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Goodguy  4d ago (text post)   Edited 4d ago   10095 thread views

Midterms Megathread

Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.

The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.

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Why did he decide to tie himself so inextricably to Trump and the GOP? I suppose some of it is his genuine dislike of wokeism. Not doubt he is also a rejection sensitivity dysphoria sufferer and this would have been triggered by the Dems disrespecting him over the electric car summit and so forth. But just as a matter of basic strategy, how were his long-term business aims ever going to be served by not maintaining some manoeuvrability within a two-state system that was always likely to pendulum back and forth?

He's a regulations-hater and Trump also has a strong deregulation agenda. On twitter he kept bringing up how the regulators made him drag up sea creatures and put headphones on them to see if they were distressed by the noise of the rockets, he thought that was absurd.

Also he has a feud with California regarding the general Dem anti-billionaire sentiment.

I don't think it was predictable that Trump was going to go crazy with tariffs and Iran. Nobody expected tariffs, markets least of all, Musk fell out with Trump severely over that (now forgotten).

I suppose I understand on the issues why he'd be pro Trump. I don't understand strategically why he wouldn't give himself wriggle room anyway in preparation for the inevitable. I guess he's just an all or nothing, big-bets, everything is existential kind of guy.

I think, like a lot of people, he just got radicalized. A lot of people got radicalized in the pro-Dem direction by a trans child, he went the other route.

I think he got hit too many times from too many directions with no sense that there'd ever be any let up if these people had their druthers. They were uncompromising on the cultural/trans front and were turning it into a loyalty test and they were moving in a more Lina Khan direction of opposing the rich corporations (and then there was COVID). Rarely do personal and private interests line up so well but, when they do, it's almost irresistible.

I feel like the nature of the Woke Panopticon is that since even moderate defection on a singular issue (Rowling/Trans the Ur-example) leads to you getting immediately treated like Turbohitler that a lot of Public Figures that defect on one thing then go relatively extreme conservative since it's not really worth toeing the line on anything else that you're on the borderline about

Rowling isn't remotely "moderate" on trans people. She's about as far right as you can get short of calling for their extermination. For an actual moderate, look at Jesse Singal.

I mean this is the issue in question on the Trans thing.

You've got 4 possible positions in the court of Trans Radicals.

  • Constant cloying approval of everything. 'Decent human being'
  • Complete silence. 'Highly suspicious but we'll let it roll'
  • Arguing that they shouldn't be allowed into women's spaces and are distinct from biological women 'Turbohitler'
  • Arguing that the Quran says they should be thrown off buildings 'Misguided but wholesome allyship'

Arguing that they shouldn't be allowed into women's spaces and are distinct from biological women

Philosophical arguments about whether trans women are "really" women are largely separate from the question of how they should be treated, though of course there is a strong correlation between people's views on these two questions.

A "moderate" position could be that trans women aren't "really" women, but that they should be treated as if they were. A slightly less "moderate" position could be that trans women shouldn't be allowed in "women's spaces", but we should still use their preferred pronouns. And so forth. Rowling doesn't even support using people's preferred pronouns. She believes trans women should be treated exactly like men; that they should not be given any recognition whatsoever. How is this "moderate"? What would be a less "moderate" stance that still comes short of advocating trans people's extermination? Advocating their imprisonment instead, I guess?

Arguing that the Quran says they should be thrown off buildings 'Misguided but wholesome allyship'

Is there actually anything in the Quran directed at trans people specifically? Iran is fairly progressive on trans rights. I don't think that would be possible if the Quran said trans people should be thrown off buildings.

I said this fairly recently, but it keeps popping up. Iran is NOT progressive on trans issues. They force gay men to transition on threat of death so that when one of their gay Imams is inevitably caught, they have a religious rules-lawyered way to claim he was actually just having sex with a woman. It’s arriving at trans rights via horror movie logic.

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