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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31658 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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Sam Brinton Warrant Issued—Biden Official Accused of Stealing Luggage Again

A felony arrest warrant has been issued for Brinton, who is non-binary, after accusations they stole luggage from the Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas TV station KLAS reported.

The charge is for grand larceny with a value between $1,200 and $5,000, the warrant states.

Grand larceny is a category B felony in Nevada and punishable by one to 10 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000.

So I think it's safe to say I believe that that Tweet thread that accused him of having a continually escalating fetish was right. IIRC there was some criticism of the Tweeter's objectivity and credentials, but I guess even a broken clock..

I suppose my reaction could be called bigoted but I'm not surprised by this, nor was I surprised by the initial charges or even the claims that he was playing out a sexual fetish. In fact, I found it highly more plausible than the alternative given his bizarre behavior and reported lies when confronted.

Taken as a whole, I am more likely to distrust someone who shows such suspect behavior while also apparently being hellbent on signaling deviancy. Not a good combination.

EDIT: Strong language edit.

This story's continued popularity seems to be a combination of "man bites dog" (and it is funny), and specifically claims that "wokeness" degrades the quality of government, and that LGBT people are weird fetishists. From twitter, searching "Brinton": "Raise your hand if you knew Sam Brinton was mentally ill before any luggage was stolen", Re. Sam Brinton, let's call it what it is: a person clearly unfit for a high-level national security role was hired because the Admin prioritizes wokeness over competence. (not cherrypicked, those and paraphrases of them were the top results). While Brinton is being retarded, taking this as something bad about 'wokeness' or 'lgbts' is about as bad as taking every base-rate sex crime by a republican as evidence for pedocon theory. There are many LGBTs in the government, at least a dozen of which have been in the R news cycle in the past few years. Many casual politics observers hear these random events and say "wow, those libs are fucked up, man" - all that does is confuse one and make it harder to pick out serious trends. And people with power having strange proclivities isn't new. (and as usual, this isn't a point about how LGBTS are good and all evidence against them is BAD, but a point about good and bad evidence for broad political points)

edit: removed jinx doublepost of LGBTQnation article

There are many LGBTs in the government, at least a dozen of which have been in the R news cycle in the past few years.

Well, there is a difference between LGBT government person who looks like this and LGBT government person who looks like this.

It may be unfair, but if Second Person is accused of stealing women's suitcases, it is going to be treated as "look at that weirdo, this is exactly what you'd expect". If you dress like Gen Z Joker, expect to be treated like the Joker.

Old-school LGBT versus new era LGBT in one photo.

For wokeness, it says something bad because even if there aren't many woke women's clothing thieves, there are many woke people who support the standards that enable the women's clothing thieves.

It's still a single event - and if its about 'wokeness' and not specifically trans people, wokeness or AA has put hundreds of gay/lesbian and BIPOC/female/minorities in the 'government' construed broadly, so it isn't surprising one of them does something wrong.

Again my argument isn't 'wokeness good', just that 'random person commits random society norm break' isn't great evidence

wokeness or AA has put hundreds of gay/lesbian and BIPOC/female/minorities in the 'government' construed broadly

I think this can happen to various degrees. Someone like this getting a position is more attributable to wokeness than someone who's gay but dresses normally and isn't a public advocate.

I believe the answer to that theory is that there are far, far fewer LGBT people than there are conservative republicans, and probably fewer than there are actual factual far right, so LGBT being common in stories about government workers doing weird shit says more than it does when conservative republicans commit sex crimes.

There's probably a good answer here in crime statistics, and I wouldn't be surprised if LGBTs have a 50% higher rate of petty theft than non-LBGBT, although 30% lower rate wouldn't be surprising either, probably all sorts of confounders. But news stories about individual actions of e.g. politicians are so heavily selected for interestingness that drawing conclusions about general LGBT weirdness is a mistake! It's much better to draw conclusions on LGBT weirdness from e.g. /r/transgender or something, as rdrama.net does.

Now then, if Hallock had been caught stealing women's luggage (twice), would it be as popular in the news? I think it would be close, but I can't confirm that

I don't think it would be? There are hundreds of deputary assistant undersecretaries, and at least one of them will have committed some wacky crime statistically, but I haven't heard of it. We heard about Sam not just because they were trans, but because Sam had media interest before the thefts both for being a brave LGBT person on govt from the center-left and for being a biden nominee while looking like that from the right.

Just how broad or narrow are we talking before we can generalize at all

"generalizing" is fine because lots of people have things in common, e.g. jews having high IQ. But it's better to grasp that jews have high IQ by reading a list of nobel prize winners or a page on the history of mathematics or physics, instead of because a few "smart" talk show hosts are jewish. I'm not saying "dont make negative generalizations that is bigoted".

Would you be more agreeable if instead of using Brinton as a sledgehammer on "LGBT writ large," it was narrowed down to, say, "public advocates of dehumanizing kinks"?

no because it's still dumb, there are millions of people who like disgusting kinks, you can read about thousands of them online. more here.

All sorts of things that are bad ideas aren't new; not sure of the point here.

Such proclivities (compare to random politicians doing sex crimes) were still common before trans people were appointed to offices, or even before gay marriage was allowed, or even before gay sex was legal, suggesting none of those are causative.

Would you be more agreeable if instead of using Brinton as a sledgehammer on "LGBT writ large," it was narrowed down to, say, "public advocates of dehumanizing kinks"?

no because it's still dumb, there are millions of people who like disgusting kinks, you can read about thousands of them online. more here.

I think the key phrase here is "public advocates of".

Most people who have kinks don't advocate them very publically, and even most of those don't look or dress any different from normal in professional situations.

Except the legalisation of gay sex didn't create gay people, the people who would now call themselves gay would have then called themselves straight, because it was illegal to do otherwise. Not that I think every gay person is a criminal or every criminal is gay, just that that is exceptionally poor reasoning.

and we would've heard about if it had happened

Do you think "Joe Smith, Deputy Assistant Undersecretary of HUD in a republican administration, stole a woman's purse" would end up on either CNN or Fox?

Yes. It would be a top story on CNN. The talking heads on the weekend shows would go on about how this showed the failure of the administration to properly vet its people.

J. Edgar Hoover is still remembered for crossdressing to this day and it may not even be true.

J. Edgar Hoover was also an absolute bipartisan titan of American politics and government in a way that I don't think anyone has been since, probably, Colon Powell? Maybe David Petraeus, but Petraeus went down fast when he got got. Nobody in government today will be remembered half as much as Hoover.

Hoover was well known for playing power politics with other government officials, including elected officials, and even hoarding blackmail on celebrities. He played rough, Lyndon Johnson's famous quote about "it's better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in" was about Hoover, and referred to Hoover's propensity towards attack politics against his enemies. The most powerful president in recent American history did not believe he could dislodge Hoover. Hoover's dirty tricks campaigns are legendary:

In 1956, Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by U.S. Supreme Court decisions that limited the Justice Department's ability to prosecute people for their political opinions, most notably communists. Some of his aides reported that he purposely exaggerated the threat of communism to "ensure financial and public support for the FBI."[59] At this time he formalized a covert "dirty tricks" program under the name COINTELPRO.[60] COINTELPRO was first used to disrupt the Communist Party USA, where Hoover ordered observation and pursuit of targets that ranged from suspected citizen spies to larger celebrity figures, such as Charlie Chaplin, whom he saw as spreading Communist Party propaganda.[61]

COINTELPRO's methods included infiltration, burglaries, setting up illegal wiretaps, planting forged documents, and spreading false rumors about key members of target organizations.[62] Some authors have charged that COINTELPRO methods also included inciting violence and arranging murders.[63][64]

This program remained in place until it was exposed to the public in 1971, after the burglary by a group of eight activists of many internal documents from an office in Media, Pennsylvania, whereupon COINTELPRO became the cause of some of the harshest criticism of Hoover and the FBI.

Another President, Truman, said:

...we want no Gestapo or secret police. The FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail. J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him.

Hoover was simply a much bigger deal than anyone in politics today will ever be.

Also, the cross-dressing in particular may or may not be true, but Hoover was absolutely a fag. He never married, and no one has any evidence of his heterosexuality, while even his friends go on the record about his homosexuality.

Some people associated with Hoover have supported the rumors about his homosexuality.[155] According to Anthony Summers, Hoover often frequented New York City's Stork Club. Luisa Stuart, a model who was 18 or 19 at the time, told Summers that she had seen Hoover holding hands with Tolson as they all rode in a limo uptown to the Cotton Club in 1936.[126]

Actress and singer Ethel Merman was a friend of Hoover's since 1938, and familiar with all parties during his alleged romance of Lela Rogers. In a 1978 interview and in response to Annita Bryant's anti-gay campaign, she said: "Some of my best friends are homosexual: Everybody knew about J. Edgar Hoover, but he was the best chief the FBI ever had."

It'd may have been more newsworthy in the past, but Hoover was in the public eye much much more than a deputy secretary of waste management or natural parks, and public distaste for things like that has declined al ot.

specifically claims that "wokeness" degrades the quality of government

Any ideology that prioritizes identity over competence is going to degrade the quality of what it does.

that LGBT people are weird fetishists.

No, not "all LBGT", just this one.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170708031332/http://www.metroweekly.com/2016/01/puppy-love-mid-atlantic-leather-2016/

and that LGBT people are weird fetishists

Very imprecise term, probably deliberately on the part of its creators.

The idea that the acronym represents some unified group (in terms of making predictions about fetishes and other psychological issues) is debatable, it's frankly debatable that even something more limited like "trans" can be narrowed down to one thing (see Blanchard's typology)

There are many LGBTs in the government, at least a dozen of which have been in the R news cycle in the past few years.

Case in point. Let's say I believe that men are just more prone to sex crimes. This tells me very little then since it may have just been a banner year for lesbians and trans-identified females.

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