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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30560 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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Here in Australia we’ve seen the latest example of ideological purity movements devouring themselves. What I find interesting about this particular case is that, to me, it accurately represents what seems to have happened in a lot of left wing movements over the last 20+ years.

Co-founder and former Queensland state leader of The Greens party, Drew Hutton, has failed in his appeal to his own party to reverse the revocation of his life membership. Hutton helped found the Greens with Bob Brown, both in Queensland (1990) and federally (1991), the initial ideological basis was for creating a party with “a historic mission to try to push the world to a more sustainable footing”. The parties platform that I recall, growing up as an Australian in the 90’s, was for combatting climate change, stopping deforestation, protecting fisheries, reefs and banning live export of cattle and other stock.

But both Bob Brown and Drew Hutton have long since departed from the front lines of the parties political battles. In their place we have seen a succession of leaders that promote environmentalism, but increasingly campaign on social justice issues. A party that (until the recent federal election) were making the majority of their electoral ground in inner city electorates (inner Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane).

Hutton was embroiled in drama from a twitter post (what else could cause so much drama) made over a year ago, which led to him being labelled a trans-phobe and promptly to the revocation of his life membership after he refused demands to delete the post and the comments below it. Today it was announced that the year long appeal process has not landed in his favour, but is in fact keeping with the original revocation. But if he’s espousing hatred and division online while somewhat representing his political party that he cofounded, then surely that’s a just result?

My initial thoughts were along the lines of “grandpa didn’t keep up to date with the terminology and unknowingly crossed the line”, however, after a bit of research it becomes clear that Hutton didn’t even make the hurtful comments, rather that he “provided a platform for others to do so”. Which after further research, revealed that he had publicly questioned his Party in their actions of removing membership from a different member for voicing concerns over a proposed amendment from the NSW Greens to change “pregnant people” from “pregnant women” in an upcoming act.

Interesting. I’ve run out of steam now, it’s a been a long day on site, but I wanted to post this and hear what other thoughts The Motte have - Australian and International.

Links:

1

2

You might want to repost this in this week's thread, otherwise you might not get much discussion.

Oops, good call. Thanks!

Daily Mail is not the best sort of news outlet, but they are serving as additional confirmation that the birthday book exists and that the Trump letter is real. Also that Bill Clinton sent one as well. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14921905/Donald-Trump-sues-Wall-Street-Journal-MoS-reveals-Bill-Clinton-letter-Jeffrey-Epstein-birthday.html

Important parts

Bill Clinton wrote a 'warm and gushing' letter which was included in Jeffrey Epstein's infamous 50th 'birthday book', The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Mr Clinton's letter is one page and is embossed with: 'From the desk of William Jefferson Clinton' at the top.

A lot of other people wrote letters

Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson – both friends of Epstein at that time – are also believed to have contributed letters to the book alongside Mr Clinton, who regularly flew in Epstein's private jet, dubbed 'the Lolita Express'.

Last night, a source said: 'Ghislaine asked everyone they knew and that included presidents, princes and kings.

'Bill Clinton wrote a warm and gushing letter. It was one page and profuse in its admiration for Jeffrey.'

The MoS has been told Epstein's close friend, Harvard scholar Henry Rosovsky, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and computer pioneer Marvin Minsky also all contributed letters.

The WSJ claimed Epstein's lawyer Alan Dershowitz wrote a letter but he has yet to comment about the claim.

We don't know where the original book is at now.

The whereabouts of the original book is not known.

It is thought to have been seized during one of the raids on Epstein's homes in Florida and New York, where Maxwell kept 'dozens of albums' filled with pictures of their trips together including holidays to visit Prince Andrew at Balmoral, Buckingham Palace and Windsor.

The source says the book is real, the letters are real, but the evidence files themselves used contain facsimiles of them

The letters are believed to have been included in more than 100,000 pages of evidence recently reviewed by 1,000 FBI agents working in 24-hour shifts.

It is believed the letters were copied by investigators and entered into evidence as facsimiles around the time the book was seized.

A source claimed the WSJ's story was based on a 'poor facsimile' copy of the alleged Trump letter and said: 'The book is now sitting in a storage facility somewhere, if it still exists.

'What was in the evidence pile were poor-quality copies of single pages, not a copy of the whole book.'

This could be one of the funniest ways to confirm that the Trump letter is a real thing, a retaliatory leak against Clinton. Also suggesting that the Epstein files are a bit of a MAD situation going on with the parties and perhaps even other elites.

Daily Mail is not the best sort of news outlet

Off topic, but the hate the Daily Mail gets is surreal to me. They're literally no worse than any "respectable" media outlet.

I still remember when the admin of my videogame forum was killed, and the Daily Mail was the first to get the basic facts of the case right (board member obsessed with the admin's girlfriend decided to murder the hypothenuse) while "respectable" outlets like the BBC were talking about wargame fanatics and dark secrets. I got reverse Gell-Mann amnesia from that, and now trust the Daily Mail more than any other British newspapers.

I've seen it said that with your standard press-releases-as-articles, most papers will just chop it up a bit and regurgitate it. The Daily Mail will send someone round to interview neighbors for a juicy take on it instead.

Neat!

They are worse. They fact check and are not hell bent on any ideology other than traffic.

If that's how someone sees "worse", then touché, I suppose.

Also suggesting that the Epstein files are a bit of a MAD situation going on with the parties and perhaps even other elites.

Contingent on there being actual evidence that could tie important people to felonious activity, this was the most probable reason things have been held up regardless of who was in power.

Its why I generally don't count out the existence of major conspiracies, even somewhat complex ones, when everyone involved has either legal protection or strong reasons to be quiet. Everyone having the incentive for the story NOT to come out/be corroborated means cooperation is pretty cheap/easy... unless one of them gets investigated and pressured to flip, that is.

If Mossad can maintain a fake electronics company for years and sneak explosives into pagers sold to dozens of their enemies, well, a lot of things seem possible to achieve without alerting the world at large.

As someone who was aware of the general Epstein situation well before he didn't kill himself and became a meme, I am heartened that people are tenaciously clinging to the story even as a lot of influential folks claim there's nothing to see. Most people are doing it for misguided or outright fallacious reasons but they got the spirit and are aiming it in the general correct direction.

Of course, what are the dogs going to do if they, miraculously, catch the car? Assuming they can make sense of anything, seems like the only just and meaningful outcome requires a bunch of trials and criminal consequences, which will be litigated for literal years to come and I'd wager will result in less than half of the people named being convicted.

Me, I'd just settle for removing all those people from power permanently and banishing them from the public eye and also polite social contexts.. Castration of their status and influence, in lieu of literal castration, if you will.

But we don't have a reliable mechanism for doing that at scale.

An article just came out about the government supported grocery store in Kansas: https://archive.is/lNlvD . But the store is currently a total disaster:

Taylor, 68, has supported the KC Sun Fresh since it opened just blocks from her home. But that solitary tomato was almost too much to bear.

Sales were okay at first, but after the pandemic, crime rose and sales began to plummet. Police data show assaults, robberies and shoplifting in the immediate vicinity have been on an upward trend since 2020. Shoplifting cases have nearly tripled.

KC Sun Fresh lost $885,000 last year and now has only about 4,000 shoppers a week. That’s down from 14,000 a few years ago, according to Emmet Pierson Jr., who leads Community Builders of Kansas City, the nonprofit that leases the site from the city. Despite a recent $750,000 cash infusion from the city, the shelves are almost bare.

This seems to be a hit piece targeting the NYC mayor favorite Zhoran who wants to bring government run grocery stores to NYC

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, has attracted attention for his campaign pledge to combat “out-of-control” prices by establishing five city-owned supermarkets that he says will pass savings onto customers by operating “without a profit motive.”

But it's unclear whether the failure of the store is due to mismanagement or criminals establishing a base nearby:

Part of the problem is the city’s lack of a jail, Young said. The left-leaning council closed the previous facility in 2009 as a cost-saving measure — a move the Kansas City Star has called a “$250 million mistake” — people arrested for minor crimes are quickly released instead of being held in rural counties miles away. That allows them to hop on the local bus system — free since the pandemic — and head back to the same location, Young said. “We typically have the same group of offenders every week that are recognizable by face and by name, just loitering and hanging out,” he said. “A small percentage of people are ruining it for the rest of the community that deserves to go to their grocery store and their library.”

It also may simply be that there are too many grocery stores for that area:

Data bears out both points. A USDA analysis showed the area around the store is low income but not low access. And a Washington Post analysis of the adjacent Zip codes show the area has steadily lost population since 2020. The council member who represents the area, Melissa Patterson Hazley, estimates there are more than 200 vacant lots in her district.

... the neighborhood has other options because of a nearby Aldi store and the independent Happy Foods Center.

But there's also more to the story - and a bit of misrepresentation but not outright lie slipped in by the WP reporter. Sun Fresh market isn't government run and never was. Sun Fresh market was actually a successful independent grocery store for over 25 years. The city does own the strip mall itself, and it seems that the store moved to this location in 2018, probably after getting some generous incentives from the city. After the Lipari guy called it quits, this nonprofit got their hands on the store (probably in a move set up by the city itself). But the city doesn't actually run the store.

Community Builders of Kansas City, the nonprofit that leases the site from the city.

So there are a lot of threads going on with this article, but my take on this is that the store was probably doing okay before 2020, but then Fentanyl Floyd's crime wave absolutely decimated the area. Seeing the situation, the store owner bailed out, but the city, not wanting to see their strip mall project go bust, gave a nonprofit millions in cash to keep the store afloat. On the other hand, it seems that the other stores in the strip mall are doing ok according to google maps, so it could just be that the nonprofit currently running the store is wildly incompetent.

Overall I think there's not enough here to get a good read on what might happen with Zohran, but my bias is still that government incompetence has no bounds. Aldi is less than 1 mile away and they are doing ok according to google. And even though the city isn't running the store directly they are throwing millions into it without figuring out how to get out of the hole.

Sun Fresh market isn't government run and never was...the store owner bailed out, but the city, not wanting to see their strip mall project go bust, gave a nonprofit millions in cash to keep the store afloat.

Yeah I'm not seeing what you're getting at here. Sure, no specific scheme is going to be exactly like the other, but no 'gov owned, staffed by gov employees' grocery store is going to happen, this is the closest thing to it that you will get in America. I think you're splitting hairs.

I've never been to one but I've read that the exchange stores on US military bases have good prices and also makes a profit for the government. My understanding is that they are run by the US government directly.

Which really shouldn’t be a surprise, the us military has the best logistics in the world and it’s not like you are going to have any crime at a grocery store operated on a military base.

it’s not like you are going to have any crime at a grocery store operated on a military base.

You would be surprised.

See my Pittsburgh entry on the Hill District from back in February for a related case study.

So very sorry to veer off topic but I didn't want to make a top post with this mere inquiry:

So I'm writing a piece on the right and AI art. The Trump administration really seems to love it. (See the Alligator Alcatraz tweets etc.) Does anyone have any information on partisanship, ideology and AI art adoption? Much appreciated!

  • -27

...I think that's what the Sunday small-scale question thread is for.

AI art is a democratizing force, anyone can use it. Consider George Droyd for instance, a Solana shitcoin supported by AI video memes: https://x.com/FloydTerminal

https://x.com/FloydTerminal/status/1927219300055572563

https://x.com/FloydTerminal/status/1888370796550373792/video/1

The far-right has less resources for art (see https://x.com/DacistRapian, clearly talented and artsy but nobody is going to give him money, he keeps getting banned off twitter and making new accounts) and the MAGA-right just aren't that rich in art either, though they do have resources. MAGA by nature is not well-organized, not a top-down force. It's mostly Trump charisma and the sincere effort of his supporters, not a honed hollywood/media operation. There's no Trump equivalent to the movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apprentice_(2024_film), which is basically a hatchet job on Trump. They don't have the resources or the organization. When they do try and do something top-down it often ends up being hideously crass and cringe.

What people on the right can do and do well is repurposing and rearranging other art for their own purposes. The only time I see The Apprentice referenced online is when the film version of Trump gives his sigma speech about tactics and Trump supporters go 'based!' see here for an example. They reappropriate the work of others: https://x.com/PierceKeaton/status/1865222291157598458

Or in 2016, remember MAGApedes? Can't Stump the Trump? WH40K God-Emperor memes? Today on the far right there are chudjaks, soyjaks, basedjaks and troonjaks. That was all bottom-up stuff. It's the opposite of hard to MS Paint up a drawing.

AI art is a natural extension to the resource-poor, bottom-up approach. One person can do it in a few hours with a trivial amount of money, often for free. It meshes poorly with the left-wing top down approach. Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert were running with million dollar budgets, Colbert supposedly was burning through $100 million a year, which is why his show was cancelled. With those resources there's no need for AI art, you can just do it the slower, more expensive way. The left are the slow-moving established players, the right are the disruptive start-ups, they're always going to make more use of new technology.

Excellent reply. Thank you!

The only time I see The Apprentice referenced online is when the film version of Trump gives his sigma speech about tactics and Trump supporters go 'based!' see here for an example. They reappropriate the work of others: https://x.com/PierceKeaton/status/1865222291157598458

I mean, did they really think they were attacking Trump by making their fictional version of him spell out his strategy in a coherent way that makes it sound like he knows how to play the media for maximum effect?

Information? No. Anecdotal observations? A few. But might I suggest you just create a thread in Small Scale questions or something?

good idea thank you

I mean, as I said

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.

I can nearly promise you, with that much state money being dumped into the project and with that little food on shelves, there is a "community organizer" driving around in a brand new BMW involved somewhere.

I do wonder where, when, and why "community organizer" was coined. Among the euphemisms for fake jobs that are out there is isn't a particularly good or effective one. The first time I recall hearing it was with regards to Barak Obama during his senate run. No one seemed fooled. Maybe a few people hung onto it to avoid thinking they were not voting for an unemployed grifter, but I don't see that as having been a significant number of people, it was a 2005 IL senate DNC primary. People were expecting a grifter.

Obama wasn't a community organizer when he ran for Senate, he had been a state senator and a constitutional law lecturer for years.

From my perspective, America has outperformed its economic peers in Europe and Asia over the last forty years despite this supposed "anchor".

Being the best of a bad bunch isn't good enough (and it isn't as if the EU and commonwealth don't also have tons of immigrants, so we can't blame nativists for their poor performance). Unless I'm missing something, real GDP growth in the US was worse in the 2000s (and far too much of that growth went to the healthcare sector) than it was in the 80s and 90s and has been thoroughly mediocre since. Aside from the post-covid rebound in 2021 the average Millennial has never seen real GDP growth exceed 3% during their working lives.

Of course, thanks to the fact that federal spending has grown far faster than the economy during the last 25 years, VA-7 is doing better than most.

Of course, this is mostly population aging. Old people don't grow the economy.

Do immigrants help? IDK.

You may have had much more negative experiences with immigrants.

To put it bluntly, yes.

I've written about it here and there. I'll try to give a concise summary of my grief and sense of loss. Of late I've been stuck on the "Anger" step, and I question whether I'll ever move beyond it and find "Acceptance".

I was born in the 80's. In the late 90's for reasons that are utterly baffling to me, my Virginia town began to get flooded with illegal immigrants. The first impact this had on my life was when two Mexicans with mustaches were put in my middle school classroom. They beat the shit out of us, were totally uncontrollable, and were there about 2 weeks. It was weird. Very weird. It foreshadowed much of what was to come.

By highschool my town was getting a bit of a reputation. Illegals were renting properties, and then cramming them with insane numbers of people who utterly destroyed them. Lower class white areas became even worse ghettos over the course of a few years. Gang activity increased. A curfew on teenagers was instituted county wide. It became dangerous to drive through town. The most common scenario was some unregistered beater an illegal bought second hand would slam into you going the wrong way down a one way street, or blowing through a red light. A half dozen day laborers would flee the vehicle and vanish into the ether, and your car would be totaled. A buddy of mine had a worse experience, and a gang of illegals tried to pull him out of his vehicle at a stop light. As he tells it, he gouged out one of their eyes and sped through the light as quick as he could. He worked as a bouncer at the time, I can believe it.

At some point my town passed some Arizona style immigration crackdown laws, but the courts denied us them. The decision was basically only the feds can enforce immigration law, and if they wanted my town to become a lawless foreign colony, it would. And it did.

I moved away, I started working. A coworker of mine's family (Brother's wife and daughter) were raped and killed by an illegal immigrant house painter when he was left alone with them. I regularly encountered drunk Mexicans in the middle of the road at night, trying to visit friends or just do some late night shopping. They'd just be stumbling down the middle of the damned road on a blind turn, 45 mph speed zone, trying to make a vehicular manslaughterer out of me.

I moved again. Things were OK for a while. The massive unchecked immigration continued. I found my wife, though we weren't married yet. We started finding bullets along the walking trails, and there were increasing reports of B&E's and shots being fired into random homes for gang initiations. One family found their daughter's bedroom window had been shot through, and her pillow had been hit. Luckily she hadn't been in her bed at the time. At some point there was a hostage situation in the house behind us that ended when the retard lit fire to his own home and then charged the police with a knife.

I moved again. Things were OK for a while. Then they got weird again. The gas station on the corner I always filled up at in the morning started getting robbed with some regularity. People started stopping me in the street, yelling at me for money. The last straw was when someone was shot in my town home parking lot, shooter on the loose, and me with a 3 month old baby at home. I arrived home from work to police positively swarming the block, and my wife terrified.

I moved again. Things are OK so far. But my nation is dead and rotting. I know the rot will follow me again. I don't know what to do or where to go to give my children a future anymore. I went back to my home town for a parade at some point. When you have kids anything to do sounds good. The museum to the accomplishments and hardships of my ancestors had been "renovated". It now celebrated the fictitious diversity my town has always had. The paving stones with names of donors, including my grandfather, had been unceremoniously torn up and sent to the dump. The compact with generations past that they would be remembered sent to the dump along with them. So it goes to be conquered.

One thing that needs to be kept in mind on this topic is selection effects. If you're an upper class professional in rich Northern Virginia, the average immigrant you encounter is likely very heavily selected for intelligence, education, and familiarity with American culture.

Lucky.

Since we're dropping anecdotes, I'll share mine as someone who has much more experience with the lower class side of things - quite possibly more than everyone else on the site combined.

My first meaningful experience was working as a laborer in high school for contractor family members. There was a period of time when we were willing to work for Indian small business owners and a reason that is no longer the case. The pattern would go like this: we would get a call about a problem, go to check it out. Give a rough quote, get an agreement, then do the work. Think minor to moderate repair jobs taking 1-3 man-days of work.

At that point we would present an invoice, and the Indian man who owned the place would interpret that as "time to start haggling", with the added bonus that the work was already done, so he had huge leverage to be a totally obstinant asshole. There was just nothing about their approach that my culture would recognize as fair dealing or good faith. On several occasions, family members did go back and destroy the repair work instead of taking an insulting low-ball offer out of sheer, outraged spite.

We soon stopped taking their calls. But when I see certain elements speak negatively of the subcontinent as a culture that celebrates being dishonest scammers and grifters, well...

I also worked alongside a fair number of illegal Hispanics during this time. I don't have particular personal complaints about them, but neither are they precious compared to the median American laborer. There are definitely standouts (Gregorio was double my age and put my ass to shame), but it's more that the far left of their bell curve in drive just never leaves the old country. Their market niche is a willingness to ignore labor laws, OSHA, and building codes. If you want to take a libertarian stance on that, maybe attack the other angle there, instead of importing a class of deliberate lawbreakers.

And in my current job, I deal with tons and tons of immigrants. Dozens every day, from all continents save Antartica. It's hard to give examples without doxing myself, but speaking in very broad generalities...

Imagine being forced to keep an even demeanor while you spend twenty minutes trying (and failing) to explain to a grown woman, using multiple forms of translation software because she does not speak any English, that a circle is different from a square, while she just looks at you sadly and says "no comprendo...". And you never actually get the idea through, you just finally manage to beg her to call a middle-schooler to put on speaker phone, and something the child says in Spanish makes her stop bothering you on that topic.

Then she asks you to help her commit welfare fraud.

That's a bit worse than the median, but it's far from an unrepresentative example. There are better ones, of course, but for every African immigrant who is just respectably middle-class with an accent, there is one who is a paranoid schizophrenic that's invisible to NoVa office workers. Many varieties of Asians seem to be more prone to demanding and Karen-ish behavior than white women - again, while being nearly incomprehensible about it. If the average immigrant you deal with just has a bit of an accent and can quote from The Office, consider that you are experiencing a large selection effect and there are tens of millions of others who cause much more severe cultural friction. Imagine if YOU, Highly Educated Theater Kid, had to deal with cast members from Duck Dynasty every day.

And I have to mention the medical side of things. Having a doctor you struggle to understand is actually extremely stressful. I had to take a kid to a specialist who ended up being Nigerian. The thing is, I genuinely liked the guy. He was charismatic and made a sincere effort to give me thorough explanations. I appreciated the effort. It was mostly wasted though, because I was struggling to make out two words in three.

On another occasion I was assigned to a GP who was an Indian woman. I went in for one physical and it was one of the most demeaning experiences of my life. Refused to make contact, would barely look at me. She ignored my concerns and fixated on a single skin thing that she immediately referred to an associated specialist for a 10 minute outpatient procedure that billed my insurance as a "surgery". I'm sure she is very good at gaming the system to make number go up, but I'm never booking another appointment with someone who considers me an untouchable, and if I could press a button to have her denaturalized and deported I'd hit it twice.

But on the other hand, I don't have terrible stories of violence and drunk driving. I've dealt with plenty of second generation Hispanics and Asians who seem to have assimilated fine (and others who were disasters, but disasters within the expected bounds for mid-00s emo girls).

What I really want is for the cultural friction to go down. I want fewer people I struggle to communicate with. I want fewer people with alien, unpleasant mores. There's this thing I've been seeing a lot of lately from completely unassimilated South/Central American young women. When you ask them a question in English, they don't say "Que?", they do this thing where they jerk their head forwards and jaw upwards at you while making a sound that I can only describe as an "angrily inquisitive grunt". And I'm sure it's just a cultural quirk, but I can't stop my lizard brain from going. I want fewer people with alien ethnic ingroup preferences. Nara said something down thread about opposing identitarianism from the left AND the right, but the identitarianism from the right was "American". Of course things get unpleasant when that's no longer enough to answer the question.

On another occasion I was assigned to a GP who was an Indian woman. I went in for one physical and it was one of the most demeaning experiences of my life. Refused to make contact, would barely look at me. She ignored my concerns and fixated on a single skin thing that she immediately referred to an associated specialist for a 10 minute outpatient procedure that billed my insurance as a "surgery". I'm sure she is very good at gaming the system to make number go up, but I'm never booking another appointment with someone who considers me an untouchable, and if I could press a button to have her denaturalized and deported I'd hit it twice.

Are you Indian? Or did she just take you for a lower class person from another race and hate you for it?

That was partially poetic, partially literal. I don't know exactly what she thought of me. But I've never, not once, had another medical professional clearly uncomfortable with literally just touching a patient during an examination.

I've seen a couple of doctors over the years who were so clearly not people-persons that they acted similarly. I think some of them might be autists and/or just status and money chasers who don't deign to view the patient as a human.

My hometown was a very less egregious version of this. Well, sort of hometown. We moved there from an adjacent town when I was in 5th grade. By the time I got to HS the immigrant population had jumped pretty significantly such that about 15% of freshman struggled with English. Violence was not a problem at school, we had a sufficient supply of jocks and racists that made it clear to them (at the time) that there would be reprisals. I recall one such when a 15 y/o illegal grabbed a girl's tits, and the football team broke his leg and his bike. This influence kept them mostly sidelined from the time I was there. By my youngest sibling's graduation though, it was more like 25% and it was becoming a real problem. And like you said, DUI is actually the biggest problem. It is out of control, no DL, no INS, 15 modelos in the back seat. They then just don't come to court and go to some other town, or just hide till hopefully (for them) the SOL runs out or the cop retires and wont be able to come back from Florida for a class A misdemeanor or CL4 felony (depending on what was actually charged).

I do think you have had a uniquely bad experience. I'd maybe have similar views if my experience was at all like yours.

I've generally had a very different experience, and I'll share since you did.

Lived in the suburbs of St Louis for a while where inner city bussing policies made sure that there was at least one or two black kids in each class that were uncontrollable by the teachers and would mercilessly bully everyone else.

At the time I lived in a neighborhood with few kids my age, they were at youngest two years older like my brother, so he had a bunch of friends. I only managed to make friends in school with a nice Indian boy and his immigrant parents had me over for sleepovers.

We then moved to Charlottesville. And I went to a school that was semi infamous for being one of the last holdouts on segregation. That was decades before. By the time I was there it was still mainly two types of people liberals that had left a city and wanted a 'quiet' life in the country. Or rednecks that had been there for dozen generations and couldn't throw a rock on the playground without hitting someone they were related to.

Some of the rednecks bullied me. I made friends with the nerdy liberal's kids. The worst bully that I remember took his dad's gun in middle school and blew his own brains out.

When I was in middle school things didn't change much except I went to the school that was in the suburbs rather than the one that served the rural areas. So the bullies switched to being white jocks and rednecks were a minority, but I'd learned how to have friends at that point and I was no longer the one being bullied. One kid I remember getting bullied was a happy Mexican boy that lived next door in one of the apartment complexes. He eventually punched one of the kids in the nose after the kid took his backpack and that seemed to resolve things.

There were ESL classes in all of my elementary/middle/high schools and they were full and I never knew a single one of these kids.

Most of my friends in middle and highschool were white, because that was about 80-90% of the population. I was on friendly terms with the very few Muslims, Indians, and East Asians that were actually in our school. I teamed up with an Asian kid to represent the libertarians at a school wide political debate.

When I got to college things became way more diverse. I went to George Mason University because they had a reputation for a libertarian friendly economics department. My best friend became a 2nd generation Indian Immigrant. For two years my roommate was a Hispanic of some kind. I made a habit of intentionally forgetting and confusing him with Mexican origins because it annoyed him. He might have been Cuban. His parents were doctors, he eventually became a doctor too.

I graduated college and went to work at a company founded by an Indian entrepreneur. Met my white wife there and we have three beautiful blue eyed daughters.

I still live in Northern Virginia. I live in a predominantly white neighborhood my main encounters with immigrants is when they come to mow my lawn. There has been a homeless problem in the area lately, the worst of them look like drugged out old white people.

Overall my life has been awesome and not filled with much tragedy. My encounters with immigrants have been almost entirely positive. The race and ethnicity of people I've known has rarely provided me much insight into whether I will like them, get along with them, or find them totally odious. Usually the people that like or dislike me for my race are the people I get along with the least well.

I'm not ashamed of my race or heritage, I'm currently serving on a board for a family heritage organization. They've been here since the 1620's. We often field requests from people looking for more information on slaves that my ancestors once owned.

Why are you assuming that he 've had a uniquely bad experience? I'm not from the US but to me what he's describing seem to be the usual consequences of Mexican or Central American underclass immigrants forming criminal gangs in a town/city where their numbers reach a critical mass. I don't assume that is a unique development, especially not in Virginia which probably attracts a disproportionate number of immigrants due to the vicinity of the Beltway region.

I think bad luck on his part. Or maybe he is just predisposed to noticing a particular type of bad thing in his life.

It's not been my experience or the experience of most people I know.

Or maybe he is just predisposed to noticing a particular type of bad thing in his life.

In other words, he's a racist.

Not what I said and not what I meant. Don't put words in my mouth.

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Overall my life has been awesome and not filled with much tragedy.

That's the part of it that is hard to communicate. At no part in my story was I the direct victim in any of this, beyond getting beat up by the illegals many years older than me who were placed in a middle school classroom likely based on education level, the county not yet having an ESL program. A mistake that was relatively quickly corrected. This might have been 1996? According to some census data I found the county was only 7% Hispanic then, compared to it's 25% now. Whites declined from 75% to 35%.

The problem isn't personally having illegals hit and run you personally on the road (that was several friends of mine), or murder your family (that was my coworker's brother), or take hostages and burn your house down (that was a row of houses or two behind mine). It's how it feels to see civilization fraying at the edges all around you, chaos growing stronger every day, and the high trust society you grew up in collapsing into a low trust hell hole of all against all. You came from a world where things like this didn't happen, period. A 40 point swing in demographics later, and suddenly it's normal. It's like that "First they came for the..." poem, only instead of methodical Nazi's eliminating problematic groups, it's just raw 3rd world barbarism and high time preference imposing it's consequences all around you, and occasionally picking off someone around you. And for whatever reason, people just keep their head in the sand. They roll to disbelieve, or they pretend this is fine. To notice at all places you on the fringe.

As the other commentor pointed out even the nearby tragedy doesn't have any kind of particular flavor. The bully that committed suicide is something I already mentioned.

The other nearby tragedies don't have a flavor other than "random".

A classmate killed on her way to SATs by a truck driver running a red light.

An older swim team friend dying in a car accident.

A swim team coach dying of a sudden heart attack on deck at a swim meet.

A student a few years older burned himself alive outside the school due to bullying.

A friend in his mid thirties dying of a sudden heart attack.

A cousin losing their boyfriend to cancer.

Tragedy has been around, but it's not very violent. And it's definitely not anyone's fault.

I have heard of the civilizational fraying, but I haven't really personally seen it. I don't even disbelieve you or anything. It's just accepting some of your conclusions or policy advice would run heavily counter to my own personal experiences. I don't even have a good way of resolving this dissonance. 5 years ago pre COVID I might have suggested trusting expert opinion and statistics on the topic. Now I'm pretty doubtful on the usefulness of that approach.

The problem isn't personally having illegals hit and run you personally on the road (that was several friends of mine), or murder your family (that was my coworker's brother), or take hostages and burn your house down (that was a row of houses or two behind mine)

I think this still counts as things happening to you "personally". A series of mishaps and disasters affected your friends and family and coworkers and neighbors, and this gave you a subjective sense that civilization was falling apart blah blah blah. @cjet79 can correct me if I'm wrong, but I parsed "Overall my life has been awesome and not filled with much tragedy" as very much including "my friends and relatives and neighbors have rarely if ever suffered life-ruining events of the kind you described as having affected your family, neighbors, etc.".

Yeah that's a good description. Tragedy hasn't impacted me or the people around me.

This is the thing I don't think people grok.

I DID. They lasted about 4-6 years each. That's how much fucking immigration is happening! Every time I have this argument with people, they act like history started yesterday, and the areas that are full of 3rd worlders always were and you should have known better than to live there if that's not what you wanted, and the areas that are still American always will be and are there for you if that's what you want. And if the naked falsehood of that hasn't been made plain by my abridged life story RE: Immigration, I don't know what else I can do to make you understand.

It’s not politics if people aren’t angry. Nothing to apologize for. Feel free to ask away as long as you find value in it.

(Also that’s just WhiningCoil don’t worry about it.)

(Also that’s just WhiningCoil don’t worry about it.)

Yeah, he's not wrong.

I find this unlikely.

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I spent some time in Virginia, Maryland, and South Central PA about 20 years ago.

I can absolutely corroborate the profound weirdness of the crimes that started occurring as the illegal immigrant population increased in a given area.

We always had a lot of bar fights, domestics, and drunk driving arrests, but as the area started getting flooded with migrant labor, the profile of the crimes started changing.

There were not one, not two, but three distinct men who were arrested for stabbing women in the ass in stores. Specifically women, specifically in the ass, and specifically in stores.

We had another rash of complaints about a serial truck bed shitter.

Later, we had a rash of cattle mutilations that turned out to be... I guess you'd call it poaching? Rustling? Either way, it was illegal immigrant orchard workers cutting their own steaks from the local dairy cows.

Don't even get me started on the cock fighting and dog fighting operations.

Believe me when I say that the character of a place does change once the illegal immigrant laborer population reaches a certain critical mass.

I can believe that illegal farm workers are poaching, maybe stealing small stock, but they'd butcher a cow and there wouldn't be a 'carcass' left(Hispanics are actually very fond of animal parts not normally eaten in anglo-american culture; poor unassimilated Hispanics[which farm laborers would be] are actually known for not liking steak very much in comparison). I can believe there were cockfighting and maybe dogfighting rings set up by illegals but the rash of ass stabbin's doesn't sound realistic to me- do you have a news article? Obviously I have no trouble buying a one off floridaman-type serial offender, but you'll forgive me if just this one guy shitting in truck beds doesn't sound like the sort of thing to paint with a broad brush over.

I can believe that illegal farm workers are poaching, maybe stealing small stock, but they'd butcher a cow and there wouldn't be a 'carcass' left(Hispanics are actually very fond of animal parts not normally eaten in anglo-american culture; poor unassimilated Hispanics[which farm laborers would be] are actually known for not liking steak very much in comparison).

Cow heart kebab is the bee's knees, even if it upsets my stomach. I've never cared much for cow lung, but I'll eat it if there's nothing else. Organ meat is good for you; that's where all the nutrients are.

Amusingly, I've slowly assimilated into the American taste for steak. When I was younger I would only eat it well done, because I thought bloody meat was gross, and consequently I did not enjoy steak any more than I did chicken, and I found it distinctly inferior to fatty pork, despite being more expensive. But after years of getting bombarded by the medium rare meme, I broadened my horizons, and now I realize that the gringos were onto something with this whole steak thing.

because I thought bloody meat was gross, and consequently I did not enjoy steak any more than I did chicken

Dunno about that "consequently". I prefer my steak well done, and a nice well-done steak is one of my favorite foods.

It goes both ways- Lengua and Chicharron have developed a following among Gringos. We still mostly think tripa is gross, and menudo is restricted to being a folk cure.

Gringas mostly still think it's all gross.

Also for @Amadan, who asked in another thread.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/fairfax-county-butt-slasher-to-be-sentenced-friday/1924072/

Pimentel was arrested near a shopping mall in Peru, in January 2012. He was extradited to the United States in December.

I live in that general area, and none of this sounds remotely familiar or believable. Are there a lot of illegals, and crime (especially in the Baltimore -DC corridor)? Of course. But all these tall tales about one town after another being "invaded" by mustachioed Mexicans beating up the high school students, roads swarming with drunken gangsters, museums literally being torn up like an SNL sketch of Great Replacement Theory?

Obviously asking for places and news articles would be tantamount to asking someone to dox themselves, so happily, no one will ever be required to prove any of this and people will believe it or not according to what they already believed.

museums literally being torn up like an SNL sketch of Great Replacement Theory

Most of this sounds wild to me too, but I have no difficulty believing that bit. I don't think it's got much to do with immigration - even a connection to wokeness-writ-large seems strained - but memorials to otherwise-non-historically-relevant individuals being lost to renovations because nobody gave a shit is a story I've heard many times. My old college absolutely broke a sweet old nonagenarian's heart when they reorganized which departments got what buildings, and, in the process, failed to carry over the naming of one of the humanities dept.'s main lecture halls after his long-dead wife, who'd been a lecturer there herself. It wasn't anything to do with her being cancelled, it wasn't anything personal at all. There was just no procedure for carrying the tributes over, and no one cared enough to make one even with the old guy protesting to anyone who'd listen.

even a connection to wokeness-writ-large seems strained

No, I think it’s very easy to place the blame squarely on wokism, especially given this detail:

The museum to the accomplishments and hardships of my ancestors had been "renovated". It now celebrated the fictitious diversity my town has always had.

Museum curators are 94% Democratic, and the newer generation seems quite gung-ho on inserting racial diversity everywhere. The New York Tenement Museum made the news a few years ago when it altered its core principles to change its focus from the Italian and Jewish families who actually lived there to celebrate a black Black family who didn’t. The Art Institute of Chicago made headlines around the same time for firing its entire staff of unpaid, highly educated volunteer docents because they were too white and hiring (and paying) a younger, more diverse crowd in their place (something several other museums also did, but without the attendant fanfare). In the city closest to my own hometown, the history museum has started replacing its old displays on the history of the area. With the changes, a first time visitor could be forgiven for thinking that the area’s history went 1) Native Americans, 2) Genocide, 3) Civil Rights, and 4) Immigration (2000–present), without anything of note in between. It’s a deliberate assault on the heritage of the people who actually built the city and made the area what it is today, and it’s entirely due to the wokeness of the museum staff.

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especially in the Baltimore -DC corridor

That might be a big part of the distinction here.

articles would be tantamount to asking someone to dox themselves,

I'll give some location details anyway. I'm not talking about Chevy Chase and Darnestown. I'm talking about Rocky Ridge and Harney. These were poor, fucked up areas that only got more fucked up. The people living between the beltways just assumed it was rednecks doing redneck shit and never looked any deeper. Given the age of the events and the crap sack quality of the local newspapers, I doubt that I could find anything without going to microfiche at a local library. Since I'd rather set myself on fire than go back there, you can retain your sense of disbelief.

None of these statements sound like believable or normal behavior for poor unassimilated Hispanic migrant workers. Public urination, drunk driving, catcalling getting a bit younger than gringos would go, bar fights, poaching, cockfighting- all sounds like the sort of thing that might happen(and which is just generally a hazard of importing male-skewed unskilled laborers in large numbers). But these stories never confine themselves to the plausible.

But these stories never confine themselves to the plausible.

Neither does reality.

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Serial butt stabber sought in Fairfax County

They did get him, he indeed was an immigrant

I don't know about there being two more.

Sure, I believe an immigrant once went around stabbing people in the butt. I even heard about that one at the time. Because it was quite newsworthy.

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One was in the York/Dover area, and one was around Frederick.

One would have been around 2005, and one would have been around 2008-2009. I had already left the area, so I don't have firsthand information.

Assassins in the ass in stores.

Believe me. After we got over the initial shock, the topic was the butt of our jokes for weeks.

Thanks for that. I actually got a dark chuckle out of it.

I was thinking since last night if I wanted to address that comment. Would it be worth my time? Would anyone even read it and contemplate what it's like to have had those experiences repeatedly? Can I even write it without getting worked up and using a no-no word or a turn of phrase that will get me perma banned? I wrote it over and over probably 3 or 4 times, deleting and thinking it's not worth the effort or it's too risky. But when I finally sacked up and had a version of the post I thought would pass, in the back of my mind I wondered if anyone would even read it, or would it just be dismissed out of hand. Fitting that the first comment, so hot on it's heels, is just rank "I don't believe you".

Yes, I know people don't believe me. That's why I'm so angry all the time.

For what it's worth, speaking as one of the most left-wing people here: I found it very interesting, I believe you wrote it in good faith, and I have a lot of sympathy for you, so I'm glad you did go to the effort of writing it.

(Of course, it doesn't convince me. The impression I get is that the universe has played a cruel trick on you - that you've been tremendously unlucky over an extended period of time, Cardiologists and Chinese Robbers-style, and this has inevitably and understandably skewed your intuitions in a very deep way. If I had a chronic heart condition, and got "treated" by three or four of Scott's anecdotally-psychopathic cardiologists in a row through pure luck of the draw… yeah, I might wind up with a deep-seated intuition that there's got to be something to the inherent rottenness of the profession, no matter how eloquently people tried to talk me out of it. Confirmation bias giving undue salience in my eyes to the ordinary failings of ordinary cardiologists would do the rest.)

What does it not convince you of, I might ask? (I know it's sort of a meaningless question as the original comment it is a reply to was moderated already, but still.) The necessity to control the borders?

FWIW I thought it was quite interesting and a useful window into the impact of immigration on American towns outside the most affluent.

I see he's banned now lol.

For two weeks. He'll be back and probably get another chance before a permaban.

But now that I'm here, I'm curious to know if your perspective is the prevailing opinion here.

For this specific problem? Almost certainly graft by left-wing NGO's is the culprit in the eyes of most posters.

America has outperformed its economic peers in Europe and Asia over the last forty years despite this supposed "anchor".

Does anybody imagine that Europe and Asia are bastions of noble, honest public servants?

It's not uncommon to only indirectly hear about a place, or maybe even visit briefly (as a tourist) and see only the positive side of things. Negatives tend to be more stochastic and harder to evaluate on short time scales. I think plenty of folks have visited the Japan of high-speed public transit and anime, but not seen, say, the sky-high conviction rates of those that raise the ire of prosecutors, or the controversial shrines to WWII troops that committed war crimes. Or the UK, visiting all the Royal tourist spots, never getting harassed by police at odd hours over edgy Twitter posts. Or China, where they advertise clean, modern urban centers, just don't ask about what happened in 1989, or about Tibet or Xinjiang. Or Singapore, as long as you don't bring gum or spray paint.

I think at some level most places have skepticism of public servants. My typical interaction with (American) police is polite and professional, but I'll believe accounts that they're sometimes not.

the UK, visiting all the Royal tourist spots, never getting harassed by police at odd hours over edgy Twitter posts

This doesn't happen unless you openly call for physical violence, and even then only if you are stupid enough to put your real name to it.

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Was the Nazi-saluting pug guy calling for violence?

No, which is why he was only talked to by the police and warned, then booked for a magistrate's court hearing and fined rather than anything else.

If you want to see an example of a case where real punishment gets meted out by the Crown court see here from last week.

The defendent got 15 months in prison for his antics, but that was because he explicitly posted on Twitter "Go on Rotherham, burn any hotels wi them scruffy bastards in it" (talking about refugee hotels) and linked to far right materials very soon after the country was on edge due to the Southport murders (committed by a born British citizen).

Those actions could have potentially spurred on a real human tragedy costing an order of magnitude more lives than the Southport murders themselves.

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the Southport murders (committed by a born British citizen)

Committed by Axel Rudakubana, child of two Rwandan immigrants, picture here.

I wouldn't normally make a point of it, but frankly Mr. Rudakabana is a very non-standard 'British citizen' and that is clearly and directly relevant to both the country being on edge and the Southport riots. The brackets here strike me as deliberately burying the lede.

He wasn't "harassed by police at odd hours". As is normal for people accused of minor offences, he was booked by appointment at a mutually convenient time, bailed immediately, prosecuted and fined £800. This is bullshit and shouldn't have happened, but if you are trying to describe it accurately it is a lot closer to a citation than "being locked up" or some such.

Ok, I trust you and concede that the guy was in fact harassed by police during normal working hours.

From my perspective, America has outperformed its economic peers in Europe and Asia over the last forty years despite this supposed "anchor"

Debatable. Over my life time America went from "the promised land" to "not sure if this is worth the bother of moving half way across the world" to "it's definitely not worth the bother, plus they lost their marbles culturally". Though this is somewhat complicated by the fact that Europe made no shortage of idiotic political/economic decisions during that time itself, including importing it's own set of anchors, as well as America's cultural trends.

If I had any intention of moving across the world, I'd probably be picking China, not the US.

As a child of immigrants myself, I appreciate the liberal cosmopolitan attitude: many of the kindest and most considerate people I have met have been whites who took great pains to live up to the color-blind promise. And I do reciprocate those feelings. But many immigrant and children of immigrants do not feel as I do. You can pave over a lot of problems with prosperity and wealth, but when times are hard those attitudes will come to the fore.

many of the kindest and most considerate people I have met have been whites who took great pains to live up to the color-blind promise

I corroborate this. In fact I would say out of the top 10 people I know well who I could see as such, 8-9 were white. They were all liberal too.

The children of Asian and Hispanic immigrants seem to integrate just fine. Like sure there's activist exceptions but by and large second and third gen Hispanics and Orientals are just... Americans.

Full disclosure: I am of Asian descent, living in Canada. The problem is that the well-integrated ones aren't in charge of culture or policy: and you have the activist weirdos who gain positions of responsibility. And because in general liberal whites are kind of trusting, they take it on face value that they represent the communities they are from.

No dispute on that; but a policy of official actual colourblindness would go a long way towards marginalizing these people. The average Asian doesn't care about Stop Asian Hate one way or the other, an official policy of marginalizing it would not be made up for by popular support.

AADOS oppression olympics racebaiting activists have enough support from the communities that they will continue to exist as notable organizations regardless of official attitude; I don't think this is the case for Asian or Hispanic equivalents.

There's a failure case, in between integration and remigration back to the homeland, that second and third generation immigrants feel like they belong to neither country: that you're fostering a nihilistic cadre of resentful young people with nothing to lose.

Just, uh, speaking from personal experience.

I see he's banned now lol. But now that I'm here, I'm curious to know if your perspective is the prevailing opinion here.

WhiningCoil is flirting with a permanent ban himself, actually.

"Deport them all" is certainly an opinion some people have here, but as loudly as it is sometimes expressed I would not bet that it is prevailing. It's not uncommon for people to make the libertarian argument for open borders, for example--Bryan Caplan has some cachet in the rationalsphere.

I think your circumstances are not unusual. But there is a potential rejoinder you might want to consider--

My eldest is going to enter the same public high school I went to. The children of the first generation immigrants I went to school with now have their own families and, like me, have stayed in the same county to raise their children. They're indistinguishable from my family in the ways that matter to me.

That's great--my classical liberal heart is warmed--but it would be interesting to know for certain whether you are indistinguishable from their family in the ways that matter to them. If one demographic says "we love everyone, we help everyone equally, this is how we all work together to make the world a better place," but the other demographic responds "thanks for the help, we're going to take everything that is given to us to help our ingroup and, if possible, to become the dominant power, at which point we will then suppress our outgroup." The quote from Frank Herbert's Dune books is--

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.

I am not saying this is how your neighbors think! I hope it is not how they think. But that is the angle and the concern that tends to arise when people make arguments like the one you have made here.

WhiningCoil is flirting with a permanent ban himself, actually.

Yeah, about that, I sent a modmail about this accusation that I'm running alts, because it's bullshit, and I'd appreciate a response.

Yeah, about that, I sent a modmail about this accusation that I'm running alts, because it's bullshit, and I'd appreciate a response.

You should just make some alts. The trick is that the alts should say absolutely nothing the least bit controversial at least until the current main is kaput. They should just make obvious little comments and build up a few points until it's time for them to become the new main.

By the time your new main goes from "newbie with a clean record so far" to being someone the mods remember in their own right, your last account getting banned should be old news.

You also need to manage IP addresses and browser fingerprinting. It's quite frankly a lot of work to do well, especially at scale.

Oh, thanks for outing yourself. I already banned you for two weeks because you keep making shitty comments, but since you just admitted to being a very specific ban evader, I will make it permanent.

I don't get why you think this makes you clever, but whatever.

Hopefully you see my response. I am not aware of any accusations of you running alts. In the past year you have accumulated AAQCs, warnings, and bans in approximately equal proportion. These are always hard cases for us, because we can see that you're smart enough to understand and follow the rules, and you create excellent content for the community on a regular basis. So we actively resist banning you, but you blatantly violate the rules way too often for us to simply ignore. Your current balance is such that you really are flirting with a perma, or at least a very long term (90+ days) ban.

I am not aware of any accusations of you running alts.

Two days ago.

"He's been temp-banned many times under his various alts since he first started blackpilling hard on reddit,"

Less than a day ago.

"I do know you have been modded and banned pretty regularly under whichever alt you're using."

Both from @Amadan.

I see. Yeah, no, as far as I know that's just a reference to his reddit username, which is/was not "WhiningCoil." The mod team was discussing WhiningCoil's status just yesterday and no one made any mention of alt accounts at that time.

Yeah, no, as far as I know that's just a reference to his reddit username

I don't think so.

I know what your original account was on reddit (1). You switched to a new one (2), came here with yet another one (3), and I am pretty sure you went through a couple others (4+) along the way-I will admit I might be misremembering those (though I think I could name them). I do know you have been modded and banned pretty regularly under whichever alt you're using.

Numbering is mine. Amadan seems to think I've had at least 4 accounts and is holding this against me in his moderation decisions.

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I wouldn't describe the immigrants I know as being "given" much beyond the opportunity to immigrate to the U.S. That's significant!, but they worked their ass off to climb from their poor neighborhoods to Fairfax County. I also don't think my family is perceived as the "outgroup" in any meaningful sense that affects our well-being.

It's great that you don't feel any ill effects from this because you can apparently afford to live in NOVA. I briefly considered moving back to NOVA to send my kids to a very specific and unique school I once attended, but real estate is so outrageous that even with my pretty decent tech salary we would be mortgage-poor if we tried. I visited my old neighborhood -- a nice middle to upper middle class neighborhood -- and it is now apparently entirely Indian/Pakistani/Arab, each driveway has a bunch of cars so presumably the houses are packed with people, and our local grocery store now looks like a halal bazaar. Even if I could afford to live there, I don't think I would, because I don't think me and my (nonwhite!) American family would fit in anymore.

If we hadn't had have massive immigration, there would be less pressure on real estate and housing (fewer people, lower cultural acceptance of people packing in like sardines and paying insane rent/mortgages) and thus a higher standard of living for existing Americans, and my neighborhood would still be recognizably American instead of some Indian/Middle Eastern colony. It's easy to be shielded from this sort of thing when you apparently make enough money to live comfortably in NOVA -- you're probably surrounded by other very affluent people who have integrated well.

That's a nice quote, but how are my freedoms being suppressed? I think I would have noticed by now.

Oh, depending on your age, there's a very good chance you're not missing out on any freedoms at all. At worst, maybe you've been passed over for university admissions or a job or a promotion as a result of affirmative action or something--and given the abundance of all those things in America, even then you may not have so much as noticed.

Your comment alludes to the process of integration and I think that historically there is much to be said for it. European immigrants faced much the same concern as that directed toward South and Central American, African, Middle Eastern, and Indian immigrants today, but a couple generations later they seem to have integrated entirely. It might be observed that the integration of descendants of African slavery has gone a bit less smoothly, but of course we didn't really start trying to integrate them throughout the nation until about 75 years ago.

Nevertheless, there is in certain corners a tendency of some political groups to assert "whiteness" as a kind of original sin. Job postings listing essentially every demographic except straight white Christian men as "preferred candidates" come up a lot in Canada and even sometimes in the United States. More importantly, just the fact of identifying as "Republican" or "conservative" is enough to get you dog piled and even banned from certain online communities. If you in fact found this space via Twitter, you might not be familiar with some of the more "canonical" writings that created this space, but I heartily recommend them:

I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup

Neutral Versus Conservative: The Eternal Struggle

None of this is to suggest that I really disagree with you. I have high hopes for the long term, and I stubbornly refuse to believe that liberalism is dead (or if it is, that we should stop trying to resurrect it). But that means I strongly oppose identitarianism both from the Right ("alt-right") and from the Left ("Woke"). Identitarianism is illiberal and works against your own expressed preferences for integration by instead demanding ideological conformity. The worry toward which I am pointing is that identitarianism appears to be on the rise since ~2014, first on the Left and then on the Right. Many people only get alarmed about the identitarianism happening in their outgroup (since the other kind is a personal benefit). But I think also sometimes people don't realize that just because you don't think someone is in your outgroup, doesn't mean they actually consider you part of their ingroup.

Y'know, your comment helped me clarify a thought I've had. It seems that there are several different beliefs that often get confused for one another because they are only subtly different.

  • Liberalism: reject tribalism, embrace equality and "color-blindness," let's put aside our differences to get rich and live and in peace (classical /old-school liberals)
  • Identitarianism: embrace tribalism, take from others and give to your own, by hook or by crook (e.g. ethnocentric immigrants, Black nationalists):
  • Anti-White Identitarianism: Same as above, except your tribe prioritizes taking from whites first (mostly because it's easy pickin's, but also something something oppression). There's the Progressive variant that adds the rest of the intersectional totem pole under whites

so far, do familiar. But then

  • Pro-Republic Liberal Identitarianism (there has to be a better name): embrace tribalism, (but reluctantly and only as a means to RETVRN to limited liberalism, not as an end in itself) because liberalism can only function as a fine-tuning knob on a cohesive society, not as a combat arena for rival incompatible cultures duking it out for supremacy.

Did I miss any?

What are some of these freedoms that an older person might be missing out on?

Sorry, I was thinking in the other direction--I think young people are the ones who may have better reason to feel this is all constraining their liberty. The 1990s seem to have been "peak America" in several ways--probably the best "Free Speech" era, certainly an economic dream time, cost disease in education had begun but was years from spiraling out of control, etc.

We do have much better video games now, though.

I feel like jokes about political correctness are somewhat peak 1990s... but I'm happy to cede something along the lines of "If we only knew...".

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I wonder if some of the problems people have with this kind of in-group bias is the reverse: immigrants who are culturally different and need to exert a lot of effort to catch up will get along with mainstream Americans, but immigrants who are multiple generation assimilated are more likely to use their immigrant heritage for identity politics.

The comment you replied to is filtered.

“We typically have the same group of offenders every week that are recognizable by face and by name, just loitering and hanging out,” he said. “A small percentage of people are ruining it for the rest of the community that deserves to go to their grocery store and their library.”

Computer, add "loiterers" to the list.

In countries like the States, seethe ensues when corporations move their stores out of crime-ridden areas. Seethe ensues when corporations stay in crime-ridden areas but put their merchandise behind protective casings. Seethe ensues when mom-and-pop stores put up bars or barriers in front of their merchandise or themselves (that's what's most Problematic about black-on-Asian crime: Asians daring to protect themselves in their stores and make blacks feel unwelcome).

Just tell us what store-owners are supposed to do. I guess, by process of elimination, keeping your store in place and enjoying the vibrancy with a smile on your face is what store-owners are supposed to do.

In that respect, state-sponsored grocery and other stores make sense. When corporations and Problematic individuals fail to be Empathetic and Decent Beings, the state would need to step-in and use net-taxpayer funds to be on the Right Side of History.

And then when the usual outcomes remain, one can bounce back and forth between the epicycles of Social Constructs, Socioeconomic Factors, Food Deserts, Food Security, Nutritional Security, Micronutritional Equity, Microbiome Equity, Factors from Other Ways of Knowing.

The state-sponsored grocery stores not delivering the promised outcomes would just mean the racists and stingy net-pax-payers prevented such outcomes from happening with their bigotry, and more tax-payer money and Inclusion would need to be devoted to the matter to pwn the racists and eat the rich in the name of Equity.

My guess is that the NGO running the store is just incompetent- the empty shelves are probably as much about poor stocking/inventory management as they are about shoplifting, otherwise Aldi would be suffering the same problem. Maybe there's also an incompetent pricing system- this seems like a thing progressive NGO's would be bad at.

I do wonder how nearby grocery stores- there are supposedly two of them- are handling shoplifting. I wouldn't expect extralegal justice.

Certainly few, if any, people are stealing tomatoes and boxes of cereal.

Actually there is a fix to the shoplifting problem, but it requires quite a bit of strategy, and probably some Republican Food Stamp reform to go through. If all you carry is healthy food and basic necessities like TP, you will have basically zero shoplifting problems. You have to, essentially, lock only your baby formula and razors.

Meat shoplifting is 100% a thing and way worse for the store's bottom line than stealing rice or tomatoes. Mostly not for personal consumption(although it does sometimes happen), but for resale- meat is expensive unless your cost to acquire rounds to 0.

That is a fair point. Meat still is harder to fence than booze, and does need to be kept fresh.

Cheese is also a big one. There are lots of grocery items that are value-dense (is this a term?) Essentially give disproportionate payoff for the ease of taking and moving them. Bonus points if you only need limited effort to keep it in good condition.

And unlike other things where you basically already need to be a career criminal to get the ins to someone who will fence stolen property for you, stealing food products has another upside: there are a million struggling restaurants who will gladly buy your stolen product from you, no questions asked.

there are a million struggling restaurants who will gladly buy your stolen product from you, no questions asked.

That seems unlikely to me. Do you have any evidence to back that up, either anecdotal or published?

The stuff being stolen most nowadays is high value-to-volume non-perishable packaged goods which are easy to fence. Razor blades are a classic example, but if you look at places where shoplifted goods are being sold online or at what gets locked up in stores, laundry detergent is probably the number one target.

Poors shoplifting for personal consumption happens (particularly for booze) but isn't what is closing grocery stores.

Poors shoplifting for personal consumption happens (particularly for booze) but isn't what is closing grocery stores.

I agree. Tide pods I know are big, as is the alcohol in resale.

There's degrees of petty criminals. Plenty of them aren't actually nearly as ballsy as they like to pretend. If the NP store just does literally nothing, Aldi just having a guard who knows their faces and doesn't let them in might be enough. But it's hard to tell.

I'm not sure if American Aldis are designed the same way as European Aldis but given the layout where you have to walk through the queues by the tills to leave it seems like an awkward place to steal from either way.

That would be the normal way to leave but you could also double back through the store.

I was never a huge aldi shopper but it seems to be a direct copy of euro aldi, in a way that is quite strange to see for my American brain.

The thing I most noticed is the coin thing with the shopping carts and the cash boxes.

So there are a lot of threads going on with this article, but my take on this is that the store was probably doing okay before 2020, but then Fentanyl Floyd's crime wave absolutely decimated the area.

You can just call it the Floyd crime wave. I think everyone here already knows he was on fentanyl and that there is an argument that it would have killed him regardless of how he was restrained, you don't need to remind us every time you say his name. (Though I'd actually be interested if anyone has ever done a reasonably credible/objective look into that argument, since from what I've seen the trial, mainstream media, and conservative media all seem unreliable.) "Fentanyl Floyd" is approaching "Amerikkka"/"Drumpf"/"Demonrat" levels of nicknames that do nothing besides signal your politics in a way that can easily come across as obnoxious.

Sun Fresh market was actually a [successful independent grocery store](Sun Fresh Market)

I assume this was supposed to be a link.

It's defense against the enemy. I won't "say his name."

Fixed the link

  • -10

But you did say his name. You typed "Floyd", right there in your message, clear as a bell. If you had some objection to typing out the full "George Floyd", well, I think that's pretty silly, but no one's asking you to do that; you could just have removed "Fentanyl" and said "Floyd's crime wave".

What's in a name fundamentally? I can certainly talk about the football player named George Floyd as much as I want without "saying his name." So there's certainly more to it than just saying the words that match up to someone's name.

To say someone's name, it requires saying the words that match up with that person's name, as well as context that disambiguates the reference to a particular person. I would also argue that using a derogatory nickname for someone doesn't count, even if that nickname contains the words that match that person's name. The reason being is that those words aren't enough to refer to that person, and the denunciation itself makes it possible to understand what person is being talked about.

It's important that it's a derogatory denunciation, rather than an objective fact, as saying the words in someone's name, along with objective but negative facts about that person, can still carry an implied acknowledgement of that person.

So it's in fact important to use the derogatory phrasing, even over saying "[word], who died from fentanyl ..." because that's simply staging an objective fact, not necessarily denouncing.

You don't have to say anyone's name, but "Fentanyl Floyd" is just obnoxious boo-lighting and very explicitly waging the culture war.

The autopsy report found 11 ng/mL of Fentanyl and 5.6 ng/mL of Norfentanyl. The story I've read online (which I'm not qualified to judge) goes like this:

DUI blood test sometimes show that drivers have 11 ng/mL of Fentanyl in their blood. Habitual users build up protective tolerance and can remain functional despite a level of Fentanyl in their blood that would be rapidly fatal to a naive user. The level of Norfentanyl adds nuance. The typical overdose death of a naive user occurs before their body can metabolise Fentanyl to Norfentanyl. The presence of Norfentanyl proves that George Floyd had a protective tolerance and had had a high level of Fentanyl in his blood for a while, giving his body time to metabolize it.

This is a load bearing part of the criminal prosecution of Derek Chauvin. Without Floyd's habit and tolerance, 11 ng/mL is a lethal dose, explaining away Floyd's death and handing Chauvin a get out of jail free card. It is important context for understanding policing in America. The police have to deal with junkies who are high on pain killing drugs at the time of their arrest, putting the police at risk of wild, random violence.

Had the Fentanyl story been pure invention, intended to muddy the waters, then keeping it alive by calling him "Fentanyl Floyd" would indeed be just obnoxious boo-lighting. But it is a vital part of the story. Without it, a nerdy, timid forger is attempting to quietly pass his $20 bill, gets caught and surrenders without resistance. Then he is knelt on and killed for being Black. That is a very different story. Trying to airbrush Fentanyl from the story is waging culture war.

Unimpressive sophistry. No one is demanding anyone "airbrush fentanyl from the story."

Ok I'll try to hold back next time.

This is giving me Harry Potter vibes.

George Floyd was not a good man, but he did not deserve to die.

I will agree that at the time of final arrest he was not going to be charged with any crimes serious enough to merit death- but he has committed some of those crimes in his life.

I think he did. Anyone who points a gun at a pregnant women while robbing their house deserves to hang

Didn't that particular anecdote turn out to be an exaggeration?

I don't think it was ever confirmed that she was pregnant. It doesn't appear any journalist ever bothered to track down this particular Aracely Henriquez.

Still in his Wikipedia. Here is a WaPo article strongly hinting it was made up with zero evidence (ie they took the five year plea because they were convinced they’d receive no justice—yet the paper didn’t include any of the evidence supporting the conviction). https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/george-floyd-america/policing/

One of the HPD officers that had arrested Floyd is serving a 60 year sentence for felony murder for the 2019 Harding Street raid, a "drug bust" on fabricated evidence that killed two white homeowners with no major criminal history.

So we now believe the victim who identified Floyd is lying because an officer involved happened to be dirty?

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Shame on him killing himself via fent overdose then

Shame on the government for allowing a fentanyl crisis to fester and claim lives, you might equally say.

Yes I agree. Shame on the government forces that allowed open air drug markets in major US city centers, released drug dealers over and over again after arrest, and turned a blind eye to public drug consumption in the middle of the sidewalk and at bus stops.

If you believe in the government as mother and father of us all. Outside that, over 99 times out of 100 you can avoid getting involved with fentanyl by not indulging in recreational opiates... which are, after all, illegal.

I don't think one should change one's opinion on the object level based on popular sentiment.

"Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument."

It's a good rule, whatever your political opinions are. If it is violated often enough, this place will just become another cesspit like Reddit or X, where most of the political discourse is just attention bait and emotional venting.

I don't think your political enemies like references to the Floyd/Ferguson Effect regardless of what you call him. If anything derogatory partisan nicknames mean such references are less likely to be taken seriously by those they might otherwise be worried about you convincing.

Ferguson Effect

Good idea I can say that, as it's a way to refer to the event without saying his name. But I feel like it's less understandable for the average reader, who probably forgot where Ferguson is but remembers the name.

Good idea I can say that, as it's a way to refer to the event without saying his name.

Different event, same effect. The Ferguson Effect refers to the rise in crime following the death of Michael Brown, and by extension any similar event. (Michael Brown being the guy who protestors chanted "hands up don't shoot" over, who wasn't actually holding his hands up and was in fact attacking the officer and grabbing his gun shortly after having robbed a store and assaulted the store employee). It was somewhat contentious whether the Ferguson effect was real, but then we had the Floyd Effect which was much bigger and less ambiguous.

I mean, is it so terrible to say these people's names? You can obviously disagree with the way in which the events have been framed and understood, but at some point you're just giving ammunition to your opposition who can make the reasonable claim that you're trying to dehumanize Floyd or Trayvon by not treating them as people worthy of being referenced, even when relevant, and even to criticize them.

Was thinking of making a higher level post but I'll just reply here:

Imagine if the enemy said "doing the hokey pokey is an endorsement of our cause." Or alternatively "doing the hokey pokey is pledging loyalty our cause." Well I would find it a pretty compelling reason to stop doing the hokey pokey. Even though I might like that dance, and have to sit out for that at the school dance. Refusing to do it is enough of a low cost to me that I'm willing to cede the ground and let them make the hokey pokey an enemy loyalty pledge.

You might say that I should do the hokey pokey anyways to try to reclaim it from the enemy. That might be reasonable depending on the specific factors at the time, but when the overwhelming number of people doing it are loyal enemy servants, that's difficult. All the genuine hokey pokey lovers in the world aren't enough to outnumber the enemy's loyalists, and unfortunately they're all going to be misjudged as being part of the enemy's group just for doing what they love. They'll probably have to post a sign outside their gym that says "we don't endorse the enemy." But unfortunately holding that ground is not a battle that can be easily won.

Imagine if the enemy said "doing the hokey pokey is an endorsement of our cause." Or alternatively "doing the hokey pokey is pledging loyalty our cause." Well I would find it a pretty compelling reason to stop doing the hokey pokey.

Well, sure, but who on earth says that saying the name 'George Floyd' or that saying the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' (in reference to a movement and organisation called Black Lives Matter) constitutes endorsing anything? I don't see the concern here.

I can understand not wanting to use certain phrases because they frame an issue in a way you disagree with. For instance, I avoid saying the phrase 'marriage equality' because I think it is a gross mischaracterisation of the issue, and if I used it I think I would be accepting a strawman. Likewise there's a tic among some activists where they refuse to use the phrase 'pro-life' in any circumstances; they instead refer to pro-life activists as 'anti-abortion activists'.

But 'George Floyd' is just a name, and saying it implies nothing about whether one supports or opposes any political issue related to him. Likewise BLM is the name of an organisation. I don't think that saying it in that context constitutes a kind of endorsement.

By saying the name of the organization, you have also said the words in that phrase. By saying those words, you have necessarily incepted the idea represented by that phrase into the mind of yourself and the minds of your readers. Even though the idea may be completely irrelevant to your intended discussion denouncing or even defending the organization, you have necessarily made the idea represented by the phrase a topic of contemplation and discussion, even against your best intention.

You have also contributed to the dissemination of that idea as readers who have not heard that phrase before will be exposed to it now. Especially without an explicit denial of the idea, introducing a new idea to someone carries a small implicit endorsement. This might not be particularly an issue with the phrase that has the same words as the name of that organization, but in general I believe this rule applies.

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they instead refer to pro-life activists as 'anti-abortion activists'.

I'm ok with that -- obviously that's what they are!

There's even the movement to stop saying pro-choice (among pro-choicers) and instead say pro-abortion. I'm fine with this. Obviously whether abortion is acceptable and should be legal, and under what circumstances, is the core of the debate. I'm happy to use the euphemisms, because it's also true that pro-lifers believe they're defending life and pro-choicers believe they're defending the ability to choose whether to carry a child to term.

I get the "marriage equality" thing, but honestly I'm fine with that term too -- if you believe gay marriage is meaningfully different from straight marriage, obviously you think it's unequal, and should be so legally, in an important way! Of course, that's strategically dangerous, but I would rather people just bite the bullet of whatever it is they want to argue for and own it. But I'm also happy with the term "traditional marriage," though I'd prefer if advocates for that opposed "we just don't love each other anymore" divorces as well.

I guess I just take the "avoid semantic debates" thing pretty far -- for the most part, I'll use any term you want me to use, I'd prefer to think about the object level.

I did a fun excercise once, where I tried to exploit the euphemism treadmill for humor or for trolling (not that I commend trolling). I just found the most out-there, unknown, transgressive, new-style, politically-correct term for something, then used it to say something deeply offensive about that thing:

"People of color should go back to where they came from."

"Birthing people should be forced to have at least one child a year." (This phrase is just dumb, I see why radfems hated it so much.)

"BIPOC are a major threat to the social fabric of the United States."

"The LGBTQIA2S+ community is made up entirely of groomers."

"Trans women of color are the worst people on the planet."

(For the record, I don't believe any of this. These are merely examples.)

Doesn't have the same valence as using a slur, does it? And yet these phrases communicate a pretty harsh claim. But stripped of opposing-tribe markers, the actual object-level claim emerges like Neo from the uterine vat of the Matrix, and can be discussed.

So I guess that's why I cringe at euphemistic avoidance of opposing-tribe terms: I'd rather make a harsh claim in a way that might get mistaken for an opposing-tribe claim than signal my in-group in a way that burdens my claim with its smell. It's not about claiming territory for me, it's about exploring ideas.

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The solution is to do a modified hokey pokey. You're signaling to your ingroup your resistance while refusing to let the outgroup dictate your actions. One perhaps silly example is that I will still draw a rainbow, despite opposing gender ideology, but will draw it in the classical style using just red, yellow, and blue.

I think this puts me on the side of using 'Fentanyl Floyd' at least directionally. I think I just disagree with that phrase in particular. It seems uncouth and disrespectful. You don't modify the hokey pokey by twerking in the middle of it because you make an even bigger fool of yourself.

Nah, man, this is silly. His name was George Floyd. That's simply a fact. He was a person of historical significance who had a name that we use the same way we use names to refer to anyone else when we're trying to convey information about who we're discussing. You are not "Saying his name" in the liturgical BLM sense just because you use his name to communicate data.

You can despise him and the Black Lives Matter movement all you want, but literally Voldemorting words is giving "the enemy" more power over you than if you just used accurate names and descriptions for things. Notice that I typed "Black Lives Matter" without in any way implying that I endorse the movement, because everyone understands what I mean by referring to it.

These awkward affectations you use to avoid typing words remind me of Zoomers saying "unalived" or "grape" - originally because they had to censor certain words on TikTok, but now it's just becoming a Zoomer thing that you can't Say Those Words.

It's ridiculous and it isn't making some political point or p0wning the Wokes, it's just you contributing to the obfuscation of language.

This post reminds me of the "His name was Robert Paulson" scene from Fight Club. Just a heads up.

Thought about this more and wrote a more direct response in a separate comment: https://www.themotte.org/post/2254/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/348256?context=8#context

These awkward affectations you use to avoid typing words remind me of Zoomers saying "unalived" or "grape" - originally because they had to censor certain words on TikTok, but now it's just becoming a Zoomer thing that you can't Say Those Words.

I've never heard of "grape", but I don't spend much time on the Tok. "Unalived" is just an inherently funny word, it sounds like a Monty Python joke about bureaucratic language. I'd only use it as part of a joke.

Of course, "died" is a phrase people don't like saying, "passed away" is the old euphemism.

I don't know anyone who won't say "died" in person, but maybe this is a younger zoomer thing that I'm too unbrainrotted to understand.

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I get some sort of autistic pleasure from obfuscating language (my friends and I came up with an insane number of codewords for too many things) so maybe you caught me in some sort of subconscious trap. Irregardless, I will still not say the words.

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Didnt this exact thing happen to the 'Ok' handsign a while ago. It was hilarious.

Imagine if the enemy said "doing the hokey pokey is an endorsement of our cause." Or alternatively "doing the hokey pokey is pledging loyalty our cause." Well I would find it a pretty compelling reason to stop doing the hokey pokey.

At some point, this is just you allowing people you describe as your enemy to literally dictate what you can and can't do, which isn't a position of power, strength, or strategy.

If they get that much on your nerves, it's them who has power over you, not you over them. You're not defeating Newspeak by speaking in the old way -- you're creating a contra-Newspeak that's just as controlling, just as silly, and just as petty as what your opponents are doing. The fact that you're saying this is going on even in your own thoughts actually indicates that the Newspeak is working on you, not that you're resisting it. To put it in conflict terms, like you like, the enemy's in your head, which means you've already lost.

All the genuine hokey pokey lovers in the world aren't enough to outnumber the enemy's loyalists, and unfortunately they're all going to be misjudged as being part of the enemy's group just for doing what they love. They'll probably have to post a sign outside their gym that says "we don't endorse the enemy."

Alternatively, they might just continue to do what they love, and keep grilling dancing. Because, just perhaps, they won't mind if someone misjudges them as "part of the enemy's group," because they'd rather live life to the fullest than let ingroup/outgroup dynamics shape every aspect of their life.

I'm going to say to you what I say to the woke left when they similarly respond with fierce intensity to things the right does: living this way sounds absolutely exhausting, and soul-destroying, not life-giving or powerful.

Honestly I don't think about it 99% of the time because I just grill in irl and the enemy hasn't come for that yet.

If I was a hardcore hokey pokey dancer then sure this would be a major problem but it's really not an issue.

it's them who has power over you, not you over them.

This is in fact true when the enemy controls all of the institutions and positions of power. Where for many people, simply having a job requires many implicit and several explicit oaths of loyalty to the enemy. I am fortunate enough that I am not one of those people.

You also have to remember, the enemy has been doing the hokey pokey and gloating about it, nonstop, 24/7 for 5 years now - on the streets, on tv, at work, in the papers, at the hospital, in the technical documentation for some random API, etc. I'm not the one who made it such a big deal. And NO, I will NOT do it.

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…”the enemy”?

I in fact have always referred to the enemy as the enemy, for at least 5+ years of posting here, even on the reddit. Though I have since nuked most old comments.

The Outgroup, which must be booed at every opportunity.

Though I may use certain tortured phrasing, in order to avoid the enemy's newspeak, my posting is not substantially boo outgroup.

In another example, I will never ever say "███████ l█v█s m█tt█r", even to denounce the movement or group, because simply by saying it the enemy has won a victory over you.

Consider the hypothetical. Suppose Israel named a military unit "Allah is not real and muhammad was a big dum dum." Now would an Iranian newspaper be able to simply report "The Israeli military unit 'Allah is not real and muhammad was a big dum dum' is committing genocide"? I think not. It's a trick meant to put those words in your mouth and I will not play along.

The parallel comments already said about as much, but Iranian media does not represent the standard of communication that I would wish for this community to aspire to.

You may consider your rationale as being analogous to "my outgroup shoots at me, so I would be stupid to unilaterally disarm and not shoot at them", but perhaps it is more akin to "my outgroup has bad hygiene, so I would be stupid to unilaterally disarm and take a shower".

Now would an Iranian newspaper be able to simply report "The Israeli military unit 'Allah is not real and muhammad was a big dum dum' is committing genocide"? I think not.

I mean, I think they would report that, because it would be a fantastic way to demonstrate that Israelis are infidels and blasphemers.

I also think if you're at the point of comparing yourself to the way Muslims respond to blasphemy, you should be seriously evaluating the emotional intensity you're applying to politics.

If the Iranians can't use certain turns of phrase I consider it a weakness born out of irrationality. If they think it's a trick to make them say it they might be correct; more the fools them that they are open to any harm from taking the trick on the chest.

I will never ever say "███████ l█v█s m█tt█r"

Bleeping it out doesn't make you say it any less than bleeping out one letter from the word "fuck" makes it any less obscene.

"If you mince your oaths, the Lord still knows you took His name in vain, he just sees you're a fucking pussy as well"

Society has certainly decided that bleeping out the fuck word makes the work less obscene. See all those songs that are bleeped out.

I also didn't say the word that you may expect in that censor bar in my head when I typed it out. I just meta-determined that placing those censor bars would be a way to refer to that phrase without saying it directly.

I just use BLM personally.

This has always been the reason for 'food deserts' - not that grocery stores maliciously avoid urban zones, but that they are forced out by crime. The margins on produce are razor thin and cannot handle a significant burden from shoplifting. This is not a symptom of urban areas in general - there are major cities in the US and around the world with perfectly healthy and reasonably priced groceries, I used to live in one - this is caused by bad policy from soft-hearted politicians who don't take crime seriously. Mamdani is a case in point here, not because he wants government-run grocery stores to fix the food desert problem (which in my opinion isn't a totally crazy idea, I've got no problem in theory with government subsidizing or managing a business even though it will likely suffer from red tape and overhead) - he's a case in point because he's openly soft on crime and yet doesn't see the connection to the other problems in his city.

The funny thing is that the area in the article isn't even a food desert. There are multiple other grocery stores within 1 mile, and also in heavily black areas.

Produce isn't getting stolen. The underclass doesn't want it and doesn't know anyone who does. There's probably a meat theft problem, but the real reason is that the urban poor just doesn't cook and doesn't want to. There are no grocery stores selling fresh ingredients because nobody would buy them; they buy whatever processed foods and sodas/energy drinks their foodstamps cover, but not raw meat, produce, staples like rice or flour or pasta, dairy. The native underclass eats an atrocious diet of ultraprocessed foods with terrible macros and they won't buy anything else.

And you're basing this on what, exactly? Your intimate involvement with the "urban poor"? I can assure you that right now, the patronage of several Pittsburgh grocery stores in wealthy, white areas is close to half black, with jitneys lining the parking lots. These just so happen to be the closest normal grocery stores to "urban areas" without one.

Normal, working and middle class blacks shop at grocery stores and eat normal, burgers and spaghetti and pork chops, food. Most blacks are not the underclass(and the underclass is not entirely black, although it is disproportionately so). Underclass whites don't cook either.

The 'urban poor' is a pretty broad stroke. Plenty of cultures have a solid foundation in frugal cooking (e.g. 'rice and beans'). I lived near a fairly poor urban neighborhood for my first job after college, and the supermercado was bustling.

Also, anecdotally, meat theft can be a big problem. I know a junkie who used to shoplift steaks by the stack. It's relatively high value for resale, and cooking a steak is not that hard vs the payoff in deliciousness.

"Urban poor" is often a euphemism and not simply referring to poor people living in an urban setting.

native underclass

Yes, the supermercado was bustling. Something tells me this isn’t a Hispanic neighborhood. The actually poor whites and blacks won’t eat rice and beans.

Meat theft is definitely a thing, it’s easy for everyone and the social class a rung or two above the junkies that they have access to eats as much meat as they can afford.

The actually poor whites and blacks won’t eat rice and beans.

Are you kidding me? That was a staple in my destitute Appalachian community growing up. When you could afford dinner, that was definitely one of the most common meals. Nobody liked it; it wasn't as good as half a can of tomato soup made with milk and a bunch of crackers, but it sure beat having a big glass of water for dinner.

Never thought before about how culturally informative it might be to ask what kind of beans go with rice or that you have for dinner.

it wasn't as good as half a can of tomato soup made with milk and a bunch of crackers

Mmm, a little margarine on the crackers when you can? Delicious.

Am I the only one here who actually likes rice and beans? It's tasty and easy to cook up when you're in a rush and the beans provide good protein so it's not the most unhealthy thing out there either.

Rice and beans can be incredible but there is a canyon between well prepared rice and beans with all the fixin's (some fatty pork stewed in the beans, lots of spices, maybe some hot peppers) and plain ass rice+ plain ass boiled beans.

I would eat "fancy" rice and beans as a meal any day of the week. Simple rice and beans is at best a side dish and it would be pretty unfulfilling to subsist on it.

Beans are just an inferior legume; chickpeas and lentils are much better side dishes to go with rice. As for protein, you should be getting that from animal products, not from plants.

Fair enough. I agree chickpeas and lentils go better with rice, but it's more effort to cook them properly in a reduction sauce while for beans you can just dump them out of a can and it sort of works.

I like them now that I'm an adult who has learned how to cook them properly.

As a kid being served rice and beans boiled in the same pot so one is over cooked or the other is under cooked? Not a fan.

...who the hell cooks rice and beans in the same pot? To begin with, the best way to cook rice is in a dedicated rice cooker.

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No. Rice and beans are cheap and tasty(although beans are not exactly quick).

1 can chilli con carne: £3

1 can black beans: £2

Rice

Easily 2 meals for £5/2=£2.50 and you can be more strict if you want to save more money. Got me through postgrad.

Yep, it's a surprisingly healthy and really cheap and easy to make meal. Even if the money is no issue it's still a good staple meal that should absolutely be in your cooking rotation.

The actually poor whites and blacks won’t eat rice and beans.

The fuck I didn't. Brown rice, black beans, celery, and salt went a long way on $15k/year.

Did you miss the 'native underclass' descriptor? This is a predominately urban group defined by generational poverty.

There are a variety of people(eg grad students) who have very similar incomes to the generationally poor underclass, but are not underclass.

It's not just crime, poor people want to eat less healthy food.

Right -- of course the people selling food in 'food deserts' are prioritizing products with high demand in the area. How else could it possibly be? "Hey let's open a market in a heavily-black area but instead of selling them the fresh organic produce they want we'll only offer processed foods." Does anyone think this kind of oppression is actually happening?

Same with reddit's daily complaint threads about how 'the fashion industry' refuses to sell women dresses with pockets. Inevitably someone links an outlet which does offer that but is doing poorly because no one actually wants them.

Or for that matter the 'pink tax' on women's items such as razor blades.

"The products are the same but they charge more for the ones marketed toward women!"
"So if the products are the same, buy the one marketed toward men."
"...No I like the pink one better."

The market is in the business of selling you what you want at a price you find acceptable. There is no conspiracy by rich white men to get in the way of that process.

...Except maybe the war on drugs.

"The products are the same but they charge more for the ones marketed toward women!" "So if the products are the same, buy the one marketed toward men." "...No I like the pink one better."

This is a complete misrepresentation of the claim. This is the equivalent to

"It's hard to unsubscribe. The link is hidden in small white-on-white text."
"Ah, so you admit there is an unsubscribe button! Why are you complaining?"

Misrepresenting your product to trick consumers into paying more or buying something worse for the same money is bad. The companies that do it should be at least shamed, if not addressed with legal action, even if savvy consumers can manage to spend extra time to work around those tricks.

  • -10

It's worth mentioning that the Pink Tax probably doesn't exist.

Unsurprisingly, feminist academics who look into whether women are arbitrarily charged more because of sexism tend not to be the most dispassionate researchers.

I'm reminded of the Obamacare debacle, which still fills me with rage. People (correctly) pointed out that women pay more for health insurance, and (incorrectly) said that this was an unfair "woman tax". It was politically brilliant, reframing the fact that women live longer as a societal injustice - against women! And it was 100% successful; Obamacare made gender-based pricing illegal, and now every man in the country is subsidizing the health care of every woman in the country. Forever.

I once saw a TV segment (might have been with John Stossel) where they interviewed a dry cleaner who had significantly different prices for men's and women's shirts. The owner said that the reason for this is that they could put a men's shirt through the machine and everything would be fine, but if there was so much as a hint of a stain remaining on a woman's shirt, the woman would be back in complaining and demanding they fix it and/or provide a refund. So they actually cleaned the women's shirts better.

Of course, when men are tricked in such ways the progressive line is that the men themselves are demonstrating a moral failure rather than being victims of misrepresentation. How convenient that we don't talk about women's fragility in falling for such misrepresentations and instead focus on how bad the people taking advantage of them are.

Classic hyperagency/hypoagency. Men need to adapt to fit society (or they are failures who need to be mocked for their fragility), whereas society needs to adapt to fit women (or else it's failing women and victimising them). Feminists malignantly prey on and reinforce this double standard all the time.

They're not the same though. Even though the color may be something trivial to change at the factory, it's still a different product. The customer is willing to pay more for it in fact.

Though in reality women's shaving products are usually not literally the same thing. They often include a rubber cushion which is less common on men's shaving products.

How much extra time needs to be spent to work around these tricks when the men's razors are right next to the women's razors?

Why aren't they charging men more then? Or do you believe women are less savvy than men?

I think the difference comes down to shopping behavior- either that of men vs women, or that of women shopping for themselves vs their husbands. Anecdotally women want to buy their stuff in person, but feel comfortable just ordering stuff for their husbands online at the best price available.

Normies have the idea that a price is based on cost, plus a certain amount of profit. Charging more for a product because the customers are less price sensitive rather than because the product costs more to make is considered cheating the customer.

Rationalists may not think that way, but everyone else does. If pink razors cost the same to make, but women are willing to pay extra for them, charging extra is dishonest.

Differences in price due to color are common and accepted, if not liked. Right now for me the same Levis 501s are $39.99 in Dark Stonewash, $41.99 in Medium Stonewash, and $49.99 in Olive Night.

Usually the "pink" items complained about are slightly (or even considerably) different anyway.

  1. The main reason why similar items targeted towards men and women sometimes have different prices isn't for the purpose of trickery, it's because prices are heavily determined by factors like economy of scale. People value product differentiation enough to sometimes buy the more expensive product, so companies make it, and then they charge a price that recoups the money they spent on manufacturing/shipping/etc. another product line.

  2. The actual overall "pink tax" seems to be approximately zero:

Gender-Based Pricing in Consumer Packaged Goods: A Pink Tax?

Further, we show that segmentation involves product differentiation; there is little overlap in the formulations of men’s and women’s products within the same category. Using a national data set of grocery, convenience, drugstore, and mass merchandiser sales, we demonstrate that this differentiation sustains large price differences for men’s and women’s products made by the same manufacturer. In an apples-to-apples comparison of women’s and men’s products with similar ingredients, however, we do not find evidence of a systematic price premium for women’s goods: price differences are small, and the women’s variant is less expensive in three out of five categories. Our findings are consistent with the ease of arbitrage in posted price markets where consumer packaged goods are sold. These results call into question the need for and efficacy of recently proposed and enacted pink tax legislation, which mandates price parity for substantially similar gendered products.

It is one of those issues that reflects the speakers more than the subject. Why is there a "pink tax" meme? Because many people view the world through the lens of feminism, so when they see a male-targeted product that happens to be cheaper than the female-targeted product next to it they believe this is an injustice and a systematic issue. Feminism's influence as an ideology means the "pink tax" then becomes a political issue, the subject of discourse and even legislation, without ever doing the first step of finding out whether it actually exists. Even if it existed it would probably just be a result of something like women statistically valuing product differentiation more so there's many smaller product lines, but we don't even have to move on to that argument because there isn't a notable difference in the first place.

I can confirm that I have bought womens' razors at times because they were cheaper (slightly) and didn't have the dumb 'lubricating strip' that clogs up with beard if you don't shave often enough.

When prima made that post about radical feminism and self-authorship, I worked on a post about different frames of view determining how people see their own lives and the lives of others. I really should finish that up and post it. Basically my point was just along your lines: feminists believe that the freedoms of men and women are different, and so they have a ready-made reason why things might exist that affect women more than men, and that becomes the default assumption. The null hypothesis is sexism if you have that frame of mind, and you need exceptionally strong evidence to counteract it.

Same with reddit's daily complaint threads about how 'the fashion industry' refuses to sell women dresses with pockets. Inevitably someone links an outlet which does offer that but is doing poorly because no one actually wants them.

This was the only example I know anything about, and it's not that simple. I tried looking up some Reddit threads, and after about half an hour, brand mentions included:

  • Duluth Trading always has good pockets, so if you want pockets for hiking, gardening, and generally being outdoorsy, that's great. Can confirm, I have a coat from them, and I while I look like a giant tomato in it, I can wear it in any conditions between -40F and 40F, due to how many layers it allows me to wear under it. Do I want to fit a hat, scarf, and gloves in the main pockets, and then still have an inner pocket for money and keys? This is the coat for that! Could I wear it to an office job, or a date night? Not unless the date involves hiking in the snow (it frequently has).
  • Someone said that Torrid had one pair of black pants once that offered great pockets, but she has never found them again.
  • A few people mentioned cargo pants, where even the women's versions have pockets.
  • There are a number of brands that sometimes have pockets, but not that often, and will sometimes say on their listing that they have pockets, but they're tiny and poorly placed, such that it's not safe to put anything inside them. If you spend a lot of time and effort, you might find something suitable in a department store. Maybe. Or maybe you just wasted two hours and will leave with no clothing (this is why I stopped shopping for clothing at department stores). Maybe they'll have something, but it will cost $200 and be dry clean only. Hard to guess.
  • Target often does have pockets! The responses being: good for them! (they are not doing poorly)
  • Temu and Uniqlo often have pockets! Good for them! (they are expanding quite quickly)
  • A recommendation for Maya Kern skirts -- comments that other had also bought those, and liked them.

This ultimately doesn’t say too much though. You can't really look at a bunch of women's clothing, check for ones that have pockets, see how well they're doing and then draw any conclusions about whether the lack of pockets in women's clothing is demand-driven or not. It is possible for women's clothing with pockets to sell well and for the lack of pockets in women's clothing to still be demand-driven.

To put forward a simplistic example let's say that 15% of women would want pockets, and that the remainder don't. Let's say that a slightly smaller percentage of women would be willing to pay extra for pockets due to the additional cost of sewing on functional pockets (note that pockets are a pain in the ass; even the non-functional ones are if they have flaps and bindings and the rest, but the functional pockets take a lot more time even than that). If ~13% of women's pants have functional pockets, and the remainder do not, clothing with pockets will still sell well even when the relative lack of pockets in women's clothing is demand-driven, since the supply of that good is appropriately scaled to its demand.

Unfortunately I am not aware of any economic studies on this, likely because the topic is trivial and the answer is obvious. Most of the literature I am able to find on it is ideologically-infused sociology without even the slightest hint of rigour. All I can say is that personally, as a dude, I actually don't like pockets, it doesn’t feel particularly secure and I often carry a sling bag along with me in non-professional circumstances where it would be more socially acceptable for me to do so. I assume that the incentive to just use purses is greater when you want to carry makeup and other items (the women I know pack a ton of stuff in their purses; I'm honestly not sure what half of it is for).

Yes, poverty in the native underclass and poverty among non-underclass is different because these people have different folkways.

I'm getting a certificate error from that link, looks like their cert isn't tied to the right domain. It's a Let's Encrypt cert too -- sounds like the cert renewal got tied to the server hostname rather than the website domains. Oopsie!

Archive.is is the main way to bypass paywalls, but the owner is kind of a nut and he does something fucky with the dns because he has a beef with cloudflare and others.


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