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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6761 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 25, 2025

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It seems to me that people who have adopted what you label "revenge narratives" generally no longer believe that there is such a thing as "our country" or "our citizens". Certainly I do not.

Well if you're no longer loyal to the nation that's up to you. But America is still my home and I want what's best for us and the citizenship.

Forming, equipping, and paying a police force is "stupid, inefficient, counter-productive, and prone to corruption" in a number of ways. It's just that it's less stupid, inefficient, counter-productive, and prone to corruption than not having police, given the situation we find ourselves in. If the situation were different, police might not be worth it. But it isn't, so they are.

Ok so having a police force isn't stupid, inefficient and counterproductive then. If you truly believe that the shifts on conservative policy are the same, then why not explain them on the merit?

Instead of "government has to own businesses because libs", you could explain how government owning businesses and directing corporate policy across the nation now improves the health of the economy after decades of conservatives saying big government and socialist control are bad the same way you can explain how police are good.

I observe that previous governments, Democrat and Republican, have chronically failed to exercise fiscal responsibility. I observe that attempting fiscal responsibility now will cost significant votes and political power, which will naturally flow to the fiscally-irresponsible. Therefore, I conclude that while I would strongly prefer fiscal responsibility, there is no way to get there from here, and so I abandon this as a political goal because it does not appear to be practically achievable. Therefore, I no longer care about fiscal responsibility or the debt, and I apportion my political priorities and values to areas where victory seems more probable.

Not pursuing something you find untenable as a policy goal is understandable. But do you now believe that ever growing debt is a good thing? Do you now believe our growing borrowing is a smart long term fiscal decision?

If you don't think you can convince other Americans to care at all it makes sense to give up, but it wouldn't make sense to change your mind just because of that.

And yet, the evidence has shown that they cannot prevent endemic free speech violations, nor even significantly impede them. When it mattered, they could not protect my speech in any meaningful sense, nor will they be able to do so in the future. Their impact is, to a first approximation, theoretical.

You're right, random civil rights organizations can not do much in the face of a population that keeps voting for and pushing for anti free speech politicians. In this same way they will have meaningful wins here and there against Trump, but ultimately unless we can get the population on board with traditional civil liberty and the first amendment, government suppression of speech will continue to grow.

The model they operate off, where only government speech controls impinge on the first amendment, is a suicide pact that I respectfully decline to involve myself in.

That's how the founding fathers set up our system, were they suicidal? No, they were forward looking revolutionary heroes. Their primary concern is government, and even today governments across the world are the most serious form of censorship. If you don't believe that, you can go look at other countries and you'll find it's government suppression of speech in Russia, in China, in North Korea, in pretty much every single dictatorship. Even in the freer nations, crackdowns on speech like the recent UK bill are government done.

The government is neither owning intel, nor directing policy there. The government is owning ten percent of intel’s stock and voting with the board of directors.

That’s perfectly reasonable as a condition of government grants(which were already going). This way the government at least gets dividend revenue.

The government is neither owning intel, nor directing policy there. The government is owning ten percent of intel’s stock and voting with the board of directors.

What do you think stock is? It's literally part ownership.

And Intel's SEC filings even acknowledge the problems with it https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0000050863/000005086325000129/intc-20250822.htm

It dilutes shares of existing stockholders, limit their ability to pursue future transactions that benefit the other shareholders, hurt their ability to operate internationally as a (now) government owned corporation.

And in the obvious issues that successful competitors like NVIDIA and AMD will have a tougher time dealing with a government that has direct financial stake into Intel.

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