This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
So the Bezos-Sanchez wedding took place, and by all accounts it was exactly as overblown, tacky, and vulgar as anyone's little heart could desire. I haven't watched any of it myself, so why am I mentioning it in the Culture War thread?
Well, because Tina Brown commented on it, and it's at least tangential because we've often discussed on here "what do women want/dating apps/men get the rough end of the stick in divorce/other such delightful War of the Sexes fodder".
I get the impression that Tina wasn't on the guest list so there may be an element of sour grapes here, but in general I think I agree. Jeff Bezos, fourth richest man in the world (depending on the day and the ranking) could have pretty much any woman in the world he wanted. So, who did he blow up his marriage for and before we get into the complaining about his wife taking him to the cleaners, it was he who caused the divorce (actually, divorces because his inamorata was also married at the time)?
The woman next door, a triumph of grinding determination to keep her figure through diet, exercise, and plastic surgery. She managed to find a classy wedding dress so kudos for that, as well as showing off the results of all that effort.
Back to Tina's commentary:
Ouch. But also, yes. What am I trying to say here? Mostly that the next time there's yet another post about reversing the fertility decline by putting obstacles in the way of women going to higher education, steering them to marrying early, and good old traditional 'the man is the head of the house and women should work to please their husband and that includes sex whenever and however he wants it', remember this. Male sexuality is a lot simpler than female sexuality. Jeff could have destroyed his marriage for a nubile twenty-something with naturally big assets, but he went for tawdry 'sexy' with the trout pout and plastic boobs (though once again, I have to salute her commitment to starving and exercising in order to keep a taut muscle tone). It's not much good to criticise women for being shallow in the dating market when the fruits of success are to dress like this and hook your own billionaire.
The true lesson here is to avoid the urge to extrapolate over hundreds of millions (billions?) of people from a single example!
Tina's commentary assumes that no one who lacks Sanchez's assets could have ended up with Bezos. What is the reason to suppose this? It is not as if his first wife, whom he was married to for 26 years, had this kind of appearance. Nor is it the case, so far as we know, that Bezos went through a bunch of similar looking affair partners before settling on Sanchez. As best I can find Sanchez is the woman he was unfaithful with that led to the end of his marriage. We could as well infer that Bezos would not have married anyone who was not a helicopter pilot, by the logic on display here. Going further, the fact that there are many other individuals who have these assets who (by assumption) would have been willing to date him suggests something further about Sanchez that she has and these others don't. This not to say Bezos doesn't like or enjoy Sanchez's appearance but it is far from clear it is either a necessary or sufficient condition for marrying him.
What is the reason to suppose Jeff Bezos' behavior and preferences are generalizable to all men? That Lauren Sanchez is generalizable to all women?
More options
Context Copy link
A thing: If Bezos is on a lot of gear it might be messing with his libido/sexuality.
A more likely thing: That woman is a turn on in more ways than just physical. Maybe smart, confident and sexually aggressive. On top of that she is probably motivated to keep her man.
To that extent it shouldn't be a wonder a 'feminist' of sorts wouldn't like her. Similar to how Amy Coney Barrett is disliked by many feminists, despite being a power feminist wet dream. Lauren Sanchez might just be a go-getter who doesn't care about what the patriarchy tells her and instead does what she wants.
It's kind of funny. Two women expose the lived experience of most feminists as kind of pathetic and their ire against the 'system' as rather fraudulent. Apparently some women can have it all. So why don't you?
I'd be interested in knowing if there is some feminist literature out there on this topic. Inequality between women is a subject usually broached through terms of class and race, but barring that, most of the stuff I can find reads more like a lot of cope. To take a maximally aggressive angle: Why should the women who win at life pay heed to the women who lose? And why should anyone take the advice of the women who are by comparison losers?
A part of the upheaval of Andrew Tate was the fact that he wasn't a 'loser' whilst doling out MGTOW/incel talking points. Does he have a female counterpart somewhere on the internet?
More options
Context Copy link
Perhaps the next rich, famous man will update his priors accordingly:
“What’s the reaction from women for dating a fresh, childless young woman in her late teens or twenties?”
“Seethe, rage, accusations of you being a groomer pedophile who’s exploiting power dynamics and taking advantage of someone whose brain hasn’t even developed yet because you can’t handle a woman your own age.”
“What’s the reaction from women for marrying a middle-aged divorce woman who’s already been around the block and had her fun?”
“Seethe, rage, accusations of you being a trashy, shallow, classless bimbo-fetishist who’s too insecure to handle an intellectual woman.”
“Well then…”
A driver of the hate is that she presents as younger than she is, possibly passing as a thotmaxxing woman in her mid-to-late 40s and maybe even pre-menopausal (at least from afar). Thus, she isn’t decrepit-looking enough and is younger-looking than Bezos “deserves.” If she looks like she still might have eggs, she’s too young for the seggs.
I suppose, in general, progressive hate is likely to result whenever, wherever there’s a successful white man enjoying himself—from other tech bosses like Zuckerberg and Musk (including pre-Trump associations) to athletes like Kelce and Bauer. Modern progressivism: The haunting fear that some white man, somewhere, might be happy without benefiting women, racial and sexual minorities.
Do you think Bezos didn't think of simply doing a Di Caprio, or was afraid of the backlash?
I've often heard an opinionoid about the idea of older guys dating 18 year olds that goes something like "there's nothing we can talk about after fucking", and while lately it does look like sour grapes/Havel's groceryism when it comes from older guys, there might be something to it. Of course, if it was revealed that Sanchez is actually not particularly good intellectual company, then I'd be at a loss.
The honest but misogynistic-sounding answer is "well that's why I have male friends, after all." Indeed, a guy who bags an stunning 18-22 year old will probably immediately text his best buds "BROOOOOOO!" since, you know, that itself is something worth crowing about for many men.
And hell, with most one-night-stands among people similar in age... what are you going to talk about, if the whole intention is not to see one another again?
Anyhow, not to derail, but it does seem best to model most complaints in this vein as intrasexual competition all the way down.
I suppose male friends can, in theory, account for all the interpersonal interaction a man needs while women solely provide the occasional intercorporeal fling. It seems, however, that many men desire more than their male friends can give, or are willing to give in the age where male friendship is notably less intimate in many aspects than it had been.
I wouldn't know, I've never had a one-night stand that I intended to never see again.
I think the main feature male friends can't provide is being the confidant of deep secrets and more purely emotional revelations from the inner reaches of your psyche. Intimacy, as you say.
For that, you want a partner that has some buy-in and is committed to sticking around for the long term and thus has a greater familiarity with your personal foibles and hangups and struggles, and has accepted you 'in spite' of those. i.e. they make you comfortable enough to be open.
So in that case yeah, you'd want somebody who is emotionally mature and a decent communicator, which would be rarer to find among 18-20 year olds.
But it also doesn't take too much experience to just let someone put their head in your lap and talk about their inner world while providing the occasional constructive response or affirmation, and remember enough of the details that they can build on it as you go.
That's interesting that you say that. I'm incredibly lucky to have some male friends where we have essentially no secrets (or close to it, at any rate). But I recognize that that's unusual and most friendships (regardless of gender composition) never get to that level.
There are a lot of blackpilled guys who feel like sharing secrets and being emotionally vulnerable is one of the things that they explicitly can't do with women, because any perceived display of weakness could cause her to lose attraction, even deep into a committed relationship. I'd like to tell them they're being overly cynical, but I also can't say that their fears are entirely baseless either.
I have some really good male friends too. They know a lot of things about me that could be used to destroy me if they wished. But I trust them to not.
And vice-versa.
But you see, what happened is they all got married and so acquired a partner that could serve that role better than I could.
Which has left me with not many options aside from finding a good therapist if I really want to unload. Although my brothers (as in, actual biological brothers) are still very good for commiseration.
Yep. And that's one hell of a tradeoff to make to achieve reproductive success. I'd want to have a partner who I could occasionally vent to with the understanding that I would always get back to work and make shit happen, but had the basic, I dunno, decency, to get that part of their role was to help take the edge off the stress every now and again so I can be the person they need me to be.
(also, from very direct experience, I have much less need to vent about emotions when I'm getting laid on the regular. Almost no issues feel overwhelming when that primal urge is satisfied)
I'd also gently point out that it was safer to do this when divorce laws weren't as lenient.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My guess is that he just fell in love with her. If he wanted to fuck 18 year olds he could have divorced his wife 20 years ago (or come to an arrangement, like Eric Schmidt, or done that classic rockstar / Larry Ellison / Henry VIII thing and just had a succession of younger wives). It seems more likely that he was relatively happy or at least comfortable in his marriage and was then seduced by Sanchez, who is no doubt a skilled and immensely ambitious operator, and then divorced his wife (likely at Sanchez’ request, and certainly as a consequence of her will given she gave her own texts to her brother who then sold them on to a tabloid) so he could marry her. There was no buffet of 20 year olds to pick from, it wasn’t like that, and the billionaires who do live that lifestyle are essentially plugged into the party circuit, big time nightclub promoters, model / escort agents and so on on the Cannes/Miami/LA/Mykonos circuit with which Bezos was not really familiar pre-Sanchez given he was a nerd who mainly attended sober economics conferences.
Mail order coeds are almost certainly available to one of the richest men in the world. No doubt he just preferred Sanchez for companionship.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Rod Stewart (age 80!) played Glastonbury this weekend with his customary troupe of sexy blonde model-looking backup singers/musicians in tight cocktail dresses. Out of curiosity I looked up who his wife is. A sexy blonde (age 54) who was a lingerie model when they started dating. His ex-wife? A sexy blonde model (for the same lingerie brand nonetheless). His ex-ex-wife? Another sexy blonde model. The ex gfs who were notable enough to make it into Stewart's Wikipedia entry? Sexy blonde models.
I don't care for Rod Stewart's music, I like his fashion sense even less. I'm not qualified to judge how physically attractive he is but at his peak he seems average at best? And yet whether it's by fair means or foul he's continually surrounded himself with sexy blonde models for more than 50 years.
I don't have a point, just adding supporting material. I'm not sure I get your point either. It can't just be "rich men like hot women", poor men do too! Rich men get hot women? Somebody has to, and if the choice is Man A, rich, or Man B, poor, it's understandable why a woman might pick the rich one.
Rich women exist too lest we forget, and according to the prevailing theory they don't care too much about underwear models and want to marry rich(er) men too. But rich men are already rich. What use does Bezos or Stewart have for a woman's riches? Woman A likes him because he's rich, Woman B likes him because he's rich. Looks like he'll turn to the tiebreaker.
And what of Mackenzie Scott's now 2nd ex husband? Where does he fit into this? Neither rich nor a model, but she divorced him after one year of marriage. Just #rebound things?
So weird, my boss told me this quote the other day but he thought it was from WC Fields.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I have to be careful to distinguish here between how much of my experience is idiosyncratic and how much of it can generalize, because I find the Sanchez woman to be rather repulsive, but evidently there are many men who do not.
If you listen to TRP/manosphere content, you'll frequently here them say "men have the biggest variety of preferences, men can fall in love with anything, but women only want one thing (and that thing is Chad)". This is one of their favorite talking points, they repeat it quite often. And women often react with incredulity when they hear this, and they claim that reality is in fact that exact opposite. "What? All men just want a 'hot' woman. But my hubby, he's got a bit of a potbelly and he isn't the tallest, but he's got a great smile and a heart of gold, so I love him all the same. Obviously women's preferences are more varied and less superficial."
I think the key to resolving the dilemma is that, although the secondary and tertiary traits can vary greatly, there are certain key traits that, if absent in a man, will make it very hard for a woman to be romantically attracted to him. As far as my observations can confirm anyway. Although, pinning down exactly what these traits are is a bit difficult. It's not stability per se, nor is it social dominance per se, nor is it social adeptness per se, but rather it's more like an abstract distilled commonality that forms a part of all these traits. We might call it "agency", or projecting a sense of "in-control-ness", if not over his external environment then at least over himself. If a man can't demonstrate at least a minimal amount of "put-together-ness", then he's not going to have much luck with women.
What the TRP guys are correctly intuiting is that men have no such minimal criteria. In spite of the fact that there are clear patterns, at the end of the day they really can go for absolutely anything. There's an active 4chan thread right now where guys are swapping stories about how much they love NEET girls. As in, "whoa, you're telling me she hasn't had a job since college, AND she never leaves her room, AND she has severe social anxiety? Now that's what I'm talkin' about, I want that". You'll have to take my word for it that they really are fetishizing the status of NEET-ness itself. And they can do this with anything, rich or poor women, fat or skinny, smart or dumb, socially successful or an anxious wreck, it don't matter. Could you imagine any woman saying "you know I really just want an unemployed loser, that's what really gets me going"? If there are any such women, they're a rare breed indeed.
Nietzsche's Will to Power (expressing a sense of agency, freedom, self-sovereignty)
More options
Context Copy link
I think this is actually sort of analogous to women allegedly preferring "dad bods". I don't think any woman genuinely finds a dad bod more sexually thrilling in isolation, but for a woman self-conscious about her own weight the idea of a man that lives at the gym and eats a stricter diet than a supermodel just sounds intimidating and miserable. I think 4chan NEETs are not necessarily attracted to a NEET girl so much as they just imagine that she will be attainable and have low standards in men and make their own failure less humiliating.
My understanding is that women are in more unanimous agreement about the attractiveness of various features. For example, tall is considered more attractive than short by probably 99% of women. It's just that women place less emphasis on attractiveness relative to social status/dominance, confidence and so forth. Men are more varied in their physical tastes, a nontrivial percentage of men seem to genuinely prefer mega-obese women not merely as a compromise of necessity but as their first choice. But irrespective of their physical preferences, physical looks are regarded as much more important.
Very possible that what women mean by dad bod is not what's popularly envisioned, too.
This is exactly it. They often mean "guy who looks like he can deadlift and bench a VW Beetle, but has some softness around the midsection (so he's probably not insane about tracking his diet, but also so him having too-defined abs doesn't make me feel insecure about my own body)."
My wife has recently given me a little gentle ribbing about my softer than usual belly. We were at the beach last week, and she turned to me and said, "Yeah, seeing all these shirtless men makes, me realize how in shape you actually are."
Point being I agree.
One of the times I was most proud of my dad was at scout camp. They had a bellyflop contest for all the scoutmasters and other adult leaders at the pool, and my dad had the smallest belly by a massive margin. And my dad isn't morbidly obese or anything, but he's certainly no beanpole either.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What exactly does Bezos gain from being married again?
Monogamy is a huge time saver. A spouse can help you with all sorts of random life crap.
Bezos got married young and doesn't want to learn how to do things like plan dinner parties with his friends while in his 50s.
Sure he could hire personal assistants and prostitutes, but he's got a company to run and it's just easier to have a wife.
I've never had a single person tell me it's easier to have a wife. In fact it's the one thing I hear most guys complain about at work.
Men will bitch about their wives, but these same men would be eating a take-out sandwich over the sink without them.
I don't know, sure, some wives certainly make some men miserable. Any man with children (except in very rare circumstances) will say it's easier to have a wife.
More options
Context Copy link
As a newly married man, my experience has definitely been that having a wife makes life easier. Pooling our social lives means that she picks up maybe 70% of the organising seeing friends, she organises most of the house stuff, she helps me draft tactful messages with her womanly social skills. Plus even if I'm working from home I'm guaranteed to spend at least some time socialising every day. 12/10 would wife again.
More options
Context Copy link
Most guys with jobs complain about their jobs, it is nonetheless easier to have a job than not to have one.
Leaving aside those who can get all the benefits of a job without one, but those are rare individuals.
More options
Context Copy link
It's way easier to have a wife. And yeah a lot of guys complain about theirs, but that's generally venting about minor grievances rather than a serious complaint. In truth, most of those guys would be miserable without their wives, and they probably know it.
I think there are two moving parts here: Jeff's marriage and the average dudes marriage. I don't think these two are comparable. And I doubt Bezos doesn't have a bunch of personal assistants and potentially prostitutes.
To that extent the argument that monogamy is a huge time saver does not apply to someone who is in the position to outsource the work. Nor would it apply to Bezos like it would some average guy.
So I'd agree that the average guy is better of with a wife to the extent he can not achieve his wants without one, but that's not saying much in my mind.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It is easier to have a wife.
My recently divorced coworker begs to differ.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Have we considered that he's in love? IDK, seems like the most plausible reason to me.
In general men on the internet have this level of paranoia about marriage that needs to be pushed back on as much as the 'OMG all men are rapists and abusers' tiktok feminism demoralizing women.
More options
Context Copy link
My theory: VHNWI are so disconnected from reality that they seek out proletariat experiences in order to feel human.
But the funny thing is they seem to fail so hard at it that it probably makes their valley feel even more uncanny: Bezos wedding, Musk trying comedy with Dave Chapelle, Musk trying to get into Berghain, etc.
Oh well, it's probably just cope for being a wage slave. At least I don't have to try to manufacture experiences for myself to feel human.
More options
Context Copy link
I dunno, based on interviews he seems sappy enough that he believes in the institution of marriage.
One view is he felt his sex life dwindling and his mortality creeping in and didn't want to accept that, so he started lifting and doing roids and wanting to party a bit but his then wife wasn't really into picking up that same lifestyle.
If being the richest man in the world was worth anything, surely it would be cheating old age at least a little bit.
More options
Context Copy link
That's why I'm surprised that she managed to keep him once she'd hooked him. She has now successfully landed the fish! I imagine if his lawyers had any say there's a hefty pre-nuptial, but even if this ends in divorce down the line, a few measly scraps of tens of millions may be just about enough to keep the wolf from the door for her.
This might be another Anna-Nicole Smith case, in the end.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This Tina Brown seems awfully bitter and judgemental about another woman's appearance for a supposed feminist. I wonder what her problem is.
I think it's a perfectly coherent view - the point is that she (Sanchez) is condemning herself (and in a small way all women) to infantilisation. Getting fake tits is essentially indulging and perpetuating male chauvinism - she should be satisfied with her own personhood without having to surgically alter herself in order to please men. The broader point has been a feminist theme for centuries.
Wollstonecraft:
Do you know how many humans (male or female) are "satisfied with their own personhood"?
Not many!
We are all, at all times, engaged in a vain and desperate struggle to alter ourselves in order to solve the riddle of the Other's desire. It's not a woman thing it's a human thing.
(From Zizek's "How to Read Lacan")
More options
Context Copy link
Perhaps.
But I've also been listening to rhetoric along the lines of "My body, my choice," "We look pretty for ourselves, not for men", and "my outfit is not an excuse" which all go towards that idea that women can dress up as sexy as they want and make whatever changes they feel like to themselves and are all but immune from judgment for it, for over a decade now.
Hence they can get trashy (in my eyes) tattoos everywhere, as many piercings as they like, they can go with fake boobs, butt, and lips, and all of this is just a celebration of their femininity or whatever.
Its a bit discordant for feminism to actively police its own side for doing things that incidentally appeal to the men in their lives, when there's no evidence that it was the result of coercion but rather her own desires... even if those desires were executed with the male gaze in mind.
As always, relevant TLP: No Self-Respecting Woman Would Go Out Without Make Up
Yeah. Not to get into the weeds of the evolutionary biology of it, but
"The way I dress/makeup is solely to feel good about myself! That it happens to 90% coincide with what makes men lust after me is completely irrelevant, its not about men's desires!" is the purest cope imaginable.
I've now seen it countless times, women who abjectly refuse to leave the house without putting together a cute outfit and doing at least minimal makeup. And when pressed (politely) its usually waved off as a matter of self-confidence or personal preference, and I just want to whisper "from whence does the preference come? Self-confident in whose eyes?"
Going to the gym, going to the store, going to grab takeout Chinese food, can't risk you might be seen in a state that might cause a man to overlook you. Especially if other women might put in 10% more effort than you and win the status game.
I'd say it's more like 60-70%. There's definitely a percentage of women's fashion that is just signalling taste/wealth to other women. Septum rings and baggy mom jeans aren't sexy but they've still had their fashionable moment.
I mean, no accounting fully for taste. Lower back tattoos had their moment, those hair hump things, Jeggings. None of which did anything for me, my thing was pleated skirts. I assume there are guys who did get into mom jeans and might enjoy septum piercings.
Hence my point elsewhere that I rarely see women doing fashion trends that are completely repellent to men as a class, outside of direct political statements.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think it has to be cope. Evolution isn't transparent to us: it is totally plausible that women naturally want to look good without actually 'feeling' the evolutionary reason why it benefits their genes to do so.
I'm just saying. Women have almost universally settled upon their conception of what 'looks good' by way of what makes men pay them greater attention. In the west, at least, nobody holds a gun to their head to make them wear tight clothing that emphasizes curves and shows strategic amounts of skin, even when those outfits are less comfortable to wear. But they do wear such outfits.
Pull up photos of women attending music festivals. And I mean, regardless of genre, from (warning: Semi NSFW) Metal to EDM to Country, and see that while the aesthetics are different, women generally converge on outfits that are revealing and eye-catching and tight and emphasize the secondary sexual characteristics. (yes, admittedly this is prone to selection effects).
I don't think they 'feel' the biological basis, but its the rare woman who can ignore their own impulses and dress in a way that is actively repellent to men and feel truly satisfied and healthy about it.
Yes, there's some large amount of culturally-transmitted information about what is 'attractive' in the other sex as well, but we haven't seen so much divergence between humans as you'd expect if it were solely culturally informed.
Anyhow, humans are just responding to impulses and they don't really think a lot about where those impulses come from. If you're hungry, eat, if you're thirsty, drink. If you're horny, put on the standard mating display and see if you get any takers.
But humans also have brains big enough to create elaborate, usually post-hoc justifications for actions they take, and so they can pretend that dressing and acting in a way that effectively short-circuits the other sex's thought processes (b/c horny) and claim its all solely motivated by self-empowerment.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Being attractive to men, is, like it or not, a pretty big part of the typical woman's self esteem, even if she's not looking right then. Obviously they can't just come out and say that, because feminism, so it's unstated, but it can obviously be both.
That's what I'm saying.
Eons of generations have gone into each facet of the female psyche. Their biological imperative is, to a large degree, to appeal to men's sexual desires. Even if its not literally about sex, that's where most of this is coming from.
Their own psychology is innately, inextricably entangled with making themselves appealing to the male brain. "Men like me if I'm pretty, therefore being pretty is good, therefore I feel good when I'm pretty."
So trying to rewrite it to seem like "I just like making my mouth look soft and kissable and pumping up my cleavage for prominent display and wearing painted on leggings that emphasize my rump because I feel good when I dress up this way completely independent of how any man might perceive it" is a tad farcical.
No woman puts in that much effort to make herself feel good and then chooses to just lounge around the house rather than going out in hopes of snagging some actual attention. And rightly so.
(and no, I ain't acting like men's fashion doesn't follow similar principles)
Gonna disagree, why wouldn't evolution just make it feel good to be attractive, without providing us with its chain of reasoning?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think there are many commonly used modern definition of feminism that directly involve policing other women's choices regarding their own appearances. I'd be surprised if Tina Brown has explicitly endorsed this principle.
In any case, this would be slightly more believable if the author had exhibited anything but total contempt for Laura Sanchez. I find it hard to believe Tina Brown is genuinely concerned about Sanchez's wellbeing.
The term is "internalized misogyny" or "the Patriarchy." It's very common, though it's never framed (overtly) as being the women's fault. But the implication is often that they are defecting, selling out for male approval.
I understand that all that could apply in theory, but I'm quite sceptical that it explains this writer's behaviour. To be fair to Brown, I'm not actually sure she's publicly aligned herself with one particular form of feminism, but the usual way feminism is expressed by popular figures in the modern world always seems to include some form of "women should be empowered to do/look/behave as they want", so I - perhaps mistakenly - assume that position unless stated otherwise. My sense is that other schools of thought are much more niche and/or dated.
In any case though, the main reason I don't buy it here is the particularly personal way she wrote that passage about Sanchez - her description is pointlessly nasty and seem to come from a place of bitterness rather than of sober reflection. Less like some form of "what she's done to her appearance has negative implications about how women are expected to look to appeal to a man" and more like "I'm angry that a wealthy man would choose a stupid ugly bitch like her".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mean you've put in a bit of an autistic way but the idea that women shouldn't indulge the male gaze is a very common feminist one across time. This is the whole idea that lies behind critiques of 'lipstick feminism'. It's by no means a consensus view, in fact there has been a lot of debate on whether fashion/beauty is liberatory and agentic, or infantilising, but either way it's definitely not an uncommon feminist position.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Lauren Bezos is not exactly my cup of tea aesthetically, but she’s probably really fun to be around. She’s also likely pretty smart, or at least smarter than most other women. She’s a helicopter pilot, for one.
Jeff is also extremely white trash coded, and has a very strange apparent short man complex. “Hey look at my hot wife with her huge tits and huge ass and huge lips and she gets all these things out for the world to see all the time when we’re in public” is pretty normal for a man his age who just went through a divorce. He is human, just really rich.
He also thought it was important to get almost comically enormous biceps entering his 60s, having been a scrub most of his life.
More options
Context Copy link
The trashiness is the guilty pleasure. Here's a guy wealthy enough to have his own real rocket set to play with, and this is who and what he spends that money on.
I don't know enough of Sanchez' character to know if she's fun to be around. I think I took agin' her (a) for the busting up of her own and Bezos' marriage and (b) by the Wikipedia account, she does seem to have moved on from one guy to a better guy all through her public dating life; this may be purely coincidental but it can also, on an uncharitable reading, be planned - as soon as a better prospect heaves into view, dump the current one.
i - has relationship with American football player (I don't know enough about American sports to know how famous he is) while she's an entertainment reporter. They have a child in 2001 but the relationship ends sometime after that.
ii - gets married in 2005 to Hollywood agent and founder of a talent agency, I'm presuming he is at least as rich and successful as her former boyfriend. This also seems like a good move career-wise if you're in the entertainment/TV business, but what do I know? They have two children.
iii - as part of husband's business, they meet Jeff Bezos and become friendly. In 2018 possibly she and Bezos start an affair, which eventually comes to light and results in 2019 divorces for Bezos and Sanchez from their respective spouses. The affair becomes public knowledge after being leaked via a story in the National Enquirer involving Bezos' texts to Sanchez, as well as nude selfies (if there's anything I don't need to see, it's nude selfies of Jeff Bezos) and there's some hysteria on his part as he accuses everyone from the government on down of being out to get him. There's an investigation into who leaked, but it doesn't seem to have gone anywhere (though some speculate that 'friends of Sanchez' leaked it. If I'm being cynical, getting your 'friends' or arranging to have it leaked would be one way for Sanchez to motivate Bezos to dump MacKenzie and make her the new official squeeze). Another accusation was that her own brother leaked it, and had been paid to provide photos of the couple canoodling.
Not very edifying, however you slice it, not to mention whatever the effect of all this was on her three and his four children. However, now at last she is Mrs. Fourth Richest Man in the World, so it's all been worth it!
There are some people who simply cannot be trusted around most of the opposite sex. They’re usually at least moderately, although only very rarely exceptionally, attractive, but they have an intoxicating charisma and can seduce almost anyone. The archetypal siren, rake, Mata Hari, whatever. Only some variant of the Pence rule is going to protect you from them (if targeted).
I would like to meet these women, for research purposes. I know well some guys who would have sex with probably any woman who paid them even the slightest bit of attention. I also know guys who have absurdly finicky standards (or claim to.) I don't doubt your claim here but I've personally sailed through many siren-populated (if not infested) waters without earmuffs and been able to get through without diving overboard or crashing the vessel. Reflection suggests you're probably right, though. Maybe I've just been fortunate or the Matas Hari I'veet have been either insufficiently charming or insufficiently motivated.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is this not evidence for the opposite of what you're positing?
Bezos could've gotten a brain-meltingly hot twenty-something model/influencer/plausibly deniable escort. But he chose a high achieving, age appropriate woman (Who, yes, looks pretty bimbo-ish).
I do 100% believe he's on TRT, and that this affected his preferences.
High achieving is debatable. But without the bimboness, it would be less tacky. Huma Abedin married a guy ten years younger than her, but there were no affairs, nude selfies in the National Enquirer, and after putting up with Anthony "I sext fifteen year olds on our shared laptop where my wife keeps confidential work emails" Weiner as her first husband, it was a lot more graceful. By comparison with the Bezos bash, it was an intimate little gathering (for a scion of a billionaire dynasty).
And the bride's bosoms were never in any danger of slipping their moorings and floating over a sporting event.
Huma Abedin is a very different case. It's pretty obvious that she was raised to be a sort of foreign agent -- her parents are Muslim Brotherhood activists and they moved to Saudi Arabia to raise her right after she was born in the US.
Most women chasing after Alexander Soros are in it for the money. She was in a better position because she wanted access to power and thus could easily pass all tests about being in it for the money.
This is an interesting take. I've no idea how accurate, but certainly interesting.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It seems like he got the worst of both worlds. To everyone with any taste or class he looks like a low-class idiot with a bimbo whore wife, but compared to basically any non-obese 18 year old she looks awful. He should've either gone the Jerry Seinfeld/Leo Dicaprio route, laughed at the haters and had his fun or sucked it up and married someone tasteful. He's dealing with all of the cost and none of the benefit.
She's not bad for her age, but it's clear there's been a lot of work done and a lot of effort into looking like that, rather than going with her age and whatever natural assets she had. I'm not saying MacKenzie Bezos is a stunning beauty, but by comparison Sanchez really does look like "mid-life crisis girlfriend" (red carpet glamour shot MacKenzie here, Lauren here - that's the most restrained version I could find, there are more hotcha ones here and here at the White House).
That's the point of Tina Brown's barb: is Lauren Sanchez Bezos smart, funny, talented and great company? Well we don't know, but we do know she decided the road to a man's heart is load up on the lip filler, silicone, and a stint or two under the knife to freshen up the face, and that this works. Who needs brains when you have zeppelin boobs?
This may be very unfair to Sanchez herself, but she has also made the decision to go this road (very likely because she started out in the entertainment industry and that doesn't care if you're smart, it cares if you look pretty and don't show your age), so commentary based purely on her looks is the natural result of that.
And yes: men don't care if you're smart and fun (though that's nice), they care if you have the requisite sexy figure. Sorry guys if that treats you all as very shallow, but I do think male sexual and female sexual attraction work somewhat differently.
Pushing back on this slightly. Yes you're probably very correct if we're just talking about sex and sexual attraction. A pretty face also helps. Smart doesn't come into it too terribly much except perhaps at that level of kink. But past just sex and at the relationship level, smart and fun are absolute requirements, at least for most every man I know who would stick around. (And of those two, "fun" is considerably harder to gauge and maintain).
A woman whose sole offering is a sexy figure will find herself ignored, or at least not really attended to, post-coitally. But sure, she'll get laid as much as she cares to, no doubt about it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think you're being dishonest in not recognizing that traditional norms around sex also prohibit this behavior. Kings had to turn schismatic or murderous before they could do what Bezos did there.
Well, rich and high status men had mistresses alongside their wives, so Jeff could have gone that route. But clearly Lauren was bent on trading up so out with MacKenzie and in with Lauren, and she knew exactly what bait to dangle in front of him - sexy. Sure, some of us catty females would call her trashy, but Jeff is a man of simple tastes. Give him boobs, he's happy.
And many men would agree with him, the only surprising thing is that this is not twenty-five (instead of fifty-five) year old replacement Mrs. Bezos. Lauren really must have some charisma going on 😁
It's not exactly Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, and Anne Boleyn, but the topic does invite comparison! The first marriage(s) ended in divorce in 2019 but it took until now, six years later, for the big wedding. So like Anne, she managed to hang on to her man through the years and get a ring on it eventually!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Wow, I thought she was like a decade younger. Fair play, I suppose.
Oh, she's worked hard and is working hard to keep looking that toned. As you get older, muscles get saggy so to keep her arms from the dreaded bingo wings that's a lot of gym hours (maybe some discreet surgery as well, but since she's always showing off her arms and shoulders and there's no signs of scars, either it's very good work or she hasn't had to resort to it just yet).
So I give her credit for that. She's kinda wrecked her face (that trout pout!) but she hasn't done anything (yet) about the signs of crows' feet around the eyes, so she's being more subtle with what work she's having done. But those boobs are not all real as Nature provided them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Thank god. I understand watching the British royal wedding (well... okay, actually I don't), but come the f- on, these aren't the royals. Why is anyone paying attention to them?
Ah, a good thesis for the Quarterly Journal Of No Shit, Sherlock. Yes, Bezos Bad, and like I said before it's not all the women's fault.
3 day wedding, renting out Venice, and tons of money to throw at it. Not as elaborate as the big Indian wedding but then again you can't have a Getty wedding every day, either.
Mostly you'd be watching this for the fashion, but since I think her fashion sense is trashy, no. But it's Gilded Age conspicuous consumption wrapped up in environmental and philanthropic babble, so good gossip fodder.
More options
Context Copy link
One of the richest men in the world is throwing a scandalous marriage with a classless woman, and you wonder why gossips everywhere are talking about it? The story is basically tailor made for that market. Only Prince Harry's shenanigans could surpass it.
Bezos was born in Albuquerque (before Breaking Bad, known mainly as the place Bugs Bunny took a wrong turn at), to recently-wed teenaged parents who divorced shortly thereafter. Class? Why would you expect it?
Oh, this is the new Gilded Age. New money and self-made men, and breaking into the upper classes (elite or not, hard to tell) by sheer shedloads of wonga. It's very funny - if these weren't the guys also steering the direction of the global economy and society which affects all the rest of us, and they've got the tastes and inclinations of when they were seventeen and that hot girl in high school didn't even look twice at them. Now Jeff is living the dream of having that hot girl finally on his arm and in his bed.
Forty years too late, maybe, but he went through a transformation in his early fifties so he can afford to buy more than a sports car to fit his new buff image, and the hottie girlfriend and megayacht is all part of that.
No. Besides marrying the quite attractive MacKenzie Scott Tuttle at 29, he dated a girl named Ursula Werner at 17. You can sneer at Bezos for embodying revenge-of-the-nerds fantasies, but you'll have no factual backing for it. (Same goes for Musk, BTW)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
7 zillion people do far trashier things every week. Is it because he's rich? We abandoned the whole "leading by example" idea for aristocrats ages ago, and Bezos is no aristocrat.
Humans naturally imitate those of higher status, which means that de facto aristocrats (/celebs/billionaires) will continue to lead by example. What we abandoned was requiring them to put some thought into it.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, the lives of the rich and powerful are a common source of mass entertainment especially if one can feel a rare and probably undue sense of superiority to them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Let's talk socialism and the NYC mayoral race. Apparently the All-in podcast people think it's a sweeping wave that will drown out Progress with a capital P. London, Vienna, Chicago, and of course the California cities have already had socialist mayors for a while. Why not New York?
Honestly despite being a "conservative" I am broadly quite sympathetic to socialist arguments. I do think free markets actually kind of suck, inasmuch as we can even have free markets. Personally I think free markets don't really exist when you take into account that power abhors a vacuum, but they are a fiction with extremely high utility to create material goods.
Anyway, socialism seems like a fair response to the complete ineptitude of our political class. It's weary writing and thinking about politics when even the best laid plans seem to inevitably just get ground down by the dumbest things. I can completely understand why young folks want to just socialize everything.
Not that I agree with them, but hey, sometimes I wish I were still naive enough to think socialism or any -ism could fix the ills of our society. I sadly am not that optimistic.
That being said, I don't think society is unfixable. I just think that political solutions are pointless. We need what has always been the core of strong societies - a culture that promotes and encourages personal virtue. Without that, you have nothing.
Relevant comment from Jeremy Carl:
More options
Context Copy link
This is why our politics is broken. The political machine has borged almost everything, and thus the other rival institutions have become rumps of what they would be in a healthy society. Education has been swallowed by the state in the form of mandated curriculum and state testing. Churches have little influence on culture as they have been mostly reduced to the few things that don’t touch politics and then trying to avoid the IRS crackdown for even broaching the subject of some politicized issue. Families are weakened because now that mom works 9 hours and commutes for 1 hour, her children are raised by daycares and the school system, with the parents as minor players in their kid’s lives mostly for a couple hours on weekdays and then on weekends. When politics is everywhere and running everything and no other institutions can match it, people hyperfixate on politics. When it’s not something most people deal with, nobody but us nerds care.
At the end of the day thriving cities need to produce strong middle class families if they want to remain democracies; otherwise it's all about looting.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Why?
The primary reason Zohran won in the primary is Andrew Cuomo, the secondary reason that he won in the primary is anti-Zionism and the anti-idpol populist backlash that comes when outside forces try to tell local people who to vote for.
Andrew Cuomo was the candidate the establishment and the financial industry rallied behind in the primary, despite the fact he hasn't lived in the city in years, was covered in scandal on his way to resigning from the governor's mansion, and really didn't have a great record as governor to run on to begin with. There was no good reason for Andrew Cuomo to run for mayor of NYC.
Then the campaign begins and they go after Zohran for his supposed anti-Semitism. Twitter was filled with jokes about Israelis speaking out on the NYC mayoral race from their bunkers in Tel Aviv, and Andrew Cuomo swears allegiance to Israel. Zohran's enemies successfully made the most interesting and present aspect of the race the question of supporting or opposing Israel.
What this tells us is that accusations of racism on IdPol lines are not going to be enough, going forward, to decide elections. The antisemitism stick has been wielded so carelessly, that even cowardly urban Democrats are no longer cringing under the whip.
It tells us that accusations of antisemitism aren't enough to decide dem primaries. It doesn't tell us that racism isn't still a potent political accusation.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Nit: when did our definition of socialism become so drowned-down? Is anything that's not free (free-as-in-captured) market capitalism now considered socialism? The only "means of production" that Mamdani is suggesting be owned publicly are a few grocery stores, no? That's hardly a "seizure" of means.
Is FoxNews blocking the term DemSoc from taking off in the US?
The second half of the 20th century. Expansion of the welfare state and government programs are attacked as socialist. The meaning gets diluted through the 90's after the Cold War. In the 2000s-2010s the meaning continues to change rapidly as progressives claim much of socialism for themselves.
I doubt it. Mamdani has not, as far as I know, gone to any great lengths to explain what a democratic socialist is or why he is not a socialist. Did Bernie even bother with this in his 2016 bid? That kind of distinction does nothing for Mamdani's campaign. The public does not have that demand for accuracy or nuance if it actually matters or is real. Plus, I suspect the well off progressive base of NYC quite likes voting for a socialist more than they do not-really-a-socialist. A diffuse contempt for capitalism is a popular meme that can be harnessed. No reason to put a damper on that for the sake of centuries old ideological accuracy.
I think if you're going to demand consistency here, then you should do so consistently. Are these capitalist policies he is proposing?
Weird requirement imo. He at least distinguishes himself as DemSoc:
It seems to be conservatives that omit the Democratic half of the moniker Democratic Socialist way more than progressives, but that's just my impression that prompted me to say "Is FoxNews blocking the term..."
I mean, that's a bit of moving the goalposts, no? The argument is that his policies aren't strictly socialist, therefore his policies aren't evidence that he's secretly a socialist despite calling himself a democratic socialist. Why would his policies need to be capitalist in order for him to not be socialist? It's not as if all policies can be neatly placed a spectrum from socialist to capitalist - I don't even think that it's useful for a society to try to think of things in that dichotomy, but it sure is useful for propaganda if that's the way the discussion is forced.
Aside from that, can you name a policy that is purely capitalist? To get ahead of what your answer may be, I would argue that "deregulation" that is often cited as "capitalist" is simply rent-seeking cronyism. As Adam Smith said:
More options
Context Copy link
Both sides are to blame here. Socialists were, and still are, marketing their economic system as "let's do what Denmark did".
Tony Blair, Nicolas Maduro, Pol Pot, and Castro walk into a bar...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
To be clear, you think it is unfair to apply the label "socialist" to a guy who spoke at the Democratic Socialists of America about the "end goal of seizing the means of production"?
I was judging him by his campaign, not by a speech while he was still in his 20s that I wasn't even aware of. Does seem to be a nice gotcha, though. Kudos.
If he brings up any more seizure rhetoric I'll adjust my priors, but for now I'll file it away in "Young politician says something strategically embarrassing to signal being in-group".
It was only 4 years ago. That's hardly an eternity. Is there some evidence he has seen the errors of his ways?
Here's what you actually said
Implication is that it's somehow unfair for people to be identifying this guy as a socialist. Given that he has called himself a socialist and he addressed a significant group dedicated to socialism where he quoted approvingly from the Communist Manifesto, seems like they got it right. At the very least, the burden of evidence is on the side that wants to claim he's seen the error of his ways.
If some people were able to determine this just from his campaign rhetoric, all the better for them! They made a correct prediction! The evidence is that their definition of socialism is accurate, not "drowned-down." You should be asking why you weren't able to see it was obvious to them.
If our core criterion for epithets was "one time said something in a speech" then we would be quite exhausted by the amount of "fascist", "Nazi", "communist", "socialist", etc. being thrown around.
Come to think of it, I am quite exhausted by the amount those terms are being thrown around. Maybe we shouldn't use "one time said something in a speech" as a criterion? Maybe we should judge people by what they're campaigning on, and their actions in office?
Edit:
Does he call himself a socialist now? I see "Democratic Socialist" on his webpage, which is distinct from other types of socialism (e.g. the flavors of authoritarian socialism that are the boogeymen).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"socialism" = "liberal policies I dislike, the more I dislike them, the more socialist they are"
"Far right" = "conservative groups I dislike, the more I dislike them, the more far right they are"
"Neoliberalism" = "things about capitalism I dislike, the more I dislike them, the more neoliberal they are"
Western political discourse is stupid and getting stupider, because we are becoming stupider
I like to use neoliberal to refer to things about the establishment domestic policy I don't like, and the more I dislike them the more neoliberal they are. For the establishment foreign policy I use neoconservative.
Based
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You can read the guy's program yourself
https://www.zohranfornyc.com/
rent freeze, state built housing, free public transport, state owned grocery stores, free childcare, - all of this paid by wishful thinking and unicorn dust. Close enough to socialism. His tax plan is for 10 billion from my understanding for his whole term mostly by the rich.
I really wish he will win. And I really wish he succeeds in implementing his program, just so that USA will see first hand the results of those policies.
I guess this is the issue lol. Point-by-point, why none of this is particularly radical in most societies that people don't consider "socialist":
Rent freezes are controversial cart-before-the-horse band-aid solution to a problem that may or may not be caused NIMBYism. The proposed rent freeze is for rent-stabilized tenants, a specific class of asset. So hopefully you weren't trying to paint this as a city-wide rent freeze, which would never pass anyway. But also not specifically socialist, at all. Very much no means of production being seized.
Hardly uniquely socialist. They used to be called "projects". Also controversial because it tends to have extremely high per-unit costs vs. market rent ROI, but that may or may not be attributable to not being able to just build housing, and more to needing to be state-of-the-art energy efficient, fully ADA compliant, up-to-code, etc. etc.
Better than "company towns" imo.
Another exaggeration. The free part is for buses only. As someone who's taken a lot of public transit in many different cities, buses are frequently used by more blue collar / "barista" type workers, whereas light rail is more often used by professionals. It's a pragmatically progressive (in the sense of: tax those who can afford it) solution to the problem of rising fare prices, imo.
Also: no one bats an eye about free public roads. Damage to roads is quadratic to the weight of the load: we all subsidize the trailer truck shipping industry with our gas prices and taxes that build our roads. This lowers prices at every checkout, at the cost of an anemic rail system.
Obviously an experimental / pilot project. Curious to see if there's a nice food distribution middle ground between "soup kitchen" and "Whole Foods" that a city government can occupy. An ideal implementation of this looks more like a 7-days-a-week farmer's market to me than a crumbling Aldi with yellowed fluorescent lights and grimey 90s tiles.
Are grade school, middle school, and high school not "free childcare"?
The most ambitious and least achievable point in his agenda. To someone completely removed from the situation, I think expanding pre-K and early childhood programs is the more pragmatic way to go about effecting change - but that doesn't pop on a web page meant to excite people about an election campaign.
Along with everything else the government has spent money on. At least these things are attempting to have a positive impact on working class families as opposed to ammunition for a genocide on the other side of the world.
You're right, it's not all NYC apartments, just half of them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Doesn't work. First because he'll declare it worked even if it didn't, and the media will back him up. Second, because "the Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire"
Yes. Anything that can be spun as controversial means no revelation. Even something like bankruptcy can be spun as a cumulative problem that [current mayor] merely had set on their plate. Lag time also plays a role. Costs may only become become apparent after a term is over and he's off to Congress or wherever. Barring an Escape from New York level of catastrophe, then one should expect to fight free stuff in the immediate future forever regardless of results.
As an alternative to the expectation voters learn -- which voters are bad at -- they are pretty good at forgetting. They'll forget the last time it didn't work out, they'll forget why, but if a party wins enough times they might forget about bad ideas. Win so hard, so often, that the bad ideas become foreign. Then there is less voter recognition which creates an additional hurdle for advocates. NYC can still partly do this by embarrassing Mamdani in the general.
I think the only way that happens is if Cuomo yields to Adams and Bloomberg (or someone of equally high stature) backs him. Which ain't going to happen.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah. If the results were marked objectively it'd be one thing, but combination of the media and some thinktanks declaring a resounding success on the topic will just perpetuate more silliness.
More options
Context Copy link
He's at least said for the grocery stores that if they don't work they don't work, and he'll walk away
They won't work, so we'll see if he actually walks away
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Many such cases.
Which problems are you referring to here?
Because the big NYC ones are:
Housing, which is entirely the fault of local voters using government to prevent more building. I blame the voters for this, not the politicians responding to their voters (selfish) wishes.
Public safety, voters hate all functional solutions to drugs/homeless because they feel "gross" (bleeding heart libtards hate enforcement, delusional rightoids hate proven solutions like SIS, no one wants to pay for more rehab centers).
Traffic/transit efficacy. See the huge backlash to congestion pricing, despite it being an economically sound and obviously beneficial policy. Also note that absolutely no one wants to give the MTA money despite it falling apart all the time (because preventative maintenance is expensive and boring). Admittedly it does seem like the MTA admin is a bit of a shitshow, so I guess we can blame government for that one. Although I've worked for large oligopolistic corporations and their admin was also an inefficient shitshow.
More broadly, in every western nation absolutely every citizen wants more gibs, and absolutely none of them want to pay more taxes to fund the gibs. So they mortgage the future instead.
I find it hard to blame government for all of this, as any politician who actually tried to take action to fix any of this would immediately lose their next election.
Sorry, but what is SIS? Neither a search for "SIS homelessness" nor "SIS NYC" turned up anything related.
Safe Injection Sites. And the provenness of their effectiveness is certainly disputed. As is that of enforcement, as the 80s drug war showed. And rehab is a joke.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Many such cases.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sadiq Khan is really more a typical Blairite Labour man than socialist. He's a lot more progressive on cultural matters, but that's par for the course for the wider Labour party these days.
He is also indescribably inept, but I'm not sure his chronic uselessness will open the door for an actual socialist to grab the mayorality of London. They already had that more than two decades ago, with full-blown Trotskyite Ken Livingstone.
Same with Brandon Johnson in Chicago. The man has made enemies out of nearly every faction aside from the highly-controversial Chicago Teachers Union, who basically blessed him with the position.
Humorously enough, Chicago would've been put in a bizarro-world situation if the opponent had made it in (Paul Vallas), with the Fraternal Order of Police pulling the strings instead of the CTU.
I think either way Chicago's budget would've been fucked, which is the number one issue anyway.
I've been meaning to read up on him. Sounds like he's a total fucking disaster.
My general vibe is Chicago has been on a pretty good hot streak of terrible mayors.
He's a caricature of a man. Toxic masculinity, minus the overt misogyny. Nothing is ever his fault. No compromises. All decisions are "tough", but somehow don't solve any issues. Manages to piss everyone off every time he opens his mouth.
Probably the worst defeat progressivism has faced in the US since LaFollete lost to McCarthy.
But, Chicago is a powerful economic engine with a multitude of billion-dollar-per-year, both publicly-traded and privately-owned entities across multiple industries. Even a few decades of bad mayors won't stop it, maybe just slow it down. Pritzker seems to be helping at least, too.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Feels like Labour and the UK had their socialism experiment with Corbyn. Didn't last long nor did it do much good, but it was an interesting case study in just what modern day socialism is in practice:
A young and naïve base of support. An old guard of political weirdos who can't decide on if they are doing principled economic classism or third world brown nationalist ethnic warfare. A principled adherence to the former alienates the young, the rhetoric of the latter alienates the old.
It felt like an indictment of the entire left wing project. Insofar as leftism isn't enabling the worst excesses of capitalism, it hardly gets anything done. And what it can get done for its own good takes a lot of time and a lot of hard work, which is not very appealing to young voters who are having their brains bombed with the most impactful political extremism the algorithm can throw at them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Road to hell is paved with good intentions. I am fairly sure that Marx's ideas didn't include people being boiled alive by NKVD but that is what we got in the end.
The problem with socialisms are two - people are selfish and tragedy of the commons. For the first the only socialist solution that works so far is to beat them into submission. For the second - there is no found cure yet for people not giving a shit for the common good under socialism.
I agree with you regarding your critiques of socialism, but
This describes a huge % of issues the capitalist West is currently failing to deal with too
Not quite. The first part - selfishness is usually nudged to be somewhat aligned with the society's interests by the free market. Before Madison avenue takeover of the american economy companies were actually competing with producing better and cheaper items. We had similar boom with electronics in the 80s and 90s, game industry in 2000s. We have such with chinese phones and cars. All those people may have been passionate about their products, but they were passionate about money too.
The second part - yes there is also tragedy of the commons, but just by the nature of the system - the commons are smaller. So there is less tragedy to be had.
What does this mean?
In a free market the better product wins. In the last couple of decades the better marketed product wins. Which is not optimal for customers
Ahhh
That's an interesting concept. Any good examples? Why do you think the model of "the customer is a rational economic agent who buys the best things for themselves" has fallen apart recently? What changed in the marketing world to allow companies to leverage marketing to make up for sub-par products?
This is for an effortpost that I am not qualified to do. But I think it is combination of two things - women entering the workforce and being single - they just have different buying patterns than men. As every geek that has been forced to buy more expensive and with shittier spec laptop for his girlfriend just because this is such a nice shade of blue. And the other is that marketing stopped selling products, they started selling desire, status, dreams.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
How about even more beatings?
One of the most common jokes in the soviet bloc was - we pretend that we work, they pretend that they pay us. And neither GULAG or their equivalents in eastern europe were productive. And they beat up people.
I think @Botond173 is referencing the sarcastic quip about how "the beatings will continue until morale improves".
The Juche (kim whatever) guy said it straight face. And in a way the stick works ok up to a point. You can squeeze more productivity. But you rarely can squeeze passion, innovation, and creativity this way - so probably you are doomed to stagnation.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Hardly; this just optimizes for the selfish people getting control of the clubs. Marxism has never truly grokked that people's ideological statements and interpersonal solidarity can be faked or hacked.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's bizarre to me that you think the political class is inept, and you think the best response is to give them more power to screw things up in the economy.
Socialism at the federal level mostly means endlessly bloating the elder care apparatus, whereas socialism at the state + local level mostly means bribing connected nonprofits and unions to provide various crappy services that don't really work. Zohran's idea for city-run grocery stores is very dumb and will probably be dropped or completely overhauled after a few pilot programs demonstrate how silly it is.
To be fair it also means doling out increasingly huge wodges of cash to professional activist organizations and favored political client groups.
More options
Context Copy link
Neither of these things have anything to do with the ownership of the means of production.
I feel like we've fallen into the trap of using "socialism" as a shorthand for "stupid liberal policy I hate" in the same way the "far right" now means "conservative people with ideas I really dislike"
He was a speaker at the DSA, which stands for "Democratic Socialists of America."
Clip here: https://x.com/Osint613/status/1939657700553486380 Actual Quotes:
Full long video at https://youtube.com/live/9K7HDuoJ0MQ
I'm not saying he isn't a socialist.
I'm saying "Socialism at the federal level mostly means endlessly , whereas socialism at the state + local level mostly means ."
Is not a very accurate way to describe socialism.
To add a similar thought, "bloating the elder care apparatus" is pretty much a bi-partisan issue in the West.
Going further, "bribing connected nonprofits and unions to provide various crappy services that don't really work" is very true for liberals, and so is the opposite "bribing connected companies to provide various crappy services that don't really work" for the conservative side.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Oh I am not in favor of socialism. I said I could understand, not that I agreed. Socialism is a horrible idea, I have actually read history.
More options
Context Copy link
Mainstream leftism is just more power to the elites.
Populist leftism isn't. Opposition to the military industrial complex and the surveillance state would increase our freedom.
Sounds more like (possibly-left-)libertarianism than “populist leftism”, fam
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I read this success as a more general rejection of the ruling elite than a specific left or right wing thing. It's New York so of course the populist candidate is going to be a socialist, but is this really any different than the rise of right wing populists in Europe in effect?
"you fucked this up, are insanely corrupt and we want literally anything but that" has been the nexus of pretty much all politics since 2016. All that's changing is that the people who reflexively vote for or support the status quo are dying and not being replaced by anybody.
Of course the same criticism of the right wing populists applies to the left wing ones: they don't really have any realistic solutions and the system will not let them implement any if they do. New York's equivalent to Jeremy Corbyn will surely have that same problem.
Depends on your diagnosis of the problem. If you believe, as I increasingly do, that most of our societal ills with corruption and collapse of state capacity revolve around the mass importation of high time preference demographics incapable at a genetic level of pursuing generational projects, deporting them is not only a solution, but the only solution. Because with that anchor tied to your feet, no state project, be it reinvigorating capitalism, monopoly busting or state run grocery stores can possibly succeed. If the labor market is flooded with lazy scammers who shameless loot the till, it's not going to matter if the grocery store is a coop, state run, unionized or anything.
Unfortunately, at least in the US, that's not going to work, for 13/52 reasons.
The blacks are a sideshow in the great replacement, more spectators than anything else- the AADOS share of society is actually slowly shrinking and black immigration is barely enough to keep the percentage of black population from dropping.
The demographic story of the USA is white anglos being replaced with hispanics, and this is 1) not a done deal and way overstated in effect and 2) while hispanics are lower performing it's not clear that that's 100% genetic, and assimilation over time is far more likely.
More options
Context Copy link
It’s not going to work in the US because the ship has simply sailed. We’re in far too deep.
The most we can do is try to give the US a smooth controlled landing and encourage European countries to not go down the same path.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Much like I urged to give the El Salvador solution at least the good ol' college try before cursing entire peoples down seven generations, I'd urge to at least try "assimilate or GTFO" (don't know if there are any success stories as stark as El Salvador, though). People respond to incentives.
The best example in America are Germans. Germans went from being a fairly-unassimilated minority, with high non-english persistence and significant ethnic lobbying...to completely dissolved in the American "white" mainstream over the course of two generations. Of course, we all-but criminalized the teaching of German in schools and fought two wars against their coethnics with pretty stringent propaganda against the inherent evils of "Germanness," but it worked.
More options
Context Copy link
To do the El Salvador solution you need a Bukele tier Great Man of History. That's not a reasonable requirement. Take it from someone whose government is tailor made for such a kind of man. They're much harder to find than you'd think.
As it stands, the managerial rulers of the US are so far from having the spine required to tell foreigners to "integrate or fuck off" that they'll let them fly the flags of other countries in violent rebellion and still not consent to crush them. Asking them to do what you want is doomed.
Is it a reasonable requirement to declare that all of society's problems are caused by a group of genetic untermenschen? I feel like asking for another Bukele is at least on-par with it under current conditions, and the latter is quite a bit more humane.
Oh I think it can very well both be true that a whole class of people are undesirable and that there is no realistic way of getting rid of them.
Seems like the Indian upper classes' whole tragic condition.
All I can say is that I share your longing for competent people that have the courage to take it upon themselves to solve the mess of modern society. But prayer is all I can really provide here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The last 50 years have been a failure of "assimilate or GTFO". 50 more years and "GTFO" won't be an option any longer. It may already be too late.
It hasn't "failed" so much as been undermined and attacked at every turn by our so-called elites and the rise of MAGA is in large part a reaction against this. If you aren't down with making America great you can get the fuck out.
More options
Context Copy link
At the risk of doing a "real X has never been tried", I think you were missing the "or GTFO" part.
More options
Context Copy link
For most of the last 50 years we haven't been doing "assimilate or GTFO". We did it before that and managed to assimilate large groups.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes; the RWP rally around a policy - immigration restriction and recognition of islamicate/SE Asian cultural incompatibility with western norms - which cuts both against official ideology as well as the fundamental moral order of the post-WWII first world ideal.
NYC electing Mamdani is literally a 50-Stalins criticism of the existing order. "We haven't socialismed hard enough/real socialism has not been tried!"
In what way is this true that isn't true of literally any person getting elected that's more left wing than the incumbent?
That really depends on what you mean by "left wing." But yeah, that's a structural problem for left wingers in a functionally one-party progressive political milieu.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's just the usual - a wrong solution to a real problem. People notice they are getting screwed, they notice some others seem to do well, so it's kind of logical to take from them to give to yourself. It also has always been human nature, unfortunately, and an emotion happily stoked by a certain kind of social elite to their own benefit. People who technically do not own all that much money, but who manage large streams one way or another, and for whom socialism means more money to manage. For the common good, of course! And more generally, just promising a lot with no concern for how to actually get it done is very hard to argue against if most voters have little time or willingness to really look into the details. Without the soviet union as a demonstrable failure in living memory, it will only ever get harder.
More options
Context Copy link
I feel like the track record of third worldist socialism is such that it cannot be considered a 'fair response'.
More options
Context Copy link
It is a fair response to the complete ineptitude of our political class to put our political class in more complete charge of what is now in the private sphere? This seems utterly quixotic.
You cannot build or keep a culture that promotes and encourages personal virtue with a political system that does that opposite, like socialism does.
More options
Context Copy link
This seems like the opposite of a fair response. If we put a guy on the fry station at McDonald's, and he just constantly screws it up over and over again, in the dumbest ways possible, it doesn't seem like a reasonable response to say, "How about we just put this guy in charge of the entire store?"
More options
Context Copy link
I feel that, given your own stated preferences, a socialist upheaval should be among the worst case scenarios from your perspective. I get that you said you're not on board with it, but I feel like connecting the dots in what you've said would logically make a sweeping trend of socialism pretty alarming and less seemingly shrug-worthy.
The entire mission of this belief system seems to be dispensing with personal accountability at any cost, rewarding people for giving nothing, and deluding the masses into thinking they can get every possible thing for free. There is no interest in a platform like Zohran's in rewarding people for being virtuous, for working hard or providing things of value, only in redistributing to those who do less of either. Personal accountability is often a dirty term from this perspective, and this sort of belief system explicitly seeks to use political solutions to fix every possible issue, whether it's empowering schools over parents, giving us government-run grocery stores, or censoring for the good of the masses.
Surprised so many people think I'm a socialist from what I wrote, lol. I am not. I agree that it's terrible.
You might better have used the term "understandable" rather than "fair". By calling it a "fair response" you are invoking the connotation of "fair" as "just, right, natural" which strongly implies that you believe that socialism is the correct outcome.
Ok, that's fair. Ahaha. I will leave it as it is for now anyway but I'll keep that in mind.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link