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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31762 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Thanks for the explanation.

I don't think it is Joe Biden though. My priors are that sons don't really want to be controlled by their fathers. But in case he had such a relationship with his father, he would had called him less formally, like “Dad” or similar.

Ray Epps is more interesting. I think the worry about January 6 being a potential coup is overblown. Recently Germany had arrested a bunch of people for plotting a coup and restoring monarchy. The media described them as a group of senile men who had got hold of weapons, i.e., nothing serious and all immediately forgot about it. The same is probably true about January 6 except they were not seniors but younger fantasists and some of them had guns (but everybody has a gun in the US). It should not be paid such an attention. Sadly some people died in the crowds but fatal traffic accidents also happen and it is time to forget about this.

The only difference I can see is that Trump was tweeting something and the irrational hate of Trump has been a feature of the US politics. I am not saying that Trump is a good man but he certainly is not guilty of all the outrageous things he is accused of. Whatever Ray Epps' role was, it doesn't change the fact that it was just a spontaneous crowd gathered in naive beliefs, probably instigated by social media viral messaging.

I don't think it is Joe Biden though. My priors are that sons don't really want to be controlled by their fathers. But in case he had such a relationship with his father, he would had called him less formally, like “Dad” or similar.

One of Hunter's (former) business associates who was on the email chain in question was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, and specifically confirmed that in this case "Big Guy" was a sort of code when referring to Biden Sr. It would have been weird for them to all call him "Dad"!

It might be. Tucker Carlson is not very reliable though.

Compared to whom?

Practically everyone who is qualified to speak about this matter.

Who is qualified to speak about this matter? I’d say Tucker is about as reliable as any relatively large media person. Do you have evidence otherwise?

For that matter, no one has contradicted Tucker’s 2020 reporting so that is a good bit of positive evidence per se.

The fact that he is a media person disqualifies him already.

He talked rubbish about war in Ukraine. He is not interested in finding truth, just make controversial statements to increase his audience (and income).

What rubbish did he talk about? Was there a fact he got wrong or merely an opinion you didn’t like?

Also, you seem to be ignoring my second point.

The usual – that Russian invasion is the US fault for not promising to not expand NATO, that Ukraine is losing the war (it is a stalemate on the front but Ukraine is retaining statehood and even becoming closer to and more integrated with the EU which could be kind of victory).

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