actually engaged with the problems faced by rural people, not stuff that tries to appeal to an urban (and by this I don’t mean ‘black’) audience or is just degenerate stuff about fucking a truck with a bottle of Coors Lite. On Swift, all she’s actually said is that she doesn’t like her.

Your comment made me curious though, so I asked her. She said she really doesn’t like her music, to the point where she would turn the radio dial if one of her songs came on. She said she’s found a lot of women will ask her if she likes Taylor Swift as an icebreaker, but she has no clue what interests them. So who knows.

She is also the most emotionally and interpersonally-stable person I’ve ever dated, so… I guess people can make of that what they will. But keep in mind this is someone whose favorite directors are Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese. She’s weird. I love her so much.

I'd actually probably agree with her on which sort of country music is better, but unfortunately, the market has spoken on this.

While it's probably just semantics, I'd also wouldn't say the shift is so much to going after an urban audience, but rather a more upscale exurban/suburban audience - instead of the more downscale working class audience (which has drifted to rap/hip-hop no matter their race), modern country music is aimed the type of guy who can buy the fully kitted out Ford F150 to drive to his car dealership job and maybe out to a lake cabin he rented, but never actually hauls anything or the woman who posts on Instagram about Jesus, but also had a fun time at college and so on. But in some ways, it's just the inevitable end of the fall of rock music (as there's lots of big songwriters in Nashville today that used to work in Los Angeles in the 80's) + the southernization of all of rural/exurban America, which made the culture of country music more available, but also flatter.

For all the talk of safety in art, the 'safest' genre as far as being afraid to offend anybody is absolutely modern country music.

It's fine to not like her, but Taylor Swift was not the first of her type, she was just the most successful by a giant margin.

Eh, there's plenty of poor/working class whites who like country music, either pop country or 'red dirt'(or more commonly, a mix thereof), although alty stuff is mostly for the $12/beer at live music venues crowd. Pop country sells better because teenaged girls fantasizing about dating a cowboy will spend more money than construction workers feeding their work radio.

Like, John Baumann and Uncle Lucius have 0% appeal outside of the 'excuse me, I work for a living' crowd. Really successful artists can usually crossover their appeal somehow, because plumbers and builders and the like will not spend money on music they don't have to.

I'll die on the hill that Red is actually just a great album. All Too Well (the original, not the far-too-indulgent 10 minute remix from later) remains a very good song, probably the best she's made.

Yes, young men. You might even call them “youths”. But I suspect there’s considerable variability in the amount of annoyance perceived by this broad demographic

Youths means all young men of every skin color so that you think of white chavs whenever the media reports on the poor behavior of them. When the whites do bad things the media will aggressively call them right wing whites, so as to protect the precious brown migrants from every bad thing. I am 100% certain the plastering of Ricky Jones name everywhere is because that name sounds ostensibly white so the media gets to continue pretending their precious browns are not actually doing anything wrong.

I am 100% certain the plastering of Ricky Jones name everywhere is because that name sounds ostensibly white

Like the US, the UK has plenty of black people of ADOS descent (atm machine etc), in this case from the Caribbean, who have names of the ‘John Smith’ variety.

plastering of Ricky Jones name everywhere is because that name sounds ostensibly white

As a small counterexample, that name feels similar enough to "Mickey Smith" that it makes me picture Noel Clarke.

And his alternate universe name was Ricky.

Yes, there is a variance, but there’s plenty of young white men who find her annoying too.

Again, the median male opinion on Taylor swift is ‘generic female pop star with bigger tits than talent #5000’. But there are some who find her incredibly irritating and hate on her. Not surprised that young men intending to commit mass violence for whatever reason has an overrepresentation of this group.

Why would you counterprotest a protest against the knifing of schoolgirls? Well, apparently the original protests were racist.

Really? You can't think of any other reason why the counterprotestors might have felt the need to counterprotest?

Saying that there were counterprotests against the knifing of schoolgirls is an extremely disingenuous interpretation of events. The counterprotests were against violence by far-right mobs. These groups pointed to a bad thing that happened, made some mostly vibes-based links to their pet issue, and then committed extreme acts violence about their pet issue claiming justification from the bad thing. Saying that opposing these group is supporting the bad thing is extremely sloppy. I think someone helping run a website with a goal of helping people move past shady thinking should hold themselves to a higher standard.

Really? You can't think of any other reason why the counterprotestors might have felt the need to counterprotest?

The headline I linked on that question was "‘More of us than you’: Thousands of anti-racism protesters turn out to counter far-right rallies in UK." It glosses the inciting event as follows:

After days of violence spurred by disinformation around a deadly stabbing attack, police had braced for another night of unrest on Wednesday.

I personally heard about the counterprotests before I heard anything about the actual stabbing; as far as I can tell, the counterprotests were well underway before the arson attempt, and certainly before the apparent traffic checkpoints (of which I had read nothing until your post). And the links I shared did include mention of the attempted arson. Yes, I condemn the burning down of buildings--but then, I've always condemned the burning down of buildings, even when I was being told it's a totally reasonable and proportionate response. But that isn't what my post was about:

Saying that opposing these group is supporting the bad thing is extremely sloppy.

Did you watch the video of Ricky Jones calling to "slit their throats," and the crowd behind him cheering that on? The counterprotesters in that case were clearly and vocally supporting more of exactly the bad activity I was complaining about, right there in the video.

My chosen rhetorical approach here was to bring forward the salient things I felt the news media was glossing over (the murders of the children). Now, I can understand why you would prefer that I make the counterprotests seem more sympathetic, but my rhetorical framing is that I was, and am, amazed at how quickly the actual child murders were buried under a shit-ton of reporting along the lines of "whose 'mostly peaceful' protests produce the most shocking and abhorrent extremes?" That's one of the reasons I chose to focus on Ricky's commentary: because it was so salient, given the nature of the inciting incident.

You can't credibly accuse me of being sloppy when I provide direct video evidence of precisely the thing you're suggesting isn't happening, actually happening.

I think the world would be a better place if people on all sides were more careful to bring forward all salient points and not just the ones that are most useful.

Your post had this:

The events, allegedly in part as the result of some false reporting concerning Axel's identity, led to a number of protests, which led to a number of counterprotests.

Immediately followed by this

Why would you counterprotest a protest against the knifing of schoolgirls?

This is an extremely sloppy way to write if you were just talking about the specific people in your video instead of representative counterprotestors. Furthermore, if you were just talking about the video evidence/Ricky Jones instead of representative counterprotestors, then you were just doing boo-outgroup nut-picking!

I didn't even mention this utterly absurd interpretation of how to think issues of causality with respect policy making since other commentators discussed it lower down:

I suppose, that people would rather talk about that, than about the dead schoolchildren who, but for recent immigration from Africa, would likely still be alive.

Think about the children indeed!

  • -11

This is an extremely sloppy way to write if you were just talking about the specific people in your video instead of representative counterprotestors.

The people in the video were the counterprotesters. Do you think a different group of counterprotesters would not have cheered Ricky's bloodthirsty comments?

you were just doing boo-outgroup nut-picking!

Which outgroup? You seem to be confused about the rule concerning specific versus general groups. I did not post about "the alt right" or "Democrats" or "Republicans" or "women" or "men" or "Catholics" or "Jews" or "the blue tribe" or whatever. The only groups substantially addressed in my post were protesters and counterprotesters, specifically those reacting to the murders and those reacting to the reacting. What I claimed about the counterprotesters was true and backed with direct evidence: they were cheering on a call for slitting people's throats, which I found ironic given that the protesters had been incited by knife crime. You're the one dragging the conversation (annoyingly and unnecessarily) into the meta.

Now, if Ricky had said what he said and no one cheered, then sure, your accusation of "nutpicking" might have something to it. But it doesn't, because I didn't share a video of one fringe loon saying loony stuff and then say "Leftists are all like this" or something. I'll repeat it, because it's worth repeating:

The video I shared was of counterprotesters cheering for more murder by knife.

That's what you apparently feel the need to defend. Is this because you agree with the bloodthirsty counterprotesters? Is this an "arguments are soldiers" thing where, because you share some of their politics, you feel the need to defend them and/or paint my criticism of them uncharitably?

Think about the children indeed!

Concern for the safety and well-being of children should not be such an overriding value as to trample other important interests. And yet it would be a grave overcorrection to instead disregard the safety and well-being of children, surely?

Do you think a different group of counterprotesters would not have cheered Ricky's bloodthirsty comments?

Of course? This is the entire issue---why do you implicitly believe that the videos and articles you shared are representative of all counterprotestors? Just to hammer this home

The video I shared was of counterprotesters cheering for more murder by knife.

The video you shared was of some counterprotestors cheering for more murder by knife.

That's what you apparently feel the need to defend. Is this because you agree with the bloodthirsty counterprotesters? Is this an "arguments are soldiers" thing where, because you share some of their politics, you feel the need to defend them and/or paint my criticism of them uncharitably?

...and I am completely baffled how you are at all reading that I'm defending this. Again, homogenizing your ideological opponents in this way is absurdly sloppy. Seriously, have you not considered that its as invalid to think of "counterprotestors" as one unified group as it is for the other examples you listed?

Do you think a different group of counterprotesters would not have cheered Ricky's bloodthirsty comments?

Of course?

Why would you believe that? Do you have videos of other counterprotesters listening to Ricky's comments live, and not cheering?

why do you implicitly believe that the videos and articles you shared are representative of all counterprotestors?

Because that is the evidence available to me.

The video you shared was of some counterprotestors cheering for more murder by knife.

Indeed! I do not have a video of every single counterprotester doing anything, because they weren't even all in the same place. But the rule is "Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible." Not "Don't post about any groups."

I wonder, if I asked you what Catholics believe, whether you would tell me something about the holy trinity, or whether you would respond, "how should I know, I haven't got time to ask every single one of them!" If you think I should speak only and ever of highly specific individuals, and never of groups of any kind, like... too bad? And if you think that it is somehow a violation of the relevant rule to ever speak of groups of any kind, then you should read the rule more carefully. Either you have developed an extremely idiosyncratic view on generalization, or you are being deliberately obtuse in furtherance of whatever end it is you think you are pursuing by doggedly insisting on the badness of my post.

Of course I am speaking somewhat generally when I say "counterprotesters." Maybe some of them would not cheer on additional knife crime. But the ones in the video didn't hesitate to cheer at all, so far as I could tell. So clearly, those are the counterprotesters I'm talking about: all the counterprotesters who cheered, along with any others who would have cheered, had they been present. Those who did not or would not cheer, clearly are exempt from my criticism; the criteria of the criticism do not apply to them. But I have no evidence that any such counterprotesters exist.

...and I am completely baffled how you are at all reading that I'm defending this.

I honestly can't think of any other reason why you would continue to level spurious, inaccurate, and just generally bad criticisms at my post.

Seriously, have you not considered that its as invalid to think of "counterprotestors" as one unified group as it is for the other examples you listed?

I have considered it. It is not invalid, or sloppy, or whatever else you continue to insist about it. You're just wrong, repeatedly, and weirdly committed to staying that way. If it's not because you feel some affinity for the counterprotesters, then the most charitable alternative explanations I can think of are sufficiently unkind that I won't speculate further on their likelihood.

Why would you believe that? Do you have videos of other counterprotesters listening to Ricky's comments live, and not cheering?

Are you seriously saying that your default assumption is to assume that counterprotestors would cheer the comments if they heard them? That seems ridiculous---that's such a strange thing to believe a human would do without something marking them as really unusual (and no, being leftist and/or "woke is nowhere near enough except if you're hopelessly partisan)

How in the world is your prior this absurdly cynical? Is this the way you reason about all your ideological opponents?

Are you seriously saying that your default assumption is to assume that counterprotestors would cheer the comments if they heard them?

No. I'm saying that the counterprotesters who were there for the comments, cheered the comments.

I don't see any reason to engage you on what you imagine some hypothetical group of counterprotesters would or would not do. My post was primarily concerned with what the actual counterprotesters in the actual video did. Why do you keep trying to talk about imaginary things, instead of engaging with the factual events as actually depicted in the evidence? It takes no cynicism at all to notice the crowd of counterprotesters cheering on the incitement to "slit their throats."

You've moved the goalposts far enough now that it seems clear you've conceded that your original criticism was baseless.

More comments

The counterprotestors were waving Palestine flags and stomping on random white people. Protecting yourself is one thing, claiming allegiance to a community not on your own territory (either Pakistan or UK) just shows how the divide cleaves.

Arguably the disingenuity happened a step further up already. How is it fair to describe the protests as being "against the knifing of schoolgirls"? Were the protesters asking someone to please knife fewer schoolgirls?

Conflating actions against X with actions against some Y which the actor holds to be correlated with X is one of the most basic dirty political tricks. This is what gets you "How can you be against (surveillance law)? Are you against fighting child pornographers?", or the same with police abolition and killing non-violent black druggies.

I concur that this is a pretty bad look from a moderator, and would really like the mods to look past the +44 upvotes and fawning u-go-girl responses and consider that this sort of thing is enabling/deepening bad tendencies in the community.

How is it fair to describe the protests as being "against the knifing of schoolgirls"?

Because the protests were against the knifing of schoolgirls and the policies that have enabled a decades-long campaign of mass knifing/rape/bombing/truck massacres of schoolgirls?

I don't understand how this is even a question if you can accept that the Floyd riots were "being against police brutality"

Where did I indicate that I accept the Floyd riots as being "against police brutality"? I don't, and I accept maybe a small sliver of the protesters as protesting against it (many more of the peaceful ones being protesters for lower policing standards against black people, drug users, or general).

I concur that this is a pretty bad look from a moderator, and would really like the mods to look past the +44 upvotes and fawning u-go-girl responses and consider that this sort of thing is enabling/deepening bad tendencies in the community.

Obligatory low heat take drop that moderators not using the mod hat are allowed to make low quality posts. We are moderated by men, not gods.

Mid-quality, perhaps. I think it gets iffy when they make posts that would be more than, say, 30% likely to get a modhat warning if they came from the wrong political alignment and were not made by a mod, because I don't think mods do (or can really be expected to do) issue modhat warnings to fellow mod.

the dead schoolchildren who, but for recent immigration from Africa, would likely still be alive.

Speak plainly.

This is true only in some trivial butterfly effect sense that is beneath notice, if you mean some deeper theory about it say it out loud.

Quite literally, this guy would not have knifed a Taylor swift themed dance party if he’d been in Rwanda.

Yes but this takes the same form as many other protests that rely on terrible logic, and can be rejected out of hand.

[Black guy of the week] wouldn't have been killed by the cops if we didn't have cops.

[Schoolchildren at whatever mass shooting] wouldn't be dead if civilians didn't have access to semiautomatic weapons.

Further

people would rather talk about that, than about the dead schoolchildren

Why would you rather talk about gun rights than dead school children?

Why would you rather talk about property damage than dead black people?

It's an absurdity. What are those against the riots supposed to do? Say, oh, yeah some kid went nuts, guess that means you're allowed to riot for some period of time!

I don't see how any of your examples show that the statement you complained about was only true in a trivial butterfly effect way. This isn't about an absurdly one-in-a-trillion event that you could plausibly say would be replaced by some other random tragedy if the immigration policy was different.

It's an absurdity. What are those against the riots supposed to do?

Say "riots bad, just do peaceful protests"? It's really not that hard, this is what the anti-BLM faction said originally, and was greeted with brilliant takes about how rioting is the language of the unheard.

How did that go for the anti BLM faction? Did that stop the rioting?

How is that argument about the butterfly effect going to stop the riots?

If you don't import Rwandans, there won't be Rwandan descended people that will stab British schoolgirls. If you don't import Pakistani you won't have thousand raped white girls in Rotherham.

Speak plainly.

Read charitably.

This is true only in some trivial butterfly effect sense that is beneath notice, if you mean some deeper theory about it say it out loud.

I disagree that it is true only in some "trivial butterfly effect sense." The children of recent immigrants are often targets for radicalization; indeed, crime rises among second-generation immigrants as they assimilate, though I've seen some recent (I suspect politically-motivated) attempts to muddy the waters on this.

I do not see anything racist about protesting against lax immigration standards when the inciting event was perpetrated by the child of recent immigrants. I find the counterprotesters in question exceptionally blameworthy.

I mentioned this above, but surely the parents aren't "recent" immigrants in nearly any sense of the word, right? Unless I have my timeline wrong they must have been in the country for at least 17 years, yes?

Given the finding that second-generation immigrant populations commit more crime than their first-gen parents did, shouldn't this actually be a warning sign - "if the current number of stabbings is bad based on 2000-level immigrant populations of [x], how bad is it going to be in 2044, when the current migrant populations of [5x-10x] turns over to a feisty second generation?"

Speaking as someone who is British I would consider someone a "recent" immigrant if their family has only lived in Britain for the past few hundred years. Once you're past the three hundred year mark I think you probably have some right to be called local.

Even if you sincerely hold this view, surely you understand why it looks like disingenuous special pleading to nearly everyone else?

The line "huh, they're English the second they sneak in on a truck, but I'm still a Colonizer living on Stolen Land after 300 years?" has been going around. So any disingenuousness goes both ways.

I'd be willing to bet money that if you did a textual analysis of every use of the word "recent" as used by British people you'd find that easily 95% of the use of the word is used for lengths of time less than 10 years. Probably more. Challenge: can you even find a single example of the word being used, in a politics-adjacent way, to mean 20 years or more? I honestly don't think you can, not without breaking out the history books. The modern debate is one with the context of politics, not history. While I realize "history" is an extremely slippery term, there's a reason we don't really start to use it until the 20-30 year mark. The distinction? If I had to take a stab at it, I'd say "politics" is implicitly something you can do something about, and history is not (and history is also something you need a little distance from to gain greater benefits of hindsight as well as some extra objectivity). Although anecdotally that window seems to be narrowing (I've seen some "historical"-oriented analysis of events as recent as 15 years ago).


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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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