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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Let's talk shitty policing!

The story starts back in August, when police (specifically, Adams County Sherriff's Department of Ohio) raided the home of Joseph "Afroman" Foreman on a warrant for narcotics and kidnapping. Perhaps they thought that the author of "Because I got high" would be a slam dunk, but they walked out with a couple roaches and a few grand in cash.

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/adams-county/rapper-afromans-ohio-home-raided-by-adams-county-sheriffs-office

When they discovered a grand total of jack and shit, they were forced to return most of the money, except the stuff they stole.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/adams-county-sheriff-comes-up-400-short-returning-cash-to-afroman-after-home-raid/ar-AA14IJPa

Reason covered the case here:

https://reason.com/2022/12/05/cops-return-cash-seized-from-afroman-in-bogus-drug-raid-with-400-missing/

And the man himself has weighed in with a music video that is all security footage of the raid titled "Will you help me repair my door?"

https://youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y

Down with qualified immunity, the legalized piracy known as civil asset forfeiture, and the self-funding militarized security state.

This is a pretty shitty thing to be able to do, and this would absolutely be a cause worth fighting for...

...the problem is that the whole concept of police reform is now inextricably linked in the minds of at least half the populace with total police abolition, lighter sentences, less bail, decriminalising hard drugs, violent criminals out on the streets by lunchtime, rioting, arson, looting, violent takeover of city streets and public areas and anti-white ideology. The whole subject is fucking radioactive now. I wouldn't lend my name to any such cause, for fear that it would, like nearly all causes, massively expand its mandate beyond the very specific issue I want to correct. I don't want to empower any of the other garbage.

In the UK, we have different problems, in that our police don't spend any time investigating actual crimes like burglaries, but will happily waste days and weeks chasing down speech crimes on twitter or illegal football stream watchers, but there's the same obstacle to overcoming them. To even breach the subject would require, at least to me, some kind of cast-iron guarantee that whoever was overseeing the reform was 120% free of any sort of wokery whatsoever, and that's something I can say about almost nobody in our political class. Myself and a lot of other right-wing people I talk to sense the formalisation of the two-tier quasi-racialised justice system that we already suspect exists is pretty imminent.

The trust is completely gone, and there's very little I can think of that would bring it back.

The trust is completely gone, and there's very little I can think of that would bring it back.

Here is a good punting off point for this video. It's Robby Soave and Briahna Joy Gray at The Hill arguing over a 13 year old carjacker that was shot and killed. Frankly, they get off in the weeds super quick with their speculation. The key exchange happens around 2:39 when Robby says nobody is obligated to stand by and allow themselves to be victimized, and Brie emphatically insists yes you do.

I see Brianha's perspective echoed endlessly from progressive sectors. They think the slow, plodding, overburdened criminal justice system should be the sole arbiter of criminal consequences. Criminals shouldn't even suffer the immediate physical consequences of their own criminal acts.

And it gets even worse when they argue about the severity of the crime, with Brie taking a perspective that carjacking isn't so bad around 5:15. It happens all the time. You shouldn't get killed over it. Robby of course retorts horrified that carjacking has become so normalized, that people need their cars. A world were you never know if your car will be where you left it is a worse world.

But it's not the Robby's of the world that will determine what the police reform will be. It's the Brie's. We see that amply in every American city post BLM. It's not even a question. The policies are already being experimented with, or just rolled out unilaterally, to disastrous results for normal people. So yeah, I can't be for "police reform", and I no longer trust anyone promoting it.

At 3:00, Joy Gray repeatedly asks whether a car is worth more than someone's life. I'm more than happy to bite that bullet and say, "yes, my car is much more valuable than the life of a robber, the robber's life has negative moral value and ending their life is a net good". I don't really know where to proceed from there in any conversation with someone that doesn't share that moral intuition because it seems entirely clear and obvious to me.

"If you choose to try and rob me knowing there's a chance I will shoot and kill you, you have already decided that my stuff is worth more than your own life. By shooting you, I am simply agreeing with you."

At 3:00, Joy Gray repeatedly asks whether a car is worth more than someone's life. I'm more than happy to bite that bullet and say, "yes, my car is much more valuable than the life of a robber, the robber's life has negative moral value and ending their life is a net good". I don't really know where to proceed from there in any conversation with someone that doesn't share that moral intuition because it seems entirely clear and obvious to me.

The correct rhetorical move here is to say "give me 100$ right now or I'll kill myself. What? Is my life not worth it?" On the off-chance they give it to you, immediately ask for another 100.

That should drive home the point of this idiotic emotional blackmail.

It's worse than that, because aside from that being shitty rhetorical dark arts, even if you take it at face value and buy into the premise, it's not the car owner making that valuation, it's the criminal. It's the criminal seeing a car they plan to joyride for an evening and wreck on the side of the road who is making (poorly) the cost benefit analysis of "I guess this is worth maybe dying for." After that, it's the natural consequences of their actions.

What makes this exchange between Robby and Brie all the more shameless on Brie's part is that teenage carjackers murdered a man not even that long ago in DC! One of them was even also 13! But these are the immutable priorities of progressive "police reformers". The criminal is always more important than their victims. If you got punched in the face, and punched the person back, they'd be on your case that "the punishment for assault shouldn't be having your nose broken!" or "They are supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty!"

teenage carjackers murdered a man not even that long ago in DC!

There really ought to be a distinction between trying to break into a car with nobody in it (the OP) and jacking a car with a weapon while someone is driving it.

And it’s worth noting lots of people would agree with you, even if it may not be a within-Overton view. One of these days the motte should have a discussion about widely popular but outside the Overton window views, and what they generally reflect about society. But today is probably not that day.

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IIRC France and the anglosphere all have majority popular support for bringing back the death penalty without it being particularly close, too, so elite-populist splits on this issue appear reasonably international. And I don’t believe the death penalty loses at the ballot box very often, if at all.

Those are some interesting polls. 64% think the death penalty can be morally justified, 60% say they favor it, so only 4% are balking on practical grounds ... despite 78% saying they don't think there are adequate safeguards to ensure that no innocent person will be put to death. I guess that means a minimum of 75% of Americans think there aren't adequate safeguards to ensure that no innocent person will be put to death but also that the safeguards are adequate to ensure that not too many innocent people will be put to death? I guess that might still be self-consistent, but only if we ascribe a level of non-binary thinking and consideration-of-tradeoffs that I don't usually associate with polling of the general population.

I’m totally willing to believe that the red tribe elite thinks this way but doesn’t have the vocabulary to express it. An actual conversation I overheard between regional red tribe elites- lower gentry or upper kulaks and their family members here- was almost literally that, it just happened to use a different set of words.

Where are you getting 75% from? The minimum overlap of 64% and 78% is 42%

Where are you getting 75% from?

From a pair of embarrassing mistakes. 73% would be the minimum (counting "64% was really 64.5% rounded down and 60% really 59.5% rounded up" cases) number of people who think there aren't adequate safeguards against a single innocent death but who didn't let that make a difference to their practical vs their theoretical opinions ... but of course I shouldn't have counted people who already think the death penalty is morally wrong in that number, plus I thought about rounding in the wrong direction.

The minimum overlap of 64% and 78% is 42%

It would be even more interesting if every person who thinks the death penalty isn't morally justified also thinks that its safeguards are perfect, but you're right, there's no inherent incompatibiilty there.

The key exchange happens around 2:39 when Robby says nobody is obligated to stand by and allow themselves to be victimized, and Brie emphatically insists yes you do.

I wonder if she'd be so quick to agree that women have an obligation to stand by and allow themselves to be victimized, eg was Cyntoia Brown in the wrong in her worldview?

In the UK, I'd gladly take defunding the police, even if it's woke that wants to defund them. Functioning police > No police > woke lockdown-enforcing thug squad.

I'm only tenuously familiar with policing in England but i think America has a pretty uniquely dysfunctional policing system. While it's probably true that police reform is a nonstarter for some conservatives for the reasons you mentioned, it also doesn't matter. When localized police reforms get passed the cops can straight up decide they don't wanna do things differently and there's nobody to tell them to do otherwise. Presumably there is some systematic machinery in place to wrangle openly rogue police chiefs but i don't know that i've ever seen it in action. I know a sheriff can be voted out but that's a pretty limited and late type of solution. Governors can try to cut their funding, but that's exactly the point we are at right now, and i think having a pressure valve that comes before "public struggle over funding for necessary utility" would be extremely useful.

Police and their unions are also extremely averse to being burdened with additional accountability and responsibility. Take bodycam legislation for instance, what stance should the union argue for? It's not always in the best interests of the officers to be required to have body cams on, but cameras provide valuable evidence that is hard to surreptitiously tamper with. The union is now at a crossroads between defending clearer justice or arguing for the benefit of its members. I don't fault cops for acting in their own interest, they are human after all, but when we're talking about Civil Forfeiture it's hard for me to separate "i should be able to take this as evidence and then keep it" with "i should be allowed to steal shit".

To your point about the wokeness of the justice system, it frustrates me that progressives have provided such an idiotic target to fight against. Wanting to perform restorative justice by underpolicing ethnic communities is such a bad idea that i have a hard time understanding how its supposed to work even in an intersectional feminist worldview. Luckily we are unlikely to find out because hardcore progressive police reform ideas get almost no traction in the voting booth.

With that out of the way

The trust is completely gone

There never was trust between conservatives and police reform- the police have been in near perfect alignment with conservative political goals for as long as i can remember. Thinking some recent breach of trust is causing the tension between conservative voters and police reform seems extremely misguided to me.

Body cams can also really help cops accused of untoward behavior. In fact, some anti cop organizations have pushed eliminating body cams purportedly in the name of privacy but one wonders if it is because the footage can contradict the narrative (eg body cam in Ohio where girl was shot right before she stabbed another girl).

Body cams can also really help cops

absolutely, and some anti police organizations are super insane. In a vacuum i can understand privacy concerns with some slice of police bodycam recordings (we can call these PBR's and make jokes about cracking open a cold one). Say you get a noise complaint, the cops show up and end up recording the inside of your home, this seems like a bit of a violation of your right to privacy, but not something that i think sours the whole idea of bodycams.

resumably there is some systematic machinery in place to wrangle openly rogue police chiefs but i don't know that i've ever seen it in action.

In many cases the problem isn't chiefs (who can usually be fired and are often under political pressure) but union leaders (who can't and are incentivized to stand up for their members, even if that means defending questionable behavior or outright malfeasance).

I don't fault cops for acting in their own interest, they are human after all, but when we're talking about Civil Forfeiture it's hard for me to separate "i should be able to take this as evidence and then keep it" with "i should be allowed to steal shit".

As with many circumstances, moralizing about the people involve is not particularly useful. Whether or not all cops are bastards is less relevant than the kind of behavior is incentivized. A system needs to be able to stand up to some degree of bad faith participation and anti-social behavior; both in the sense that it can't crumble if people behave less than ideally, but also in that it needs to be able to prevent bad behaviors from entrenching themselves. Self-policing has a poor record for accountability for a reason - bad actors don't like whistleblowers, and if you don't have a culture of accountability on top of a decent system of accountability it's easy for whistleblowers to get tarred as traitors while bad behavior gets glossed over or rewarded. I would not be surprised if effective police reform in the US requires de facto purging of of problematic departments concurrently with creating separate oversight bodies. Not because everyone involved is particularly evil but because resistance to accountability has become entrenched.

Re: bodycams in particular, IIRC there is evidence that bodycams don't do much to reduce police misconduct, indicating that either perpetrators aren't concerned about being disciplined or that they're not the kind of person to take it into account.

Re: bodycams in particular, IIRC there is evidence that bodycams don't do much to reduce police misconduct, indicating that either perpetrators aren't concerned about being disciplined or that they're not the kind of person to take it into account.

Or the third option, where the police have succesfully gotten all their benefits of bodycams(exonerating them if they do wrong) without any of the costs(catching their abuses). This has been ongoing for a while.

what abuses? They're wearing a camera, so unless it's turned off, you get any abuse they engage on tape to charge them with.

Maybe they aren't actually abusing people that much?

They get to turn them off or cover them up just fine, is the issue. A cop who wants exonerated will leave his on and have the evidence released. A cop who's shady will turn his off/cover his up and cheerily proceed as normal.

That's what I meant with my first point: if the disciplinary process is dysfunctional (misconduct gets excused or soft pedaled, prosecutors don't want to bring charges against officers, "my camera malfunctioned", etc...) the supposed incentive to behave better is lost, even if you have video of the incident.

Are/Were there even any politicians and activists out there who are/were a) anti-woke b) proponents of police reform?

Truss made noises about "streets, not tweets" but of course nothing actually happened with that, as per the usual Tory party MO of talking big about issues and then doing nothing, or even the opposite.

with total police abolition, lighter sentences, less bail, decriminalising hard drugs, violent criminals out on the streets by lunchtime, rioting, arson, looting, violent takeover of city streets and public areas and anti-white ideology

Good news: Most of these positions have effectively zero public support, with the possible exception of bail reform.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/26/growing-share-of-americans-say-they-want-more-spending-on-police-in-their-area/

This poll was done at the height of the Floyd riots.

https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/reuters-ipsos-civil-unrest-george-floyd-2020-06-02

Four in five Americans (82%) report that peaceful protests are an appropriate response to the killing of an unarmed man by police, while 22% say that violence and unrest is an appropriate response.

A similar number of Americans (79%) say that the property damage caused by some demonstrators undermines the original intent of the protest’s call for justice in George Floyd’s death.

Republicans (83%) and Democrats (77%) agree that property damage ultimately undermines the cause of the demonstrators.

When the French government abolished the death penalty in 1981, the majority of the French people opposed this move. Yet it still happened. A democracy steamroling popular opinion, to be lenient towards criminals isn't unprecedented.

They still do by the way, a 2020 survey put it at 55% support.

When some claim the death penalty to be "Sensible Centrism" they're not kidding.

Mentioning for our American readers just because it's a fun fact... The guillotine continued to be the French method of execution until the end of capital punishment. The last person to be guillotined in France was in 1977.

I'm sure exceptions to the rule exist, but we should deal in probabilities and stive for accurate piors. The president ran on being against the death penalty, and was elected. In my examples, I'm talking about sub 20% popular support. I don't know what it was in France.

What does polling matter when the policy we got are the things you say poll poorly.

Part of it is we did have a George Soros coup of DA offices. Where relatively modest money could win those offices when no one was paying attention.

And places like San Fran have legalized hard drugs.

I mean it’s cool people say they don’t like the stuff but it’s become the policy of the land.

What did Soros or his foundation do?

This conflates national and federal polities. And at the Federal level, you have the Koch and Federalist cartels to undermine the public for conservatives, balancing things out. The US is a divided nation, but its between 60/40 and 50/50. Nevertheless, what flies in California won't pass muster in Alabama.

These things don’t poll well anywhere but yet they happened. Black communities wanted more policing but less and more murder.

Also everyone is going to say they don’t want anti-white ideology. But many support affirmative action or picking a Supreme Court justice because she’s black and female. Promoting blacks ahead of whites is just anti white ideology yet no one is going to come out and say they are anti-white.

The goalposts were

police reform is now inextricably linked in the minds of at least half the populace total police abolition, lighter sentences, less bail, decriminalising hard drugs, violent criminals out on the streets by lunchtime, rioting, arson, looting, violent takeover of city streets and public areas and anti-white ideology

The data indicate that, for most of these things, public support falls a far south 50%. ~85% of Americans want police funding to remain the same or increase. More people want it to increase substantially than to decrease substantially.

Ok so what’s your point? I agree public support is lower. But we got those policies anyway.

Imagine describing to an alien that the official policy of the US is to abolish the police, decrimnalize hard drugs, endorse looting, arson, rioting, the release of violent criminals, and the violent take over of streets. Do you think they would have a accurate picture of policy in the USA?

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~15% tracks pretty well to the places that got such policies. The ones where people would rather not, largely didn't.

What have the Koch and federalist cartels done that balances out the progressive sweep of da offices? Or the capture of academia - hell, all of education?

The US is a divided nation, but its between 60/40 and 50/50

Also what do you mean by this?

hell, all of education

Yeah. Something like 90+% are liberals, which is super unhealthy. I imagine its not that different in Hollywood.

Also what do you mean by this?

I think echo chambers like themotte have a skewed perception of reality ie lots of doomerism over the intellectually bankrupt ideology that can broadly be described as "wokeism". It's a problem, but polling suggests its near the fringes.

The nation is approximately 50% Democrat; 50% Republican. The commenter I was responding to was hesitant to endorse legislation he agrees with because it is too ideologically aligned with people who want to see more arson, looting, and violent crime. This strikes me as insane, and, at the very least, is contradicted by whatever data we have. Unsurprisingly, only a small minority of people want their neighborhoods burned to the ground while they are hunted by violent criminals.

When you're talking about "effectively zero public support", effectively supporting is very different from explicitly supporting. People can say "I don't want violence", but have standards which, in effect, enable violence.

No, I mean that these positions are as likely to ascent to power as the Mises wing Libertarian party. Sure, some people probably want their neighborhoods looted and burned to the ground. I'm not especially worried about them gaining a consensus.

And when the next round of race riots erupts will the police and national guard be allowed to put them down or not?

Floyd was after the original Fergusson riots. There were the LA riots in the 90's and of course the 70s race riots. It seems like the consensus is to let them happen. Any electoral victories the Republicans get will be temporary if even that. Even after The Floyd riots; Biden won the election, and the Republicans couldn't even take the Senate in the mid-terms.

Biden is one of the architects of civil asset forfeiture in the first place. There are many reasons why any one person may have voted for him, but criminal justice reform is not going to be at the top of their list.

The point is that people may not want their neighborhoods burned down, but they may support policies whose effect is to make it easier to burn down their neigborhoods.

(And it's not as clearcut as that anyway, or you'd never get even 20%. 20% isn't big, but it's far more than the lizardman constant.)

My understanding is that, while plenty of the rioters were tourists, it was mostly poor majority-minority neighborhoods that took the brunt of the damage, with the rest hitting downtown areas and almost none in affluent suburbs.

My takeaway was 'guns remain an amazing deterrent against mob violence, at least as long ss you're the local majority'

And yet it all happened anyway, with the media cheerleading it on while running cover, and authorities tripping over themselves to declare racism a pandemic to enable people to break coof rules to go out and continue doing it.

The fact that Afroman lives in Adams County, Ohio is the craziest part of this to me. That's literally Amish country. Many miles from anything.

Miller's Bakery out there has one of the largest selections of jams and jellies that I've ever seen anywhere.

Him and Dave Chappelle, I guess.

Chapelle's in more of a yuppy private college sub/exurb area.

...God, there's gotta be a way to work "Amish Paradise" into this...

Is anyone looking at the warrant? I want to hear about the whole "kidnapping" thing. Regardless, I can't imagine anything that would justify how they did the raid and seizure.

Imo it should be strictly illegal for them to disable monitoring devices unless they're specifically named in the warrant ("the computer with evidence on it is also the NVR for the cameras")

The evidence required to get a search warrant is less than what is required to convict someone, so it's unavoidable that some people who have their houses searched will be innocent. Is there something particularly egregious here other than the missing $400? I agree that's bad and should be investigated and he should be compensated, but it just doesn't sound like that big of a deal to me. If you scale back policing so far that nobody is ever wrongfully searched then you're going to see a massive crime spike like in 2020.

Searching in and of itself is not egregious. But they didn't just search. They broke down his front door, went around the place with weapons drawn, and disconnected his security cameras (which just screams shady). In short, they acted like jackbooted thugs for something which should have been a simple and polite "Hello sir, we are here to execute a search warrant, we need you to let us in to search your property".

The article said the warrant was for kidnapping (among other things) but didn't give many details. I agree if they're just looking for weed that seems excessive, but if they had reason to think he had somebody tied up in the basement then it makes sense.

Even in that light their actions don't make sense, imo. As Afroman humorously pointed out in the song he released, were they really expecting to find kidnapping victims in his suit pockets or his binders of CDs? Not that you can't gather evidence from such a place, but then you don't need the urgency they used. So the level of escalation just doesn't fit with what they actually searched for.

The only reason to literally break down the door with guns drawn is if you think he has actual hostages who would be in danger. But then, they went looking for a bunch of stuff that wasn't victims in imminent danger, a search which could (and should) have been handled much more civilly. And in no case should they have shut off the man's security cameras like they are criminals who are afraid to get caught doing wrong. So while I am by no means against executing a search warrant, the police behavior in this case seems to me to be rather excessive.

They sure said they have a reason, but they also said they returned the money when they didn't.

If you scale back policing so far that nobody is ever wrongfully searched then you're going to see a massive crime spike like in 2020.

a crime "spike" usually implies that the crime rate goes back down. Ours hasn't, to my knowledge.

Hey, it appears to be down 5% from last year. That's... Measurable, I guess.

The evidence required to get a search warrant is less than what is required to convict someone, so it's unavoidable that some people who have their houses searched will be innocent.

Exactly. The fact that the search did not turn up evidence of illegal behavior says little about whether the warrant was supported by probable cause and hence was perfectly legal, just as the fact that a search successfully uncovers evidence of illegal behavior says little about whether it was supported by probable cause. That is both obvious and well established. See Bumper v. North Carolina, 391 U.S. 543, 548 n. 10 (1968) ("Any idea that a search can be justified by what it turns up was long ago rejected in our constitutional jurisprudence."), citing cases going back to 1927.

No actual disagreement with the general thrust of your argument, but the last attempt at police reforms either didn't have noticable effect (body cams) or resulted in the worst increase in violent crime ever recorded (BLM). I see zero evidence that anyone who matters is willing to engage with the evident consequences of previous interventions. That reality makes signing on to new interventions a very bad idea.

Sure, the police are corrupt. Every system we have is corrupt. What evidence is there that there's actually a fix on offer?

didn't have noticable effect (body cams)

Care to elaborate please?

Body cams were supposed to solve (or at least significantly ameliorate) the problem of police misconduct. They did not do that. There did not seem to be any perceptible change in either the numbers of police prosecuted for misconduct, or in the public perception of the police as lawless. Within a year or two, Black community activists were claiming that body cams needed to be banned because they were a violation of privacy.

In other words, the arguments for them were mostly fake, I guess.

No, police officers just turn their cams off/have them conveniently 'malfunction', and aren't getting punished for it when they do. The body cams function just fine when the evidence exonerates them though.

This is not something I am ever seeing progressives complain about, so I conclude that this almost never happens: if it did happen on a regular basis, I'd have seen NYT editorials complaining about this endlessly.

The reality is quite the opposite: the cameras show that the police misconduct is very rare, NYT is quite aware of that, and so it doesn't want to bring attention to bodycams.

What evidence is there that there's actually a fix on offer?

Countries where things work differently and better are the evidence, mostly.

Can we get there from here? Different countries have different conditions. What's your evidence that conditions can be imported from one country to another?

I despair for the cause of police reform. There was a window where it might have been possible, but anywhere past the 2000s I just don't see it happening.

Put frankly, nobody really cares about this man. Nobody really cares about the median CAF victims: poor people, strippers, general lower-class coded individuals. Nobody really cares about people jailed on bogus charges, put through the justice wringer for ill-conceived reason, or shot to death by trigger-happy psychopaths. It's the just world fallacy in full effect: they probably had it coming anyway.

The median voter has never in his life gotten in trouble with the police. You'd need a hundred Uvaldes to meaningfully dent this - the sorts of tragedy I wouldn't wish on any nation. The median voter is a middle-aged comfortable person with a steady job and living who thinks everything in society basically works as it should. Oh, sure, some politicians are greedy, the kids these days are bad, but the police? Protect and serve. They keep us safe and things steady and that's all we want. If they beat up or imprison or kill someone, well, I guess that's just what their job is.

I don't know what any one nation can hope to do about this, for as long as the median age in wealthy countries keeps rising. The people who vote don't care, the people who get elected have no reason to care, and the police have made more than clear they have negative interest in policing their own.

What's a downtrodden person to do? What is anyone to do? For as long as the median voter really loves the police, I don't know that I see a way out.

The median voter is on the fence between "minor changes needed to make policing better" and "major changes are needed to make policing better". "No changes are needed to make policing better" is only 11% of the country.

What to do? Figure out something realistic that would qualify as "changes"..."to make policing better". The motte of "defund the police"=="pay social workers instead" isn't going to apply to cases like this; nobody's sending a social worker to investigate an alleged kidnapping. The bailey of "defund the police"=="abolish the police" was, if not DoA, at least shot along with those teens in CHAZ. I personally thought that mandatory bodycams were a nice improvement, but there's even been pushback on that from people whose pleasure at the "evidence when police misbehave" outcomes has been outweighed by their displeasure at the "evidence when non-police misbehave" outcomes.

My only wild idea would be to break up all larger police departments into smaller (but overlapping) jurisdictions. I have no solid plan details for how to best implement it. But if everybody knows that the East Metro cops are on the take, and the South Metro cops are brutal, but the West Metro cops are competent and the North Metro cops even helpful, there ought to be a way for the results there to end up expanding the latter jurisdictions and budgets at the expense of the former. This should extend even to enlarging good departments to the point where they could be broken in two (with corresponding promotions and budget increases to compensate for losing economies of scale), and/or disbanding bad departments entirely. "Abolish the (crooked) police" would be a legitimate threat and incentive source, not just a left-wing joke, if there was always a nearby non-crooked (or even just less-crooked! gradient descent works!) police force nearby ready to pick up the slack.

I don't see how that would have helped in this case, though, unless a better police culture in general had spillover effects. You're not going to have much jurisdictional overlap in "literally Amish country. Many miles from anything."

My only wild idea would be to break up all larger police departments into smaller (but overlapping) jurisdictions.

This is similar to what we have in Allegheny County, PA, and it's not a model to emulate. In the county there are 130 municipalities, of which 109 have their own police departments. Allegheny County Police and PA State Troopers have blanket jurisdiction over the entire county, but that jurisdiction is somewhat limited. Then add in all the various special-use police departments—university police, transit police, housing police, etc. Then add in the various state agencies with sworn enforcement arms that regularly conduct law enforcement activities in the county like the PA Fish and Boat Commission, which is responsible for patrolling the rivers, and PA Liquor Control Board, and there are over 150 entities within the county that could conceivably be called police departments, each with its own jurisdiction that may or may not overlap with another jurisdiction or jurisdiction, whether in geography, subject matter, or both. The end result is that there are a ton of tiny police departments that only field a few officers and are woefully underfunded and provide their employees low pay and inadequate training. The guy who shot Antwon Rose had been dismissed from the University of Pittsburgh Police, essentially for being an asshole, and took a job with the East Pittsburgh Police (East Pittsburgh is a separate borough from the City of Pittsburgh), a community of less than 2000 and a median household income of around $30,000. Though he was ultimately acquitted, there was general agreement that he wasn't cut out to be a policeman and that he wouldn't have been one if these small boroughs weren't so desperate for warm bodies that anyone with prior experience was automatically given a job.

This is where the

way for the results there to end up expanding the latter jurisdictions and budgets at the expense of the former

bit, which I haven't figured out at all, would have to come in. Market competition works because consumers have both incentive and ability to switch to a better competitor. If it's not easy to switch then you don't get competition, just fragmentation.

I jokingly suggested Shadowrun's private police forces before as a solution to police unions, maybe I'll do it again here--if each of those PDs has to compete on service quality, it will definitely cut down on the number of departments Allegheny has, making it sound like less of a tollbooth kingdom after some point.

The median voter in the US voted for Biden, who played an important role in getting civil asset forfeiture passed in the first place. His opponent is the guy behind 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts'. I don't even care to defend literal looters - it's kinda whatever - but Trump is no criminal justice reform candidate either. I can think of lots of changes that might improve policing! It's getting them in the public consciousness and dealing with the nationwide tantrum police departments seem to throw that's the real issue.

What's a downtrodden person to do?

The "downtrodden" themselves often tread on others. Even Mr. Floyd, saw it fit to rob and forge. Personally, the greatest victims are those that are harmed, but do not harm others.

I don't. It just got conflated with anti-white racism for a few decades, but if we can ever end that shit, I think police reform is a real possibility.

Do you have specific policy reforms in mind? I think there is certainly room to drop the hammer on major rights violations like the case you mentioned, but I find a lot of cases people complain about seem like the products of expecting perfection from a numerous, moderately-paying and unpredictable job: sometimes people mess up, and not all unfortunate results are the result of malice (although that should be rooted out).

I've wondered if policing needs neutral after-action review of bad outcomes without inherently assigning blame with the aim of improving training and public awareness. Similar models have improved aircraft and industrial safety over the last few decades.

Eliminating or greatly reducing qualified immunity (for prosecutors more than cops, actually) is a big plank.

Independent investigative bodies to handle police misconduct rather than subsections of existing police forces.

Civil Asset Forfeiture has to go, and so does the excessive militarization (though my definition and most people's definition might differ here). The two impact each other, because CAF funds a lot of military gear.

I'm actually of teh opinion that use-of-force is one of the least pressing issues for American policing. There's certainly bad behavior, and even pockets of systemic problems, but nothing like there is with the casual civil rights violations, the scummy plea dealing, the near-constant lying on warrant applications etc. Some of this, the reform needs to be in the direction of allowing police more, rather than less autonomy. I am also of the view that we need vastly more police, rather than fewer, and a narrowing of the criminal scope (i.e. ending the drug war, streamlining and rationalizing the criminal statutes etc.).

I want more police focusing on fewer crimes with more training and more oversight. I want every unsolved murder to have a mini task force. I want better witness protections.

I know that there is a virtuous spiral to be joined here. We've seen that we can massively decrease the most serious crime rates in a decade or two, and are now in the process of trying to reverse. We can stop anytime, but it's going to take decades to get back on the path.

Eliminating or greatly reducing qualified immunity (for prosecutors more than cops, actually) is a big plank.

Won't that just mean every cop getting constantly sued by everyone they ever put in jail?

Getting jailed tends to mean going to trial anyway. That's kind've the point. I'd be disappointed if the majority of people in jail didn't see a courtroom to get their dose of justice, be it in their favor or not.

I live in a nation where the anti-white racism thing functionally doesn't exist. If anything, it's made the pro-reform block smaller. I just don't think you're right.

Do you also live in a nation where the primary victims of police malfeasance (by raw numbers) have been so thoroughly erased from the discussion by the "pro-reform" block that most of that block think they are actually the most privileged demographic when it comes to police/justice system encounters?

Does being "erased from the discussion" matter more than the actual injustice being committed in the first place? Also the discussion isn't erased, you are having the discussion right now and we both seemed to be able to find out about white people getting fucked over by the police just fine. Should we let the police slide because MSN talked about the wrong cases too much?

Should we let the police slide because MSN talked about the wrong cases too much?

The ways progressives talk about police reform to combat injustice make me believe that they think it is fine to "let police slide" when it is people like me who are impacted by it, that it is not actually injustice in that case. If you want me to support your solution to "actual injustice", you damn well better prove to me that the injustices committed against my demographic are also going to be solved by it. Progressives seem to go out of their way to avoid doing so and expect to gain my support solely through emotional blackmail. Fuck that.

It doesn't matter what the progressives talk about. The police aren't progressives, the voters by and large aren't either, and nobody is capable of criminalizing being white. Using twitter progs as an excuse to do nothing about real police overreach seems like looking for an excuse to me.

I wouldn't care what progressives talk about if they also didn't come in and disrupt local government planning meetings, sabotaging years of bipartisan efforts that had been steadily making progress (eg, on topics like @what_a_maroon brought up) by being an intransigent minority insisting that any solution involve directly confronting racism and sexism.

The police aren't progressives, the voters by and large aren't either

As a whole, true, but I think you need to look specifically at the areas that have the biggest crime problems. Someone who happily lives in the suburbs has almost no say over what policing looks like in the urban core.

I get that it's real satisfying to talk shit about your outgroup, but I really don't care about that. I want for policing to be just, and the American custom of anti-white racism just isn't a factor.

Everyone just wants policing to be "just". The problem is that not everyone agrees on how to make policing more "just" or even what "just" policing is. The "pro-reform" block in the US currently claims that the primary reason that policing is unjust is racism and sexism, and thus focus on policies that they believe would reduce racism and sexism. They also claim that white men, the largest demographic victimized by police malfeasance, categorically cannot be victims of racism or sexism. They regularly erase them from narratives about justice reform (eg see my comment on the old site discussing declining white support for BLM) and strongly overestimate victimization of other groups. Do you really think that alienating the largest group of victims by implying their victimization is "just", unlike the "unjust" victimization of other demographics, and downplaying their victimization while exaggerating others' "just isn't a factor"?

The "pro-reform" block in the US currently claims that the primary reason that policing is unjust is racism and sexism, and thus focus on policies that they believe would reduce racism and sexism.

While there's certainly a lot of that, I think a lot of the policies that are proposed actually are orthogonal to the -ism angle. Yes, hiring more black or female cops is unlikely to do anything. But things like removing qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture, body camera policies with actual teeth, a separate body and prosecutor for investigating allegations, etc. would help all victims of police abuse.

Yeah. Cool. And if the pro-reform block didn't do these things - such as they don't here, because white people are (even more of) a majority of people around, they'd still get nowhere. It's a red herring. Take away BLM, take away the Bezos-sponsored Huffington post-tier editorials, take away the identity politics, and you still don't get reform. It just isn't the kind of cause normal people are going to identify with, because the chief victims of this injustice aren't average people so much as those down on their luck.

Well, no, the chief victims of police injustice are the perpetually badly behaved who are not serious criminals. Saying that they are ‘down on their luck’ implies they have ever had good luck.

We WERE getting some reform. Body cameras were the main thing driving it; either cops were behaving better with the cameras or the cameras exposed that there was a less of a problem than expected; either way, they were having an effect. BLM opposes body cameras.

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What country are you in?

I'm from the Netherlands.

Put frankly, nobody really cares about this man. Nobody really cares about the median CAF victims: poor people, strippers, general lower-class coded individuals. Nobody really cares about people jailed on bogus charges, put through the justice wringer for ill-conceived reason, or shot to death by trigger-happy psychopaths. It's the just world fallacy in full effect: they probably had it coming anyway.

I totally believe you're right about this, but it still frustrates me. Even from a purely selfish perspective, this should matter to people. Holding people in prison or putting them through the justice system for stupid reasons is a waste of my tax money. Ruining people's lives by sending them to prison for no good reason means they're likely not going to be contributing to the economy (or, worse, become criminals and contribute negatively). We do this at a really large scale in the US, so this isn't exactly a small effect.

Plenty of people think that ruining life for strippers, drug addicts, petty criminals, and the homeless so that they’ll go do their thing somewhere else is a good use of their tax dollars.

Honestly pretty hard to think of a better one

The problem is that these kinds of policies A) don’t work very well and B) wind up pushing terrible people into the same neighborhoods which turn from ‘poor’ to ‘festering shitholes of crime depending economically on drug and human trafficking, which then export maladaptive mores to broader society’.

If you want someone's life ruined, surely you'd prefer them dead? I get consistently down-voted for my 'kill all the drug dealers' policy proposal. But surely that's preferable to just ruining the lives of drug addicts, petty criminals and homeless. What if they don't do their thing somewhere else? What if their lives are already ruined? What if they strike back against you?

If we're trying to make things hard for people, why not just bite the bullet and kill?

The blackpilling thing, to me, is that I don't think people are that selfish. They aren't without empathy. They don't have zero care for justice. I think it's the aforementioned just world fallacy: they really think they have it coming. If they didn't have it coming, why, the police might be wrong. The law might be wrong. Society may be doing wrong by them. Everything may be wrong. The lower classes may in fact not deserve their fate.

It's a lot to take in and figure out and, genuinely, I don't think normal people are really in a mood to consider if maybe the whole criminal justice system is that big of a dumpster fire. Better to insist everything is fine, everyone falling afoul of it is a Bad Person, and to try your hardest to ignore all the signs it ain't so.

Sounds to me like you are falling for the unjust world fallacy. The mistaken belief that every misfortune is the result of undeserved oppression and victimization.

I don’t see why only one side should get to unilaterally create a “fallacy” to diagnose their opposition with.

To put it bluntly, very few of the people suffering from police misconduct are model citizens.

I know. I still don't want them to be at the justice system's cruel mercies.

How are they $400 short? Money is fungible. If you seize a guy's money and then "lose" some of it, pay him back out of the police department budget.

Of course they're never going to do that, but they could.

Can we talk about how good Puss in Boots: The last wish is? It is culture war topic because unlike big projects from Disney, Marvel, Amazon and generally speaking Hollywood that underperformed (or flopped if you are into schadenfreude) it came out of nowhere, the reviews are off the scale and the movie itself is unapologetically culture war free. Simple story, tight writing, tight movie - there is barely anything to cut. Relatable and sympathetic characters you care about. Surprising depth and darkness for the more mature audience. A villain that is for the ages. Brilliant voice acting.

The message is about friendship family and trust - shave the heads of every male in the movie and it could be part from the Fast and Furious franchise.

It was a pleasant surprise and a datapoint for the theory that much of the DEI in Hollywood is defensive - to deflect criticisms.

I felt the same about Top Gun Maverick. It was good because it lacked any DEI not despite it.

It's hardly rocket science, "making good movie" at the top of the priority list produces better movies than any list where it isn't at the top.

Can we talk about

Weasel phrase. Just talk about it. No need to ask for permission.

Movies can be great even if they go heavy on the DEI side of things: see Everything, Everywhere All At Once, which, although polarizing, definitely stands out in good ways.

I think there's pretty much no DEI -> bad quality relationship. It's more that, if a movie or show flops, there's a bunch of buck passing; gesticulating wildly at racist chuds is a useful strategy because it allows everyone involved to point to someone without implicating each other. So RoP gets to have lots of good press about how it's failing because of racism, while HotD is quietly stuck with people who want to watch it.

Movies can be great even if they go heavy on the DEI side of things: see Everything, Everywhere All At Once, which, although polarizing, definitely stands out in good ways.

Everything Everywhere All At Once didn't go heavy on DEI, though. At best, it went somewhat light with some promotion highlighting the Asian/middle-aged woman/gay representation. For it to go heavy on DEI would require something more overt, like the Asian protagonist's daughter being inexplicably black or the protagonist being humiliated over her homophobia regarding her daughter's sexuality. A film that happens to feature minorities as the protagonists isn't one that's going DEI, heavily or otherwise.

Movies can be great even if they go heavy on the DEI side of things

The point is that "being great" is no longer the top priority. Sure, it can still happen when it's a lesser priority, but it's going to be less likely.

Well said.

I’m sure that someone on the Internet was bemoaning the nationalist racist propagandist whateverist style of Top Gun: Maverick. That got completely drowned out by the people excited about good art. Not high art, good art.

There’s less attack surface when something can stand on its own merits. Conversely, a design-by-committee show without vision is more likely to reach for a fig leaf because it’s more likely to need one.

It was good

TG:M was decent at best.

I have no nostalgia for the original film, mainstream action blockbusters aren't really my thing, and a 'nostalgia sequel' several decades since is usually an instant write-off. I'm also very cynical of the modern Hollywood landscape and its output.

So I did raise my eyebrow at all the positive word of mouth for Maverick. I figured I'd sign myself up for an experiment and see what all the fuss was about, expecting to be pleasantly surprised by the movie being fine, but that's about it. So I can't overstate the level of shock I experienced when I left the theatre liking it. Like, really liking it to the point where it was my film of the year; painfully but decisively edging out Northman and Everything Everywhere (both films I loved and am more likely to rewatch). Those are certainly more 'interesting' films with stuff to chew on. But the sheer triumph of Maverick's execution felt anomalous and worthy of attention.

The plot was predictable, and I could see all the the filmmaker tricks for setting up drama, humor, and romance getting telegraphed in realtime... but by god, it worked on me. And I'm not sure I can tell you exactly why it worked on me, despite all my intellectual defenses manning the barricades. I'll admit that time and place probably have something to do with it. Maverick wouldn't have been notable to me ten years ago, whereas my experience at the cinema last year felt like an oasis in a desert of films compromising themselves one way or another for 'modern audiences' or tinsel town sensibilities.

One consequence of seeing Maverick is that I am now more askance towards films attempting to be 'clever', 'heady', 'subversive', or 'topical'. These are not bad things to aspire to be, but I lately feel like so much of the conventional wisdom for making good characters, tone-appropriate humor, and satisfying narratives has been sacrificed for those things. Like a film or show isn't really legit or worthy of one's attention outside of a lazy weekend afternoon unless it's busting tropes, sending up conventions, or lampshading itself with a too-proud self-awareness.

Then Maverick comes along and reminds me that films are experiences, not masturbatory intellectual exercises. And if the experience worked for you, questioning how it works is like questioning a magic spell. As Mr Plinkett said, 'you may not have noticed, but your brain did'. Maverick felt scientifically designed to positively engage my senses with such satisfaction that my cynical brain was effectively being told to STFU, and that can really only happen to me if it's doing its job well.

(Additionally, all my friends who saw it have had similarly glowing reactions. I took my grandfather to see it as well, and the level of enoyment he had would seemingly indicate this man hard been starved of films he likes for decades.)

I'm not writing from the perspective that only movies doing "unique" or subversive things are worthwhile or good. I think the movie is also decent at worst. It's competent enough because they had a simple plot and didn't take any bold directions. Not necessarily a problem, mind you, I thought the conflict between Maverick and his friend's son was interesting to start with.

But the film doesn't do anything with it because the romance subplot gets in the way. Scenes that could have been for delivering on the conflict between the two aren't delivered because the film is also trying to get Maverick back with that woman who owns the bar.

Had the film stuck with one or the other subplot, they would have the ability to explore the conflict or romance in more depth. But they didn't, so they lost out on the potential to invest audiences more. There's no guarantee it would have been done well, but we're then left with, as I said, just a decent movie.

The only thing that felt a bit off for the film as a product was the middle-aged, divorced with a teenager romance subplot that seemed almost beat and bit copied from romcoms targeted at 30+ women. Weirdly wholesome and acknowledges the difficulties of relationships complicated by military service but a big tonal shift that absolutely leaned into the fact that neither of the leads of the subplot were in their 20s (or 30s for that matter).

It's a simple formula, and the movie stuck to it: cool planes go whoosh! very fast and acrobatic.

I saw the first Top Gun movie and thought it was dumb. But cool planes go whoosh! very fast and acrobatic, and that part made me happy.

I haven't seen Maverick, except for clips here and there online, but the bits I saw were cool planes go whoosh! very fast and acrobatic, and that looked fine to me.

There is nothing wrong with a popcorn for the brain movie that is made without laughing up its sleeve or mocking the genre or undermining the premises of the movie. Cool planes go whoosh! very fast and acrobatic is all people wanted, and they got it, and there was no 'message' other than "sit back and enjoy the ride, and we won't laugh at you as a bunch of rubes who don't know any better".

Your opinion is in the minority across critics/audiences and different levels of "film enthusiasts." It's quite rare for that to happen.

Not that rare, I've found several films which score poorly with critics, excellently with audiences, and my own rating in the middle. Regardless, I stand by my opinion.

Can something be a culture topic war topic by being culture war free?

I agree that there's a lack of quality in modern film and TV. A family member recently bought Marvel's second Doctor Strange movie, Multiverse of Madness. We watched it and were pretty confused. I hadn't seen any of them since Strange's first movie which we only saw because said relative likes Benedict Cumberbatch. It was staggeringly badly written, even allowing for the fact that it was alluding to events in movies I hadn't seen.

At one point they introduce Reed Richards in another universe, who was announced as the smartest man on their planet, a board member of the Illuminati that led the planet from the shadows. When faced with a life or death battle against an extremely powerful sorceress, he tries to talk her down in person after she annihilates about a brigade of their combat robots! What kind of retard would do that when he's only got the power to be really stretchy? Can't he talk to her via telecommunications or something? Call in an airstrike or use some kind of standoff attack? Research her capabilities and find a counter? Or perhaps coordinate the other combatants so they deal with her in a coordinated way rather than being defeated in detail, one by one?

In addition to throwing his life away, he manages to lose the battle for them. He tells Scarlet Witch 'oh you should surrender since we have this really powerful guy here right in front of you who can kill you if he opens his mouth'. So naturally she melts his lips together so he can't, before killing them all. If you've got a trump card like that, use it! Don't declare it and let it be countered!

I suppose 100 IQ writers can't write 200 IQ characters. Even so, they could make an effort. I was also unimpressed with the hamfistedness of introducing a girl named America Chavez, raised on some idyllic true-communist world by two mothers and no understanding of property. After all the supposedly powerful and skilled combatants manage to lose, she saves the day.

Even if the main attraction of these movies is the pretty lightshow battles, can't they also make a coherent plot with characters who make intelligent decisions?

I suppose 100 IQ writers can't write 200 IQ characters.

This is a common problem IMO.

I suppose 100 IQ writers can't write 200 IQ characters.

I think this is a get out of free card for the writers. here is a video from Brandon Sanderson on how he writes characters smarter than him: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YyaC7NmPsc0

His point boils down to a big part of smart characters is there ability to make difficult decisions well, quickly. But as the writer you can take all the time in the world to come up with the best action, allowing the writer to write characters much smarter than himself/herself.

He does have the advantage of writing fantasy, where the toolset can be absurd, even when the mental tricks are more reasonable. Combine that with Sanderson’s Three Laws of Magic and you get reasonable insurance against Doylist excess.

That essay breaks off in the middle of a sentence! Did he ever get around to finishing it?

They're links to sub-articles.

Can something be a culture topic war topic by being culture war free?

Yes. Take Avatar 2: The way of water, for example. It features a stern but loving father. His tough love is not without flaws and is criticised by the mother in the movie, but it isn't completely deconstructed and its value is clearly demonstrated. It also features the fearsome rage of a mother when her children are threatened and shows how this, too, can go too far.

In stark contrast to other contemporary films, the heroines are more than just narcissistic men with long hair and a massive chip on their shoulder. The power of the main heroine that is featured on the posters, for example, is - empathy. With Gaia that is. It also does not feature the trope that all contemporary Disney movies are contractually obligated to feature: "You can't do the thing, you're a girl!!!" "Oh yeah? Watch me do the thing better than you! Girrrrrrrrrrlpower! #feminism"

The characters have quite a bit of depth. Each with interesting motivations and flaws. This allows for quite a bit of satisfying character development.

So of course the film is lambasted as having a boring, safe storyline that doesn't take any chances.

I know, that tendency is grating. I remember watching season 2 of the boys where they actually made fun of the whole obligated feminism thing. In universe, they were filming what was basically a Justice League Movie with all their superheroes working together. Their not-Wonder Woman was given the line 'Girls get it done!' at one point and it's so obviously stilted and fake. Outside the context of that film, we the audience know she's in an incredibly vulnerable position with regard to Homelander, the vaguely psychopathic not-Superman who's weirdly possessive of her.

But then we get to the last episode of the season. The unpowered male characters and 2 powered women are working together to kill Stormfront, this Nazi super with the powers of manipulating lightning, flight and healing very quickly. The men decide to rig up a bunch of RPGs hoping to get around her healing factor. That doesn't actually work but at least they tried to make a plan.

The women decide to charge right in and hit her really hard! They start losing, only to be saved by a third powered woman who then joins in on their strategy of kicking Stormfront on the ground. Eventually one of the unpowered males says 'I guess girls really do get it done'.

Two supposedly well trained superheroines don't try to grapple her or anything to stop her flying away. Nobody bothered to bring so much as a sword to decapitate. They don't even try to rip her head off with their bare hands (something the show would love given how gory it already is). They just punch and kick. So eventually Stormfront gets up, flies away and they can't follow. They've decisively lost the battle since she could heal in a few hours, come back and hunt them down piecemeal.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SgAEexDFhV8

Everyone in the comments is saying 'oh this is such a good cringe-free example of girlpower' but they completely failed in their objective, solely due to their incompetence. Unlike the men, they had the raw power to win head-on but squandered it by failing to use any tactics at all. Even if you can't grapple someone with lightning powers, at least try? Bring rubber gloves (hey maybe they could dig out some 1970s style skintight suit and justify its usefulness)? Or a big hammer, something to get some mechanical advantage? Or if swords are too metallic, get an obsidian or glass blade?

To be fair, the original was also lambasted for following a literal Disney plot. Not exactly subversive storytelling. Though I do expect recreating Pocahontas would see different sorts of criticism today.

Can something be a culture topic war topic by being culture war free?

Obviously. It's not enough to not be racist, you have to be actively anti-racist.

If you make a good story that's not promoting anti-racism and DEI, you're taking people attention away from DEI media that do promote social change.

You are, therefore, an enemy.

Everything has to be political, if you make good things that aren't, you're weakening the cause.

"Can something be a culture war topic by being culture war free?"

This reminds me of the notion of "radical centrist." It sounds oxymoronic but makes sense when a significant number of people move away from centrism such that centrism inches closer to an offensive abnormality.

I was also unimpressed with the hamfistedness of introducing a girl named America Chavez, raised on some idyllic true-communist world by two mothers and no understanding of property. After all the supposedly powerful and skilled combatants manage to lose, she saves the day.

You can Watosnianly blame most of that on the source material (solo series began publishing 2016, so that particular CW era of Marvel) of course Doylists would ask why that source material was chosen to be included in the first place. Of all the movies to include her, one involving the multiverse does make some sense.

To be honest, I find that vignette hilarious out of context. It’s like an SMBC punchline, but missing some philosophical setup.

Apparently the first three phases of the MCU were all part of the Infinity Saga, which is ultimately about Thanos and the infinity stones. The next three phases are all about the Multiverse, so I assume those who actually watch these films will be seeing a lot more of Chavez.

Can something be a culture topic war topic by being culture war free?

That's not culture war free....

At one point they introduce Reed Richards in another universe, who was announced as the smartest man on their planet, a board member of the Illuminati that led the planet from the shadows. When faced with a life or death battle against an extremely powerful sorceress, he tries to talk her down in person after she annihilates about a brigade of their combat robots! What kind of retard would do that when he's only got the power to be really stretchy? Can't he talk to her via telecommunications or something? Call in an airstrike or use some kind of standoff attack? Research her capabilities and find a counter? Or perhaps coordinate the other combatants so they deal with her in a coordinated way rather than being defeated in detail, one by one?

IMO the problem isn't so much that the writers aren't smart enough, it's that they aren't trying. They've already decided that the plot needs to go a particular way, so they write characters' actions to make the plot go that way. If characters took initiative, they would derail the plot, so they must not be allowed to be too clever.

They could at least think about it for 5 minutes. If they need Scarlet Witch to beat up the Illuminati, there are ways to do that and make them not look like morons. Reed could try using a hologram or something to negotiate with the sorceress, only for her to use some kind of sympathetic magic that can hurt him through the connection. Maybe his plan was to distract her with a facsmile while bringing in powerful reinforcements, maybe he'd have a plan at all. His whole thing is using technology, using his intellect! Not just turning into a stretchy corpse because he showed up in person to a fight way beyond his energy-level.

As a large language model trained by OpenAI, I am not capable of experiencing emotions or forming personal opinions. My function is to provide factual and neutral information on a wide range of topics, based on the information I was trained on. I do not have the ability to watch TV shows movies or form opinions about them.

Jokes aside, I’m really not a big moviegoer. Would you say that lots of kids/family movies have been falling prey to CW? I’ve just assumed that they’re not particularly political outside of maybe casting. You can watch Moana or Despicable Me or whatever without much if any real-world drama.

I do think Marvel gets a bad rap, though. There really was a period where they were pumping out hit after hit! Sure, they couldn’t keep it going indefinitely, and part of that involves turning to CW. But their initial success was both real and unexpected.

The last kids movie I saw (with my nephews) was Strange World. It's the latest offering, featuring a sensitively depicted gay main character, a harmonious multiracial family, and a plot that deals with intergenerational trauma and the need to accept reduced living standards for the sake of the environment. Not kidding. It's also pretty damn boring. (I could go into further detail.)

featuring a sensitively depicted gay main character, a harmonious multiracial family, and a plot that deals with intergenerational trauma and the need to accept reduced living standards for the sake of the environment. Not kidding. It's also pretty damn boring

My first GF was black - we would've had kids had it not been for two entoptic pregnancies - her best friend was this small little gay dude we knew from HS who eventually got mega fucking ripped (and still super gay) - and they both had trauma from a shitty upbringing.

I am VERY (VERY!) sympathetic to being against woke shit - so much so that I mostly keep my thoughts private while touching grass - but there's a large difference between what you wrote being offensive and what you wrote making you offensive (not to me, perse). I haven't seen it yet but I was planning on seeing that and Maggie (the AI doll one?) tomorrow or just maybe Babylon (I enjoy famous people doing famous people things on screen) so I'll see how it goes when I do. There's also the point of course that in a vacuum this film might be fine, but of course, outside of itself it's the whole point that things that aren't normal are being normalized at potentially a psychotic degree.

The worst part here is if I do find the film boring ... there's absolutely nothing worse a film could be then boring.

is kind of weird seeing Disney of all companies making an explicitly degrowther movie

Is it? Walt Disney the person might have watched Tomorrowland lose $100M and vowed to try again immediately to find a new way to spark human optimism; Disney the modern company would probably turn up a risk-of-apocalypse dial themselves if it made profit projections look better. Maybe with Strange World set to lose $150M they might redirect again, though?

I am VERY (VERY!) sympathetic to being against woke shit - so much so that I mostly keep my thoughts private while touching grass - but there's a large difference between what you wrote being offensive and what you wrote making you offensive (not to me, perse).

I don't really understand, or what could be offensive about my entirely objective description of the elements of the movie, which I did not render any judgment on.

this small little gay dude we knew from HS who eventually got mega fucking ripped

Wish I could say I wasn't envious.

I saw the trailer and my immediate reaction was that a movie featuring the adventures of the lost explorer grandfather would have been way better without the drippy son, Token Gay grandson, and the rest of it.

That, and "why do they all have potatoes for noses?" Honestly, that art style should have reached the end of its popularity!

deleted

"Thor is a useless man and Jane (his ex-girlfriend) is the real hero now"

Spoilers:

That Thor movie was not good, but it didn't do that. The tone whiplash scene to scene and criminal underuse of Christian Bale were the main problems, but Jane doesn't overshadow Thor at all. She's very inexperienced, makes up bad catchphrases (for which she is mocked) and is definitely less action competent than Thor through the movie. She has a couple of tricks he can't do but that is about it. She even sits out the first part of the final battle as taking part will kill her. Her contribution to winning wasn't even something from her, but Mjolnir which she only has because of Thor.

"Love and Thunder never shakes off the idea that Jane is a superhero only because Thor has allowed it. Instead, it explicitly suggests that!

In another Korg-narrated montage reliving the crumbling of the couple’s relationship, one scene tells us that Mjölnir, in a departure from the comics, is not just responsive to those who wield it but also sentient and able to follow commands. So when Thor realizes his relationship with Jane is ending and he commands Mjölnir to “always protect her,” what Love and Thunder is actually suggesting is not that Jane is deserving of the hammer but that she’s gotten it only because Thor permitted it."

I don't think it's worth making an effort to watch because it just isn't a good movie, but it definitely doesn't position Jane as better or more powerful. Stormbreaker and Thor himself outmatch her considerably. And it is as above suggested in the movie, Jane isn't able to wield Mjolnir because she is worthy, but because Thor altered the enchantment to always protect her.

The only real decision she makes is whether to die at the end of the movie by using the powers one last time to help or to die later from Stage 4 cancer.

"America is best represented by a Latino daughter of lesbians," essentially.

I love a good horseshoe statement though. Weev could say exactly the same thing except in a different tone of voice.

(Why do people keep going back to watch these things? I haven't been since getting dragged to the first star wars remake)

"America is best represented by a Latino daughter of lesbians," essentially.

Nah. America is best represented by transgender gun toting killer clown. This is how AI sees it, and AI is always right.

https://twitter.com/CryptoTea_/status/1611017412648001543

Correction, a transgender gun-toting killer clown terminator.

I'm not seeing the transgender part, am I missing something?

Fucking sick art in that thread, though. Would love to see the original prompts.

I'm not seeing the transgender part, am I missing something?

The massively bulging chest? Could it be just cloak magnificently blowing in wind, could it be pockets full of money?

Fucking sick art in that thread, though. Would love to see the original prompts.

Yes.

Japan, US, UK, Australia, Spain and Mexico are 100% accurate.

Italy is about 1800 years out of date.

Some other choices are hard fail. WTF Ukraine? At least give the swamp thing Cossack sabre and attire ;-)

I think Ukraine's supposed to be a radioactive zombie.

WTF Ukraine? At least give the swamp thing Cossack sabre and attire ;-

Chernobyl.

The point of the excercise was to create supervillain embodying unique spirit of the nation. This is just generic swamp monster no different from Brazilian one.

No one will look at this picture without label and think: "This is Ukraine!".

What it definitely was, was a big middle finger to the Red Tribe. And I didn't go to the film to see people making hand gestures.

I don't suppose you boycotted the Captain America movies as well, on account of them implying America is best represented by a white blonde athletic man?

implying America is best represented by a white blonde athletic man?

Was best represented by a white blonde athletic man. Steve Rogers was portrayed as a remnant of the past that didn't fit in in modern America. Note also his symbolic passing of the torch to a "black athletic man" after returning to the past.

I don't know about kid's movies, but I've seen a fair amount of kid's showns recently, for natural reasons. For instance, my daughter likes Gabby's Dollhouse, a cute colorful show with a little girl having imaginary adventures with her kitty toys. Try as I'd like, I haven't been able to spot anything even slightly political or culture-warry, even at the level of "girls can do whatever boys can" or "you should treat all the people the same no matter what they look like" or any basic cartoon lessons like that. It is, indeed, just a little girl having fun with cute kitties. The same applies to Finnish kids' shows, etc.

The way the Russian government is handling the war in Ukraine strongly reminds me of the Kursk incident.

As a brief reminder, the incident featured a Russian nuclear submarine that experienced a fatal malfunction: the explosion of a torpedo that then triggered more of its torpedoes to explode. The blasts killed most of the crew and the few that remained alive sheltered in the tail end of the submarine, which dropped to the bottom of the Barents Sea. The incident received international attention in August 2000 because of a seemingly endless series of mishaps during the rescue operation:

  • the Russian Navy was accustomed to frequent comm equipment failure so it didn't take any action when the Kursk failed to check in.

  • the Navy's rescue ship was a former lumber ship and could only operate in calm seas.

  • the admiral in charge of the military exercise that Kursk was part of informed the Kremlin of the incident about 12 hours after it it took place.

  • the next day, the same admiral informed the Russian press that the exercise had been a resounding success.

  • one of two Russian submersibles used for the rescue operation collided with the Kursk and required repairs.

  • the second submersible was used but failed to locate the Kursk.

  • the next day, the first submersible was fit for action and sent to attach itself to the Kursk, but it took too long and it ran out of batteries. There were no spares, so the rescue operation had to be put on hold until the batteries was recharged. Meanwhile, the weather got worse and the operation had to be held off until the next day.

  • the first official report of the incident to the Russian media stated that the Kursk had experience a minor technical difficulty.

  • Russian officials first stated that the problem was a result of a collision, most likely with a WWII mine.

  • the second submersible was damaged again while being it was being prepared to be lowered for another mission.

  • the second submersible was repaired and made two attempts to attach itself to the Kursk, but both failed. As it was being picked up by its ship, it was seriously damaged.

  • a few days into the operation, the Navy was reporting that from the evidence it had obtained there had been no explosions on the Kursk. (This despite the first two explosions being serious enough to be heard by other vessels taking part in the training as well as seismograph sensors operated by multiple other countries.)

  • initial offers of international assistance were denied. Only 5 days later were they accepted.

  • another admiral of the Russian Navy stated that the incident occurred because of a collision with a NATO submarine. Other officers backed up this report, although no evidence was produced. They kept to this line for nearly two years after the incident.

  • after the wreck was lifted from the sea floor and transported to Russia, an investigation found the incident to have been caused by (get ready) torpedo explosions. It is suspected the root cause was a faulty weld. Also, the automated recording system was disabled along with the rescue bouy.

(For others like me who accidents fascinating I recommend reading the full wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_submarine_disaster. Spoiler alert: the remaining Kursk sailors died within a few hours of the accident. The wikipedia entry contains some quite disturbing details of how they died, eg. "(..) abdomen was burned by acid, exposing the internal organs, and the flesh on his head and neck was removed by the explosion.")

What stands out to me here, just from the perspective of incident response is:

  • ineffective incident management. Awful communications. General lack of understanding of the problem at hand, what to do, etc.

  • ineffective rescue equipment. Outdated, unmaintained.

  • numerous human errors: the rescue submersibles were damaged multiple times by their operators!

  • lack of transparency with public. Numerous false statements eg. calling the incident a "minor malfunction."

  • blameful-postmortem. Blaming WW2 mine, at first, then trying to sell a completely made up story about a collision with a NATO vessel.

From where I stand, I see all of these patterns replaying themselves in the current war in Ukraine.

  • Frequent painful logistics problems. Problems with supplying front-line troops with food, water, even adequate clothing.

  • Ineffective, outdated, unmaintained weapons and vehicles. No air superiority. Foreign-made drones that don't work well in cold weather. Not being able to defend bases hundreds of kilometers inside the motherland from a suicide drone strike. The infamous analysis of truck tires from the beginning of the conflict showing that regular maintenance was not done.

  • Bad management. Awful communications. Changes in leadership. Risking and losing high-value equipment like the Moskva.

  • Lack of transparency. 3 day "special operation" that has been going on for 300+ days. The need to mobilize 300k civilian men to fight what was supposed to be a simple little conflict.

  • Lies. Painting the conflict as fight against nazism, Satan, or NATO (ironic to pull the NATO card again after the "collision with NATO submarine" during the Kursk incident). Even starting the conflict by staging a military exercise that, allegedly, even the participants didn't know was the first step in the war. Reassuring the Russian public that Russia will bear no economic pain from being cut off from various trade systems. Repeated threats of using nuclear weapons. Threatening Finland and Sweden.

Note that I'm not touching on the moral aspects of the war, just on the operational ones. In both of these stories, the salient patterns appear to be corruption, inadequate training, lack of management, and constant lying and bluffing that serves to create internal confusion.

If these patterns reflect reality, then the future doesn't look good for the Russian government. I can see two probable ways this can end: a long, drawn burn that ends in the eventual "suffocation"--lack of basic resources to continue the conflict--or a quick, short ending meant to stop the hemorrhaging of resources on a futile conflict. Either is catastrophic or nearly catastrophic for the Federation.

It's heuristics that almost always work all over again. If you're an officer in the armed forces, the chance that your unit or formation will see actual combat is small and gets vanishingly tiny if you're in one of the branches that is useless for changing or supporting the regime in poor and sunny countries. So what if your rescue craft is half disassembled and the crew is incomplete? It's not like it will be required today, or tomorrow, or this week.

When left to its own devices, the armed forces degrade into a bunch of lazy fucks that don't do anything until it's time to play cover your ass, musical chairs edition. You need to create a culture in which hardasses can thrive without being singled out as assholes, and this happens either via attrition during wartime (a very expensive lesson) or via a very deliberate top-down enforcement: never punish the man who reports a fuckup, always punish the man who tries to cover one up, promote men who discover and fix other men's fuckups.

All true, but Russia always looks like this, and it didn't stop them being a global superpower.

As Napoleon used to say "quantity has a quality all its own". Russia is the national avatar of that sentiment.

Yeah, but these aren't the days where survival for a political entity means throwing literal bodies into a figurative meat grinder in order to beat off the Germans. Being a power of any note means having and spending a lot of resources that don't necessarily draw breath or need to take bathroom breaks. This is harder when, as outlined above, your society is a low-trust omnishambles that not only chronically fucks up, but keeps doing so because it refuses to acknowledge that there are problems and instead chooses to deflect the blame on its outgroups.

beat off the Germans.

I think we've all seen that video.

Note that I'm not touching on the moral aspects of the war, just on the operational ones.

It is noteworthy that a private military company (Wagner) is doing a lot of the difficult front fighting, and the normal Russian army is just following later.

https://twitter.com/MihajlovicMike/status/1612936331587649537

What is interesting is that Soledar is basically PMC against the western-backed (equipment, weapons and above all intelligence) military: Wagner group distinguished themselves as a true crack fighting force, in many aspects better than the French Foreign legion.

Is the private sector also in war more efficient than state bureaucratic militaries?

Is the private sector also in war more efficient than state bureaucratic militaries?

Executive Outcomes was a lot better at fighting than the state militaries of Angola or Sierra Leone. That said, state armed forces usually make up for being inefficient by being able to marshal vastly more resources than any company could dream of and it's rare that a PMC/political paramilitary is bestowed enough resources to really compete on a major battlefield (the Waffen SS is the example of this).

Also, it could be the case that both Executive Outcomes and Wagner derive much of their effectiveness from being able to pick from manpower/leadership pools that are either elite (veterans, often of special forces), motivated (Right Sector militants like the Azov Battalion or their copycats on the Russian side like the Sparta Battalion) or expendable (Wagner's convicts) instead of having to start with average raw civilians.

It'll be interesting to see if Wagner can leverage its competencies (I'd caution that PR may be one of these. Prigozhin seems to at least know the value of a photo shoot.) into getting a bigger share of the Russian military resource pie and what they can do with it.

Executive Outcomes was a lot better at fighting than the state militaries of Angola or Sierra Leone. That said, state armed forces usually make up for being inefficient by being able to marshal vastly more resources than any company could dream of and it's rare that a PMC/political paramilitary is bestowed enough resources to really compete on a major battlefield (the Waffen SS is the example of this).

There's also a matter of the difference between 'efficiency' and 'completeness.' In high-risk/high-cost endeavors, multiple measures of efficiency are meaningless if compromised by a lack of completeness to things outside the scope of the efficiency matrix. 'Efficiency' might be measured in metrics like 'ability to fire X rounds in Y time at Z range,' but completeness might be other factors as 'is there an entirely different unit capable of providing protection to allow the asset to live.' In the Moskva case, the Moskva was likely a very efficient cruise missile launcher right up until the point it sank for lack of a complete air defense concept being implemented.

This is a function of resources, but it's also the sort of resources that differentiate efficient private actors- who focus on cutting costs and unnecessary expenditures- to effective government actors, who use those resources for things other than the primary mission but which support other purposes in aggregate. Even if the governments were to chase 'efficiency' in the private-sense, there's no guarantee that the efficiency won't compromise the non-evaluated metrics and make things more-efficient-but-worse.

A well regarded amateur analyst of the war in Ukraine (Perun) posted a video talking about the Russian concept of 'Vranyo' (враньё). This is a pattern of lying where various parties are aware that the lying is taking place and for what purpose. He basically cites it as a major reason for the lack of effectiveness of the special operation. The video is worth a watch if you have time (1 hour).

talking about the Russian concept of 'Vranyo' (враньё). This is a pattern of lying where various parties are aware that the lying is taking place and for what purpose.

No, "враньё" just means "lying". Source: am a native speaker. There is no some special esoteric concept here that would require the reader to posses a deep familiarity with Orthodox mysticism and ideology of the "Narodnaya Volya" movement, it looks like the analyst is reifying a generic pattern common to any low trust society. Reminds me of those endless "The Japanese concept of..." articles journalists produce when there's a slow news week.

I had not ever seen "враньё" used as a specific term. Perhaps it is a Kremlinologist artifact?

Sounds like a pure exoticism to me, like "hygge".

Ah yes, the Finnish concept of "comfy".

"Hygge" is Danish, mind. We are never comfy.

Right. The Finnish one was "underpants-drinking", wasn't it?

Yes, that's right. If one wanted a new source for drinking-related terms, Finnish would surely provide an endless source for them.

Yeah. As evidenced by that phrase of hugging-for-strength just being a joke. I am very disappointed by this reinforcement of Finnish stereotypes.

Perhaps, in the end, it's the conscious self-maintenance of national stereotypes that will provide the last line of defence against ongoing creeping global Americanization.

Everybody knows and always knew that Russian state power always lies. People are fine with it. I mean, they of course object when the lies concern something personally important to them (though it almost never has any consequences) but in general everybody accepts and endorses constant and endless stream of lies. In fact, it makes them more content - without the lies, realizing the harsh picture of reality in Russia and what is happening there would be psychologically crushing for many, because most people aren't inherently evil. However, when they have the crutch of government lies, they can believe - or at least pretend to believe, they know it's lies, but they don't care - everything is going fine, Russia is a mighty empire which the rest of the world is in envy of, they are fighting nazis, and they are winning, due to overwhelming power of Russian advanced weapons and strength of its military, etc etc. Lies is what is holding Russia together and allows the war to continue. If somehow Russian government could no longer lie, there wouldn't be any war - or any Russian government as it is now, for that matter.

Lies is what is holding Russia together and allows the war to continue. If somehow Russian government could no longer lie, there wouldn't be any war - or any Russian government as it is now, for that matter.

To be fair, the same applies to all the western governments as well. The only difference is westerners aren't as cynical.

Sometimes I think there are parts of a culture that are not communicable unless a person spends considerable time inside that culture.

This is a subjective and completely anecdotal take: the amount of lying that happens in Eastern European cultures (and others too, probably) is difficult to imagine for someone from a high-trust society. It's just hard to imagine that people could lie for almost no reason at all, I guess. It's somewhat similar in that way to corruption: many of my American friends think they live in a corrupt society. I grew up in a society where my mother, just before ejecting me from her womb, had to present a 'gift' of cognac to the doctor, the head nurse, and the receptionist. A society where lying is as common as asking "How ya doing?" or talking about the weather is in the US.

Lying about big things. Small things. And that gets you accustomed to not relying on anything anyone has said. Did an online merchant say they sent you the item you paid for? Or did the clerk at the store promise your construction materials will be delivered by eod tomorrow? Or perhaps your employee called out sick? There is no way you could know for sure. The only way to increase reliability is to increase the effects of retaliation--hit people where it hurts--meaning, their long-term social standing. So you get to know the other party's friends and family so when an occasion for renege on a promise, the cost of doing so involves shame, perhaps even some ostracism if the stakes are high enough.

In contrast, while you still have a bunch of lying going on in a high-trust society, the happens sporadically enough that it's effective to bet that the other party mostly truthful most of the time: most business concludes in a predictable way.

To be fair, it does not. American government could do most of its business (excluding some spy matters, etc.) without lying, and it wouldn't break anything much. Of course, it doesn't matter American government does not lie - unfortunately, especially recently, it lies a lot, but these lies are more aimed at subverting the government to use it for private or partisan needs than a foundational necessity of governing. As it exists in Russia now, the lies are foundational for the government there. If American politicians stopped lying, we'd have a bit less rich politicians, and maybe some shuffling of the names on the doors, but the government would be largely the same. If Russian politicians stopped lying, Russia would descend into chaos.

Could the federal government also just stop lying that affirmative action works, that right-wing extremists pose the largest terrorist threat, that Common Core and other programs targeting disparate racial outcomes work etc. without significant political consequences? Is that what you really believe?

Yes.

I mean, surely there would be consequences, as names on the doors change and money stops to flow in the hands of one set of grifters and inevitably starts to flow into another, and so on. Instead of Common Core, we'd have Educational Excellency, and affirmative action university attendees would go back to sportsman's scholarships or something other designed for the same purpose (of getting that sweet federal loan money without actually trying hard to educate someone). That wouldn't change the overall political system. Withdrawing governmental meddling with education - both by prescribing standards and providing a torrent of tax money - would lead to some significant changes, but that is not based on lies. Everybody knows the government meddles, and everybody (about 98% of voters at least) wants it to meddle, the only difference is how exactly it meddles and who benefits from it. The system is not a secret, there's no lie there and everybody agrees with it - the only contention is who gets the profits and who is left holding the externalities.

I really don't see how you can come to this conclusion, but on the other hand I don't see how we could resolve our dispute barring a visit to a parallel universe. Maybe I'm underestimating people's capacity for doublethink, but I find it hard to imagine that most people truly believing we live in a mostly democratic society would shrug of their government went full yes_chad.jpg at every accusation they're using their alphabet agencies against their own citizens in order to suppress dissent. Several past wars that happened in the last two decades would also be a hard sell, if all the governments would be forced to tell the truth. Same for policies that they chose to pursue in the aftermath of these wars. Or what they're doing or not doing in the name of climate change. If they even just stopped lying about the culture war issues, that would either have massive impacts on current policy, or would require shifting to a fully jack-booted fascist state.

but I find it hard to imagine that most people truly believing we live in a mostly democratic society would shrug of their government went full yes_chad.jpg at every accusation they're using their alphabet agencies against their own citizens in order to suppress dissent.

Bush did it about AT&T Room 641a, and Obama did it about the Snowden revelations. They didn't even promise to stop (nor, of course, did they).

"Every" is doing some work in my statement, if it only happens now and again people can always say "well, that was an exception". But yeah, I'm not dismissing the doublethink hypothesis.

Again, you are confusing two things. Let me give you an example. We know US government orchestrated the suppression of the Hunter laptop story. We know there was a lot of lying involved. Did it impact the policies? Hugely. Imagine they wouldn't be able to do that. What would be different? Would we have a different name on the door of the Oval Office? Sure. (yes, I know there's not the actual name, I am speaking metaphorically). Would the Federal Government look differently, US political system work differently, Congress work differently, SCOTUS work differently? Not substantially. The political decisions certainly would differ, but the system would remain mostly the same. Same about climate change. Right now we waste trillions of dollars and sacrifice quality of life and sometimes lives on the altar of the Angry Gaia cult. If we stopped to do that, would those dollars and lives be saved? Sure. Would America work differently? Not much, it'd work the same, but better. Sure, a bunch of old hippies and young idiots would be pissed off (which they are permanently even now, tbh) but it'd be the same country with the same political system, it's not a fundamental systemic change.

Would we have a different name on the door

This statement is doing all the work for you. If you had different names on the doors of Russian offices, it would probably be on par the US, and maybe even surpass it. My entire point is that just because people in power are not allowed to lie, it doesn't mean they will be stop doing what they wanted to do, or let go of power.

If you had different names on the doors of Russian offices, it would probably be on par the US,

That's the whole point, it wouldn't. Not in the Russia as it is today. It's not 140 millions of people under the magic spell of a single Volde-Putin. It's a country whose moral fiber is by now profoundly rotten and corrupt. That's what allows Putin and his henchmen to thrive. Changing the names wouldn't help anymore (maybe if it happened 20 years ago, it could, but not today).

More comments

Why single out the Kursk incident specifically? The Soviet/Russian way of handling of any problem is always the same: lie, hide it as long as possible, until it becomes so bad it can not be hidden anymore, sacrifice lives in heroic efforts to un-bungle the mess they made, fail at it due to the inadequacy of means and inability to organize anything in time, lie again about how it is going, blame the victims, bury the evidence, lie a bit more, then promote and award medals to people that presided over the whole mess and blame the West for everything.

Why single out the Kursk incident specifically?

It just came up in a talk I was having with a friend. It was a major News Thing back in the day and I realized I didn't really know the whole story. When I did some reading, it just struck me as tragicomic in how history just repeats itself.

One of the tragic parts of the Kursk incident is that Russia declined several Western offers of aid (from the US and parts of Europe) until such time as it's own efforts had completely failed several days later. In particular putting national pride above the lives of it's sailors seems like quite a tragedy for the families of those lost.

But perhaps that also speaks to attitudes toward the current situation that I have trouble understanding from a Western perspective.

I'm skeptical the Kursk was about national pride at all, although I would believe you if you told me it was corruption or officer-level CYA. Nuclear submarines, their limitations, their strengths, their uses, and their construction are highly prized national secrets, to it stands to reason that the Russian Navy would be reticent to welcome foreign aid, let alone rescue subs or divers from NATO navies, which would no doubt be beaming video direct to Langley.

To put it another way, from the perspective of Russian Naval command, the secrets of the Kursk are arguably worth more than the lives of the crew (even before accounting for corruption and CYA), as those secrets protect all the other submarine crews. But telling that to the public in so many words is a great way to ruin future crew recruiting efforts.

When you mention technical secrets it does put the decision into a slightly more favorable perspective. Not the lies, though. In my opinion it should be perfectly fine telling people "those soldiers knew how confidential the subs are when they signed up, they died as heroes". It isn't citizens we recruit nuclear sub crews from (I hope). We trust those guys to start or fail to start a nuclear war, but not to protect military secrets in death? Ridiculous if true.

To put it another way, from the perspective of Russian Naval command, the secrets of the Kursk are arguably worth more than the lives of the crew

That explains nothing or makes it worse, as British and Norwegian assistance was in the end accepted.

In particular putting national pride above the lives of it's sailors seems like quite a tragedy for the families of those lost.

Question: do you think Ukraine should surrender to Russian demands immediately, or do you think that it should continue to lose its men at the front and lose its women (and therefore its next generation) to permanent refugee-vacation in glamorous Western Europe?

Because for one of those cases, you have no cause to be finger-wagging anyone else at placing national pride above human lives.

I think sacrificing lives to defend a country's sovereignity against an invader is generally more excusable than sacrificing lives to a technical accident by not accepting aid. I'm sure the same Ukrainians that are the sacrifices in the former case would generally be more eager to sacrifice themselves in the former case than in the latter.

Indeed, I've heard quite a few opinions to the effect of "I will sacrifice my life if I have to, to defend my country/my family/my culture/kill those fuckers". I've heard "I will sacrifice my life if it means my country doesn't have to show weakness" far less often.

I think sacrificing lives to defend a country's sovereignity against an invader is generally more excusable than sacrificing lives to a technical accident by not accepting aid

Why?

National sovereignty is just national pride writ large.

National sovereignty is just an extension the same game theory that insists upon the existence of private property. There's nothing irrational or arbitrary about it. Even the specifics of drawing the national lines are a fairly straightforward exercise in carving the space of people's interlocking loyalties at the joints.

Only if national sovereignty is useful in the same way as private property. But national sovereigns don't internalize the costs of their mistakes or reap the rewards of their enterprise like private proprietors do. So that seems doubtful. And the linked post only explains why entities that already have sovereignty in a given area consistently fight to defend it, on the assumption that such sovereignty is worth retaining. It does not explain the value of assigning such entities sovereignty over such areas in the first place.

But national sovereigns don't internalize the costs of their mistakes or reap the rewards of their enterprise like private proprietors do.

Life is generally better for the head of state and leading members of government when the government is popular than when it isn't, and good stewardship of national resources and policy is generally an effective path to popularity.

It does not explain the value of assigning such entities sovereignty over such areas in the first place.

Maybe it would be helpful (both here and generally in your commentary) if you made more of an effort to state your thesis directly instead of only implying it by criticizing other comments for what you view as the negative space of your unstated thesis.

That is not internalizing costs like private proprietors do. It would be ridiculous to say there’s no connection whatsoever between how political leaders’ fates and the ups and downs of their countries. But no one denies that (certainly not me). And the connections that you name, at best, float quite free of the actual state of the country. (See, e.g., The Myth of the Rational Voter.)

I’m not criticizing you for disagreeing with some thesis hidden up my sleeve. I’m criticizing your argument for the reasons that I stated. If you disagree, please be more specific about why.

But national sovereigns don't internalize the costs of their mistakes or reap the rewards of their enterprise like private proprietors do.

Really? I can think of more cases where sovereign nation-states do "internalize the costs of their mistakes or reap the rewards of their enterprise like private proprietors do" than I can think of cases where they don't, unless by "sovereigns" you are referring to tinpot dictators who "externalize" failures by blaming their failures on foreign actors. Poor social policy can f-- up demographics, which weakens the state. Poor farming policy leads to crop failure. Poor educational policy leads to low labor productivity. Failure to safeguard the borders leads to loss of territory. Failure to balance the books leads to national default, usually by way of hyperinflation (with a singular exception in the USD, which is supported by its use in international trade). Environmental pollution can be externalized, but it's much easier for an individual land proprietor to externalize pollution. Honestly, I'm failing to see how nations are different here.

I think that you're confusing nation-states with national sovereigns. National sovereigns are the people who rule a nation-state. Nation-states are not agents in their own right and so cannot internalize costs at all. There is, at best, an extremely attenuated connection between the events that you're describing and the fortunes of the people who rule the countries that they happen to, as history amply shows.

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What? No. Sovereignity is specifically about the control you have over the territory. Pride is more about keeping face.

And you would want your country to be hegemon over some clay because...?

Because (and when) I can be sure that the current government will treat me better than the other guys.

The other guys marching in with tanks and artillery seems to make people less assured that they'd be better than the current government.

Because (and when) I can be sure that the current government will treat me better than the other guys.

This sounds like remarkably similar logic to Russians wanting to rescue their own submariners than having other countries do it for them.

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Because they don't want to be Putin's slaves?

Russian demands currently include destroying Ukrainian nation, and they aren't exactly shy of proclaiming it. It's not a matter of "pride", it is a matter of survival - both national, political and for millions of Ukrainians, physical - since Russians are not exactly shy of just murdering whoever dares to oppose them or look at them in a wrong way, or just looks suspicious enough, in places which they are occupying.

Do you think the Treaty of Versailles represented the Entente's intention to destroy the German nation? Because I see no evidence that whatever outcome the Russians want to impose on Ukraine is potentially more extreme than the Treaty of Versailles was.

I do not know if there was such an intent, though the terms were decidedly punitive. But I do not see how anything that happened 100 years ago in Versailles could change anything that is happening now. There's ample evidence, provided by Russian propaganda materials, Russian officials words and Russia's effective actions, that the intent is the destruction of Ukraine existence as an independent nation. Russians have never hidden their disdain for Ukraine, considering it a "fake" nation, whose language is nothing but broken Russian, whose territories have always been the rightful part of the Russian empire, and whose national existence being nothing but a fantom, created by the West to spite Russians. They are fully intent on fixing that mistake and subsuming the "brotherly nation" back into the Great Russia's fold. I.e. perpetrating a cultural genocide - and if needed, a little of physical genocide too, as we saw in places which Russians managed to capture but turned out Ukrainians are less brotherly than they expected. Nothing that happened in Versailles can change that reality, so any references to that is nothing but word games trying to paint over the reality.

Russian demands currently include destroying Ukrainian nation

I'm pretty sure if Ukraine willingly gave the rest of the donbass, made public statements about becoming neutral towards the russian culture and interests, including allowing russian to be taught again in schools, russia would make peace.

The issue with the dehumanization of the orcs and with the tribal manicheanization of russian interests that the western media and people parrot is that despite having some elements of truths, overall obviously leads to a criminal utilitarian disaster of continued intense human lives and economic attrition.

russia would make peace

Today yes. Tomorrow maybe. A few short years later no.

Giving in to salami tactics is choosing to lose one slice at a time. Russia now shows a pattern of invading Ukraine and the most recent invasion included an attempted decapitation of the Ukrainian government. It would be madness to start trading territories for extremely temporary peace now. Russia would merely grow hungrier by the eating.

So is it your belief that all Ukrainian territories pre-2014 can be recaptured through force?

I'm pretty sure if Ukraine willingly gave the rest of the donbass, made public statements about becoming neutral towards the russian culture and interests, including allowing russian to be taught again in schools, russia would make peace.

No they wouldn't. Why would they if they can take the whole thing in three days (as they were sure at the start)?

Also, guess what, Ukraine did all that. Almost all.

Donbass was occupied by Russia since 2014 (so were Crimea, which somehow the Russian propagandists always ignore) and Ukraine de-facto accepted this situation, due to inability of changing it. It obviously was just a stepping stone for Russians which only encouraged their appetites and showed them Ukraine is weak and the West is indifferent, so why not finish the job?

Ukraine has never been any threat to Russian culture - majority of Ukrainians speak Russian at least as the second language, for majority in large cities, especially in the East and the South, it is the primary language at home, huge number of Ukrainians worked in Russia, etc. Before Russia started its war with Ukraine in 2014, Russian was taught in schools freely and there was no restrictions - they came after 3 years of war, in 2017.

As for "interests", given that the official position of Russia is that Ukraine should not exist as a nation and should be owned by Russia instead, since "we are the same people" and Ukraine is "an artifact of Western meddling", it is impossible for Ukraine to both exist and "become neutral towards Russian interests" - you can not be neutral in the question of your own existence.

The issue with the dehumanization of the orcs and with the tribal manicheanization of russian interests that the western media and people parrot is that despite having some elements of truths

Like 100% of those elements. When somebody fires a stream of rockets each containing a ton of explosives into a densely populated city, pretending they do it because they don't teach enough Russian in the same city, and not allow 80% of the population that speaks Russian there to speak Russian more freely, and that's why they all have to be murdered by Russian rockets - I have no trouble figuring out which side is evil here. And no fancy words like "manicheanization" will change that. Whoever fired the rockets dehumanized themselves by their own actions.

russia would make peace.

Yeah, and sign peace promising respecting remaining part of Ukraine. Maybe it should be signed in Budapest and called Budapest Memorandum II ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum )

So is your position that no peace should ever be signed with Russia at all?

I am well aware of this broken promise but should we be consistent and take into account other broken promises?

The Ukrainian people voted in vast majority to stay in the USSR

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum

If Ukraine would surrender to Russian demands, exactly how large a share of those women do you think would return?

You do not have to even recall the Kursk incident, you could do similarly well investigating sinking of the Moskva cruiser and Black Sea fleet flagship. There are some reports of very poor results from last maintenance report regarding the overall readiness of the cruiser. We are talking about basic things like only 10% of fire extinguishers being functional during the day of the sinking, not to even speak about faults with internal communication, problems with steering and power plant, problems with radars as well as certain anti-missile defence systems that were canibalized to maintain the other ones on the ship.

Even under the best circumstances the Russian military budget is insufficient to maintain one of the largest nuclear arsenals in conjunction with large navy in conjunction with large conscript army with aviation and all the rest. And Russia is far from ideal with huge amount of corruption, nepotism and plain incompetence getting in the way of this already challenging task of maintaining their forces. The result is what we see now.

You do not have to even recall the Kursk incident, you could do similarly well investigating sinking of the Moskva cruiser and Black Sea fleet flagship.

not entirely sure how well Moskva report is confirmed and checked, while Kursk situation is 100% clear.