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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   28358 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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British RAF describes applicants as "useless white male pilots" in leaked emails.

In a bid to increase its diversity, an organized and systematic discrimination of white men was implemented. Leaked emails from RAF staff include vehemently racist and sexist remarks, reports have revealed.

Under a subject line entitled: "BOARDING PROFILE", a squadron leader wrote:

"I noted that the boards have recently been predominantly white male heavy, if we don't have enough BAME and female to board then we need to make the decision to pause boarding and seek more BAME and female from the RF. I don't really need to see loads of useless white male pilots, lets get a focussed as possible, I am more than happy to reduce boarding if needed to have a balanced BAME/female/Male board."

The emails date back to 2020. But even before then there had been a focused anti-white anti-male effort to discriminate against white men in a bid to get women and browns into service. The full article linked above gives further account to the full extent of the conspiracy that kept multiple white men applicants out of service and further discriminated against those that managed to enter. In contrast with women and browns who were fast tracked through the process.

As is noted in the article, the conspiracy was temporarily halted as Group Captain Elizabeth Nicholl resigned from her post in protest to what she thought were unlawful hiring practices back in 2022. Voicing disagreement with Air Vice-Marshal Maria Byford, the RAF's head of recruitment. The row led the RAF to claim that no discrimination was taking place, as a Ministry of Defense inquiry was launched into the nature of Nicholl's resignation.

"The Royal Air Force will not shy away from the challenges we face building a Service that attracts and recruits talent from every part of the UK workforce. We will continue doing everything we can to increase our recruiting intake from under-represented groups within the provisions of the law."

And at the time the evidence for 'strict' discrimination was lacking. As then leaked emails only noted anti-white sentiment in propaganda creation:

'Gents, do any of you have a "pilot who is preferably not a white male" who would like to be the "RAF" face at a press event for the release of Top Gun 2? Shy guys get no cakes so shout quick as offer has also gone out to other units.'

Nicholl's replacement, Group Captain Dole, saw no issue with furthering the conspiracy of active anti-white discrimination and went on to be awarded an OBE in the 2022 New Years Honours List. As the RAF proudly met its target of 20% women, 10% browns. Thankfully a part of the racist and discriminatory process by which the goal was reached is now out in the open.

Contrasting this anti-white conspiracy with last years report that China was "luring" UK pilots to train its pilots, what exactly does a white person owe a state that actively discriminates against them?

I think one of the toughest lessons for ethnats to realize is that elite ethnic solidarity, at least for most west-of-Hajnal whites, is and has always been a total fantasy. The English ruling class will never prioritize the English working class or even regular middle class (which pilots, being officers, generally are) over anyone else, especially people of their own class from other lands. They may have affection for their country, for its institutions, and for People Like Them, but they have never much cared for most of its people. There isn’t any solidarity; perhaps there never has been.

They might be delusional to think that they can replace a native working class with an imported one at no loss of performance or deference, but they shall find out either way.

Same thing happens in all empires, even faded ones like Britain. The core ethnicity that drove the success of a nation is eventually cut off from power and replaced with outsiders, loyal only to the power at the center. The golden age of Ottoman expansion was also the era that native Turks began to be resolutely marginalized within the halls of power and replaced with mostly european renegades, captives, slaves and wives. Over time even the sultan became more and more genetically european, as that's who filled the harems. They maintained a native elite, related to the cavalry forces, and with paths into the imperial bureaucracy, but the mass of Turkish people were entirely estranged from their massive empire.

We can see the same story told throughout history, in Rome, Persia, even Russia. Multi-ethnic societies/empires recruit from the margins and marginalize the majority, because powerful members of the majority are a threat to central power. A powerful member of 1% of the population ain't raising shit. Part of this process is teaching the native elites to hate and fear their own people.

I think most ethno-nationalists have a better understanding of the idea, that the past and current ruling powers are not their friends, than most others. Which is why so many of them see appeal in National Socialism. To that end you don't need ideological conformity and purity from the elites. Just a strongman to tardwrangle them into doing what's good for the people.

But I agree that ethno-nationalists generally go through a sort of metamorphosis where they realize that the object of their affection hates them vehemently and wants to kill itself in the name of diversity and the GDP. If a loved one explains, with a smile on their face, that they want to kill themselves, and that nothing would make them happier, do you constrain them with force and suffer their hate or hand them a rope?

I think most ethno-nationalists have a better understanding of the idea, that the past and current ruling powers are not their friends, than most others. Which is why so many of them see appeal in National Socialism. To that end you don't need ideological conformity and purity from the elites.

Except National Socialism was, in its time, widely popular among German elites, and the movement really needed their help.

Not going to happen now. No mainstream politicians and civil servants are going to cooperate with modern NS, no billionaries and corporations are going to finance the movement, no police and three letter agencies are going to avert their eyes before NS activism, no judges will let NS go with slap on the wrist.

Modern NS dream about new 1933, but establishment of "ethnostate" in today's conditions would mean total overthrow of elite 1917 style. Be careful what you wish for.

Except National Socialism was, in its time, widely popular among German elites, and the movement really needed their help.

I don't believe that's true if by 'elite' we mean politicians, business owners etc.

I mean, no. It wasn't. It was popular with lower and middle classes, the political elites hated it and the businessmen were afraid before they were mostly bribed & coerced to go along.

It absolutely was, if only because the elite at the time was deathly afraid of the communists. Likewise, you overstate lower class support for the Nazis: those people did in fact vote communist far more often.

'Better than the alternative' is not the same thing as 'popular'.

Nazi leadership were low-class outsiders who weren't at all sympathetic to traditional german elites.

I thought the general understanding is that the Nazis did well with the provincial lower-middle class, ie. artisans and shopkeepers, and attracted some poor rurals and some elites (in smaller proportions). Urban proletarians largely voted for communists or social democrats.

Yes. And since most societies, definitionally, have fewer elites than they do people in the underclass, you can look at the numbers and conclude the elites supported the NSDAP more than Germany's urban working class did.

The point being made does not pertain to a rise to power but an aspirational ideology. I sincerely doubt many National Socialists today are drawn to the idea because of its chances of political success and popular appeal.

It's instead about recognizing how the world moves and figuring out a way to wrestle it down to a point where it serves you rather than enslaves you. As an example, you can recognize that the profit motives for capitalist elites exist. To that end you don't need elite conformity to a cause, you just need a few motivated men with a monopoly on violence to stop by their house and kindly ask them to work towards a national greater good rather than their profit motives.

If a loved one explains, with a smile on their face, that they want to kill themselves, and that nothing would make them happier, do you constrain them with force and suffer their hate or hand them a rope?

What makes you think elite whites are killing themselves in the name of diversity and the GDP? I agree they are killing the lower classes of whites but elite white culture and elite white tastes will still be going strong decades into the future. Honestly I would say that at the moment elite white culture and elite white tastes are killing elite non-white culture and elite non-white tastes (and this is probably a good thing).

The elites are not the object of the ethno-nationalists affection, the 'people' are.

Sure, but then the object of the ethno-nat's affection has no control over what is happening and what will happen to them (the 'people' whites justly have next to no power, regardless of what society's democratic delusions may tell them), it's very much not "If a loved one explains, with a smile on their face, that they want to kill themselves, and that nothing would make them happier", they are more like lambs being led to the slaughter by a shepherd who's going to replace them with a more docile, less complaining breed.

Historically, the rulers of Europe had to appease the rulers of the Church, and the Church cared tremendously for the people of the nation. Also, it wasn’t the peasants and traders fighting in wars, but the kings and the knights.

It is certainly the case that our current batch of leaders in the West do not provide enough for their own people at the expense of foreigners, but this is actually an historical anomaly. If a King in the past did a bad job, he risked being usurped, overthrown losing the support of the Church and landowners, which could mean (ironically) a foreign king being invited to rule as a replacement.

Here's an interesting article that discusses, among other things, mechanisms in monarchies/tribal societies for holding kings and chiefs to account:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-018-0499-3

For hajnalis in general, yes, elite ethnic solidarity is mostly a fantasy(on the other hand, Afrikaners and Southern Whites had some notable elite ethnic solidarity fairly recently), but Israel, China, Japan, and Russia are examples of much more complete elite ethnic solidarity that isn't hajnali.

What ethnic solidarity is there in Putin’s Russia? Much of the inner circle aren’t Russian, the business elite are pretty diverse, millions of Central Asian immigrants pour into Moscow and St Petersburg over time etc. Putin offered a vaguely nationalist justification for the invasion of Ukraine, but he and the rest of the FSB elite aren’t, by and large, sympathetic to identitarians and regularly throw them in jail, shut down rallies, bookstores and groups and even assassinate them.

China was ruled by Manchus for centuries, and even now the situation for Han in terms of affirmative action and legal rights relative to minority groups is arguably substantially worse than it is for whites in America - China literally exempted minorities from its one-child policy for decades, allowing many to expand much faster than the Han population. Before they’re regularly suppressed, online Chinese dissident rightists regularly complain that Han are discriminated against, some even advance various conspiracies that the Manchurians are still in charge.

Hardcore ethnonationalists (largely under the banner of “religious zionists”) are actually a minority in Israel, but their centrality to Bibi’s longstanding coalition with the ultra-orthodox (who don’t care about an ethnostate) and the center-right who are afraid of terrorism gives them enough power to have a decisive say in policy. Perhaps this counts as ethnic solidarity given Judaism is both ethnicity and faith, but I’m not sure it’s clear that the ‘secular elite’ in Tel Aviv have much more ethnic solidarity than whites, really. They’re just participants in a country with different demographics and therefore politics to the modal European country.

That leaves Japan. I think in many ways the Japanese are just luckier than Western Europeans. Their economic boom happening 10 years later than it did in Western Europe (more immediately postwar) and the fact that Japanese fertility rates in the 1930-1950 period had been very high by Western European standards (~4-4.5 vs 1.8-2 in the UK) meant that there was less need to import Gastarbeiter, and Korea’s immense poverty meant that when they did need them, they could look next door rather than further afield (not that there was much Korean immigration postwar). In Europe, the Germans and even Brits did first look south to Italy, Greece and so on, but the whole region was booming (and most of the poorest European countries were behind the Iron Curtain) so they looked to Turkey, Pakistan, the Caribbean etc instead.

A lot of Southern whites are descended from the Scots Irish, who are themselves descended from trans-Hajnal subcultures within the United Kingdom.

Yeah, and Afrikaners are arguably partially dehajnalized.

Is teen marriage unusually common among Afrikaners? According to Hajnal’s original work, the defining feature of cishajnal societies is that the working and middle classes didn’t marry until they had achieved a degree of financial independence from their parents. In the US, Southerners have consistently married younger than Yankees, even before the sexual revolution.

It was when Afrikaans society was forming, I believe. British observers noted the african Dutch to differ from euro Dutch by being poor religious fundamentalists who married their teenaged cousins- which sounds like a pretty good description of partially dehajnalizing to me.

It was when Afrikaans society was forming, I believe. British observers noted the african Dutch to differ from euro Dutch by being poor religious fundamentalists who married their teenaged cousins- which sounds like a pretty good description of partially dehajnalizing to me.

Agreed

It'd be interesting to see if this stuff was more or less prevalent in the other branches of the military. Back in the Vietnam War most of the racial conflict tended to be concentrated in the US Army: https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/Vietnam/heinl.html

Yet now in the US and Britain we see an emphasis on non-whites in all services, including the air force. I would've thought that the airforce was the most complicated and sophisticated branch, along with the submariners and special forces. As with surgeons and aerospace engineers, these are roles that naturally fall to whites and Asians. Yet it's not being spared diversity: https://www.af.mil/Portals/1/documents/2022SAF/Officer_Source_of_Commission_Applicant_Pool_Goals_memo.pdf

I love the inherent doublethink in these passages: diversity is key to the success of any organization and enhances the effectiveness of the air force. Yet achieving diversity goals is only 'aspirational' and should not interfere with merit-based processes. If diversity is so good, then how could it interfere with merit-based selection?

This is just a diatribe against blacks

No it's not:

"Racial conflicts (most but not all sparked by young black enlisted men) are erupting murderously in all services."

It's no more a diatribe against blacks than crime statistics are: 'most but not all murders are committed by blacks'. That's literally true today in the USA. And 80% of the article is to do with the other problems facing the US army in Vietnam: drugs, loss of discipline, illicit newspapers urging that troops frag their officers...

I dunno. The first sentence in the section entitled "Racial Incidents" is: "Sedition and subversion and legal harassment, rank near the top of what might be called the unprecedented external problems that elements in American society are inflicting on the Armed Forces." If that is not a diatribe alert, I don't know what is.

He then goes on to discuss a number of anecdotes, each and every one of which involves black perpetrators.

Is he supposed to find a statistic to back it up? How can he, given how the Army tries hard to cover up the data:

Among the few pre-World War II War Department records still heavily classified and thus unavailable to scholars are Army documents on racial troubles.

that knife cuts both ways. as always one must consider the source

Yes but ones priors should start with the idea that the population that is generally more violent is…more violent.

More comments

what exactly does a white person owe a state that actively discriminates against them?

Maybe ask these guys?

  • -16

Care to speak plainly? The rhetorical questions are getting tired.

It's pretty obvious what he's saying. Japanese-American soldiers fought for the United States in WW2 under a state that was persecuting them to a degree far in excess of what white Britons 'face', and no-one would deny that they were doing the right thing. If people who were being routinely interned can set that grievance aside, I think white Britons can set aside the grievance of a diversity drive in the RAF.

I think I would deny they were doing the right thing.

In fact I think it's pretty easy to establish, according to the American civic religion, that such a conduct isn't in fact, loyal, but traitorous and that they had a firm duty to rebel against tyranny. Especially when the full horror of Imperial Japanese rule was unknown to them.

If Miyagi was a true Patriot, he wouldn't have fought for the army of the State that killed his wife only to return to a country that still hated him, he'd been bombing recruitment centers instead.

If Miyagi was a true Patriot, he wouldn't have fought for the army of the State that killed his wife only to return to a country that still hated him, he'd been bombing recruitment centers instead.

With what end? All that would achieve is assisting an unambiguously far, far worse 'tyranny' in the war.

The survival of his kin sounds like enough of a motivation. And it's only unambiguous to you in retrospect.

It must have seemed fairly unambiguous to the Japanese-American soldiers at the time given that they were willing to risk their lives.

The survival of his kin sounds like enough of a motivation

I am glad that he managed to rise above man's baser instincts.

I'm not. On account of his sacred duty to his family that supercedes the one to the State.

He did not rise above anything. He took the path of least resistance.

I respect the idea of this sacrifice. But is is still a moral error.

Thank you. I would argue that they would have been fully justified in not fighting for a state that had been actively persecuting them. In hindsight they seem virtuous and heroic because public opinion ended up reversing course on Japanese internment, but they couldn't be sure that that would happen two decades before the Civil Rights Act. They would have seemed foolish in a different timeline where the U.S. had remained a country where Japanese were seen as un-American and alien.

Same goes for black soldiers in WW2. Why volunteer to fight for a country that sees you as a subhuman? I think black draft dodgers during WW2 would also have been on solid moral ground.

I'm not denying that they were courageous, optimistic, and virtuous, but simply that their virtue was beyond what could be reasonably demanded in the circumstances. And so I think a young white British man would be perfectly justified in giving the finger to a system that apparently actively dislikes and seeks to diminish his kind. Pinging @Gdanning.

He's plenty plain, rhetorical or not.

  • -12

I don't come to The Motte for wiki links and one liners. That's Reddit-tier discourse. If someone has a point to make, they should state it explicitly so the countours of the argument are plain.

Then you are on a different website than I am, because such comments are the order of the day. Constantly. They do not stop. To call out any single one without making it a hobby is a textbook isolated demand for rigor.

  • -11

FWIW I tend to downvote those, but I often won't engage since there's usually not even an interesting point to be made. I even report ones that are especially egregious, although certain posters on "my side" of the culture war seem to be allowed to get away with low effort snark that I think would get me moderated.

I agree with you that there are a lot of them and that they should be more aggressively moderated since they drag down the discourse.

Why? China is the Nazis now? I don't get it.

If I'm wronged by someone I don't particularly care to modulate my response to what some Japanese megacucks did in the 1940's. Should I? To turn the ingroup/outgroup distinctions on their head a little: How far should jews have submitted themselves to the Third Reich? Does it reflect as a good or a bad on the character of the jewish people who allegedly sold their fellow jews out to nazis?

some Japanese megacucks

This kind of thing just degrades discourse.

Banned for a week.

A week? That's ridiculous, it wasn't even a swear word.

I think you banned him because you know he is one of the few motters who could and would eloquently and persuasively defend that position.

A week? That's ridiculous, it wasn't even a swear word.

What fucking difference would that make? It's not the words you use, here--it's how you use them.

I think you banned him because you know he is one of the few motters who could and would eloquently and persuasively defend that position.

I think I temp-banned him because next time I want him to lead with the eloquence and persuasiveness you seem to think he has at his disposal. I have quite had my fill of people getting moderated and then responding to me with eloquence and persuasiveness--or at least, with the evidence and effort they declined to furnish in the first place.

I want people to do that before they get moderated, and if they fail to do that often enough, then they're going to eat a ban. That's how this works--as you well know.

Then I think you are being extremely unfair, and not just because you led with "degrades discourse". I assumed you were giving him a slap for badmouthing a group most of us consider heroes, in which case a week seems excessive, but I understand the reasoning. But if it's about his whole post, then I'm at a loss. I don't know what else he was supposed to write in response to a four word post using those guys as a gotcha. But hani did, he demonstrated that the gotcha didn't work on him, and he then continued by explaining his positions. And while a lot of people were venting in that thread, I don't think hani was, I sensed conviction behind his posts and I wanted to see where those arguments went. Has he been dinged for this kind of thing a lot? I didn't think he'd been modded much at all, but I don't have the same data as you.

Are we talking about being unfair or being incorrect?

Hey now, you're supposed to be on the user side now, no hints.

More seriously, unless I am mistaken about hani's interactions with the staff, I think one week was excessive, very excessive. And if I am wrong about that I will distract from my error by asking if anyone knows how one would go about setting up the ban list again.

Thank you for upholding civility standards.

Does it reflect as a good or a bad on the character of the jewish people who allegedly sold their fellow jews out to nazis

Badly of course, but principally because selling people out to send them to their deaths is wrong whether those to whom you are doing it are your ingroup or not. They are no worse (though both are still abhorrent of course) than French or Dutch gentile collaborators who assisted the prosecution of the Holocaust.

That's not relevant to the point. I doubt you think that getting racially discriminated against is right. So from the perspective of a UK pilot who gets treated like some sort of subhuman by his government, is his allegiance to said racist government admirable?

If we are not venerating the loyalty of a subject to their country, what exactly are we doing? By what metric is loyalty to a country that doesn't value you and racially discriminates against you good? Do you just not like China?

megacucks

I know it is probably a waste of time to engage with someone who uses such terms, but I would like to suggest the possibility that real men undertake the hard work of trying to get those with power to live up to their ideals. It is children who respond by running away, be it to China or elsewhere, or who take the easy road of engaging in violence. Martin Luther King was a man; Huey Newton was a child. And, not uncoincidentally, King was highly effective, while Newton was counterproductive.

  • -12

Did the Japanese who fought for the US change it in any way? Or did they get to watch their ethnic kinfolk firebombed and incinerated via incendiary and nuclear weapons? Is Japan, under the fading soft power occupation of the US, thriving or is the nation slowly withering away?

The high road was taken by former Group Captain Elizabeth Nicholl. She left in protest to what she was ordered to do. Her replacement receives an award for doing what she was unwilling. She didn't run to China, she didn't flee, she did the maximum amount she could to draw attention to the situation without incriminating herself as an insubordinate member of the RAF. But with the world being how it is, there is no incentive for anyone with power to step away from their racist ideology that ultimately demands white displacement.

As an exact contradiction to the situation MLK found himself in, there is very little fertile ground for white victimary discourse in mainstream politics. It doesn't matter if it's white men or boys getting snubbed from education and employment, or little girls getting raped by the thousands by newly imported browns. MLK wasn't special and he didn't talk to the people. He talked to media and he talked to elites who rode him as a prize horse for a victory lap over the dead south. White people in the UK have no such backing. When they do organize they get ridiculed and ostracized with the full force of the media or they get outright banned and imprisoned.

So I'd ask again, what does a British male pilot owe the state that discriminates against him? Becoming MLK? Overthrowing the government and media hegemon? Or do a Mike Buchanan and speak into an empty jar for over a decade? Surely someone will listen...

did they get to watch their ethnic kinfolk firebombed and incinerated via incendiary and nuclear weapons?

Why do you think they care about their "ethnic kinfolk"? I assume, like most Americans, they were relieved that the invasion of Japan ended up being unnecessary.

Is Japan, under the fading soft power occupation of the US, thriving or is the nation slowly withering away?

Is this a joke? As if Japan did not thrive after the war.

He talked to media and he talked to elites who rode him as a prize horse for a victory lap over the dead south.

The Civil Rights Movement was probably the most successful social revolution in history. And it was not the doing of elites who were out to oppress white Southerners; elites would just as soon no one make waves. That is what elites do.

White people in the UK have no such backing.

No, but they are the majority, and they can organize politically, and politicians who want their votes will listen. Or have you never heard of the Moral Majority, or the Tea Party, or Ron DeSantis?.

successful social revolution in history

Successful it what sense?

It's not done much for black family formation.

was not the doing of elites

Have noticed the coincidence of the non-black founders of organizations like the NAACP?

Will you accept being "on the bottom of the progressive stack" if you'll have families?

Successful in overturning the social order that was Jim Crow, obviously.

Have noticed the coincidence of the non-black founders of organizations like the NAACP?

Have you noticed the elites on the other side? And, the NAACP was founded in 1909. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted 55 years later. That doesn't sound like society's elites were working very hard to advance NAACP's goals..

NAACP was founded in 1909

Yes and practiced lawfare and lobbying for 55 years prior to the CRA of 1964. It wasn't non-elites arguing these cases.

overturning the social order that was Jim Crow

If your criteria for success of an act of congress is that it makes illegal the behavior you don't like, I guess it's it's been a success.

More comments

"I don't like this institution and have determined that I will not achieve career success in it. I'm becoming a mercenary instead." That's not a "child running away".

Unelected bureaucrats don't answer to me and you. There's nothing you can do to stop them from implementing terrible policies. Your high minded point about "real men" is irrelevant given modern bureaucracies.

There's nothing you can do to stop them from implementing terrible policies

Except there have been countless instances of enormous shifts in the behaviour of the state apparatus?

If you will support your nation only when times are good to begin with, you were always a mercenary to begin with; it just so happens that the truth got revealed a little more dramatically in these cases.

To push back a bit: this hypothetical mercenary was denied a career or career advancement in England due to his sex and skin. Having been denied success there he sells his skills elsewhere.

I suppose he could "support his nation" by not flying anything anywhere, since his kind aren't wanted flying for the military in his nation. But at that point I'm not going to denounce this hypothetical former pilot as a childish traitor if he flies somewhere else after being denied in his birth country.

There is quite a big difference between "it's bad times" and "my country is creating bad times for me in particular".

Your high minded point about "real men"

I am not the one who initiated the "cuck" discourse.

Okay. Neither am I.

The people in power are already living up to their ideals. The ideals of western civilization are that white men are racist oppressors who need to be removed from power to make way for minorities.

The people behaving like children in this situation are the ones saying "We hate you, go away" to highly trained pilots and making a shocked pikachu face when they leave.

Actually the Stern Gang and Irgun were full of people who just went directly to the easy road of engaging in violence and they got their country. They were extremely productive and former members of those gangs of violent extremists were elected to high office in the country that they won. History is actually full of examples of men who went and took the road of political violence and were richly rewarded for it, so I'm afraid you might want to retract that suggestion.

I was making a normative claim (as was OP, of course), not an empirical claim about what methods are likely to be successful.

That being said, there is apparently evidence that violent strategies tend to be less successful than the alternative.

And while of course there are examples of men who were richly rewarded for using political violence, there are obviously far more examples of men who were not so richly rewarded. More importantly, I was referring to strategies for social change, not personal success.

Finally, I am skeptical that the Stern gang and Irgun can be credited with the establishment of the state of Isreal, given the Balfour Declaration, world opinion after the Holocaust, and the fact that every League of Nations mandate in the Middle East became independent at about the same time.

And I'm also making a normative claim - turning to violence is not the easy option reserved for children, but a difficult and sometimes necessary path. Violence is a tool that works in some situations and doesn't in others, and trying to claim that it is the reserve of children and the incompetent is just, from my perspective, wrong. That said it took me too long to reply to this so please feel no obligation to respond.

trying to claim that it is the reserve of children and the incompetent

I certainly did not say that it is the reserve of the incompetent. I merely noted that there is "apparently evidence that violent strategies tend to be less successful than the alternative." I intentionally worded that as a relatively modest claim.

As for children, yes, I probably overstated the point. I should have said that it is children who respond with violence as a first resort, or that those who valorize vioIence as the only "manly" response to perceived injustice and who deride those who respond otherwise as "cucks" are children. But I continue to assert that, as a general rule, responding with violence is the easier path, in part because it is the most natural path. That, IIRC, was a central claim of Gandhi/MLK/whoever initially developed the theory of nonviolence.

MLK himself discovered, after his Southern victories against de jure segregation, just how difficult it was to make progress against the de facto kind alone. . . . But to make a blanket statement that real men win victories by ...

Note that I didn't say that real men are always successful in their endeavors. I merely mentioned that MLK was more successful than those who used violence (though as it happens there seems to be evidence that nonviolent resistance campaigns tend to be more successful than violent ones). And it certainly seems unlikely that a violent campaign would have achieved King's goals in Chicago.

But, I really was not making a claim about success rates at all. I was making a normative claim that real men undertake the hard work usually necessary (but not sufficient !) to create social change. Yes, that was a generalization, but I believe it to be an valid one, especially relative to OP's "megacuck" reference.

PS: Re the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, note that it was a declaration of independence, not a declaration of war, and it was precisely framed as an effort to convince Great Britain to live up to its ideas. I would also note that the American Revolution, like the other revolutions in the Americas, was less about social change than about preserving or extending the power of local elites vis-a-vis elites in the metropole.

Yes, there is evidence that nonviolent protest is a better strategy than terrorism, when your audience is liberal enlightenment democratic republic types with some decent baseline respect for he rule of law.

But, surely that is the context for this discussion, is it not?

Also, there’s an argument to be made that MLK started looking much more attractive to the powers that be, who regarded him as a commie radical and had the FBI surveilling and harassing him, once the alternative was young black men open-carrying in the streets.

Didn't most of the successes of the Civil Rights Movement precede the emergence of young black men open-carrying in the streets? The Black Panthers were formed in 1966, for example. Stokely Carmichael replaced John Lewis as head of SNCC in the same year.

why compare the civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance of MLK to the profound obedience of men who took up arms for a government that dispossessed their ethnic group?

Well, I was really contrasting them with those who use violence for political ends. And, I initially suggested them as people who addressed the question ostensibly posed by OP re duty to a society that discrimates against you. It was only after the claim that they were "cucks" that I compared them with other "cucks" like MLK.

But these are very different strategies for securing one’s place in the social order.

As I understand it, leaders of the Japanese American community pushed the government to allow Nisei to volunteer for the military, while simultaneously pushing for more equal treatment. And of course civil rights leaders pointed to military service by African Americans as a reason for ending discrimination. So I don’t know that they are all that different.

Contrasting this anti-white conspiracy with last years report that China was "luring" UK pilots to train its pilots, what exactly does a white person owe a state that actively discriminates against them?

This is completely pathetic. A pilot feels, perhaps not unreasonably, disadvantaged by this one policy, so that's grounds on which to throw your toys out of the pram and work for a state which, for most RAF pilots one imagines, behaves in a manner completely antithetical to your values?

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If all states adopt values antithetical to your own, I think it's a reasonable response to abandon loyalty to nation-states and instead prioritize other loyalties - and if the Chinese give you enough money to set your family up in comfort and style, you might choose them over the nation that discarded you.

A pilot feels, perhaps not unreasonably, disadvantaged by this one policy, so that's grounds on which to throw your toys out of the pram and work for a state which, for most RAF pilots one imagines, behaves in a manner completely antithetical to your values?

I'm less familiar with the UK than the US, but my understanding of the comment was that after 50-60 years of destruction of national cohesion/sentiment/what have you turning what would have been a calling that a citizen takes up to preform their duty into a mere job that an atomized individual takes, this could be the trigger for said atomized individual to lose the last of their belief in the system and finally try to maximize market value.

When I was 16, I and every other boy in my RS class was made to stand up and recieve chastisement by our then RS teacher, who proclaimed that the world was made for us, by people like us (my school was 99% white working class), that we had it the easiest out of any group of people and that we had a duty to right this imbalance. This is not my lived experience (though I attribute that to my undiagnosed and untreated autism), and it is broadly not the lived experience of young men, who have worse outcomes than their fathers and are expected their bear the dwindling of their piece of the socioeconomic pie and the societal narrative that this is not so with a smile on their face.

And frankly, given the events of the pandemic, I am not so convinced that there is a large divide between the British and Chinese states.

I am not so convinced that there is a large divide between the British and Chinese states.

Well, where you complained (not unreasonably I might add, that is a bit ridiculous) about an unfair upbraiding by your RS teacher for your privilege, ethno-religious oppression in China entails internment, sterilisation, forced labour and physical maltreatment (even torture) in those camps at the hands of state authorities. This really is only a comment someone living in the freedom and prosperity of the West could make. Young Britons have it bad? Hardly anywhere near as bad as toiling in a Chinese coal mine or electronics factory.

The thing about this, we are constantly told that the tiniest hint of bias against certain races (blacks and jews in the US) is massively dangerous and a slippery slope to literal genocide. Meanwhile, individual hatred and institutional bias against whites is slowly but surely getting stronger, yet there are people (often the same people warning us about how dangerous other types of bias are) who tell us essentially, well they're not literally sending you to death camps yet so what are you whining about? Suck it up and quit being such a scaredy-cat.

Why shouldn't we assume that this type of bias is exactly as unjust and dangerous as any other type? Exactly when will it be okay to do something about it more serious than complaining on the internet?

the tiniest hint of bias against certain races (blacks and jews in the US) is massively dangerous and a slippery slope to literal genocide

I don't think you see much of that in mainstream circles, seems a very online sort of thing, but where you do see it I agree that it is hyperbolic and unhelpful.

well they're not literally sending you to death camps yet so what are you whining about?

Much more than 'not literally sending you to death camps' there isn't that much serious bias against whites, not in the UK anyway. There is some 'diversity hiring' (but the available evidence seems to suggest that there are strong effects of in-group bias in hiring, which mostly of course favours whites, so on net even in the direct hiring process I think whites do fine, before one even considers broader questions of socio-economic inequality etc.) but it's hardly sufficient as to constitute a major or even minor concern for any aspiring professional in Britain. This RAF stuff has been newsworthy precisely because it is unusual for such vigorous policies to be in place.

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(but the available evidence seems to suggest that there are strong effects of in-group bias in hiring, which mostly of course favours whites, so on net even in the direct hiring process I think whites do fine, before one even considers broader questions of socio-economic inequality etc.)

Oh what do you know, it's actually biased in whites' favour somehow. You know, unless you are in the armed forces, or the police, or the media, or working for the royals, and so on.

before one even considers broader questions of socio-economic inequality etc.

Etc in this instance means "other things that don't actually matter and only distract from the issue of blatant racism that is somehow not a problem when it targets white men, but is otherwise the Greatest Sin In The Universe!". I'd love to see the available evidence though, it's not that recent civil service kerfuffle where that guy reckons there must be bias because the demographics don't specifically match those of the population is it?

Oh what do you know, it's actually biased in whites' favour somehow. You know, unless you are in the armed forces, or the police, or the media, or working for the royals, and so on.

The first article is about a case where an employment tribunal ruled the discrimination was unlawful and awarded compensation to the victim. The third article, unless I am misreading it, doesn't quite support your point, either.

“Had he not been such an exceptional candidate he may not even have suspected anything was wrong and this unlawful and unacceptable selection process may have been allowed to continue.

Not every discrimination case is provable. If they managed to be egregious enough about it that they got caught, there are certainly a bunch of other cases where the evidence wasn't as strong and they did it without getting caught.

And you think the police committing unlawful discrimination to the extent a tribunal was held and they were required to compensate the victim means they are not discriminating? If I had just linked a guy suing them you'd say it hadn't been tried yet. And if you read to the end of that third link, you would learn that the royal staff now complies with the equality act 'in principle and practice', meaning they now use the hiring quotas. That's why it's at the end of the article, so you know the royals have confessed their sins and can be counted amongst the holy - and then the final sentence tells you that this is provisional, and their good grace will be stripped if they slip up.

but the available evidence seems to suggest that there are strong effects of in-group bias in hiring, which mostly of course favours whites,

Which available evidence suggests that?

Fictitious applications were made to nearly 3,200 real jobs, randomly varying applicants’ minority background, but holding their skills, qualifications and work experience constant. On average, 24% of applicants from the majority group (white people of British origin) received a positive response from employers, but only 15% of ethnic minorities received a positive response.

https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/news-events/news/new-csi-report-on-ethnic-minority-job-discrimination/

levels of discrimination have remained unchanged since the 1960s

This is already not passing the smell test.

I am unable to find the study. It seems to be self-published by the department, but the PDF is unavailable.

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Of course, that assumes discrimination is a result of positive in group prejudice or a result of history with minorities. That is, you stole a base.

we are constantly told that the tiniest hint of bias against certain races (blacks and jews in the US) is massively dangerous and a slippery slope to literal genocide

Yes, woke leftists say that, and they are wrong. Copying them doesn’t make that argument any better.

Exactly when will it be okay to do something about it more serious than complaining on the internet?

When they do something worse to you than marginally reducing your chances of getting a job.

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Yes, woke leftists say that, and they are wrong. Copying them doesn’t make that argument any better.

If they're wrong, stop letting them get away with saying it.

Of course, you can't, because you aren't in charge. But the fact that neither you nor anyone else can stop them is, unfortunately, significant. It means the society and the structures we have now can't solve this problem, so changes are going to need to be made.

Yes, woke leftists say that, and they are wrong.

They are wrong about white gentiles. And specifically wrong about people who aren't "pre-judging" anymore, they are merely "judging".

Leftists are likely correct about themselves.

Things happen slowly; then suddenly. The whole reason why PRC treats its minorities poorly is Han supremacist world view. That isn’t that different compared to the view that white men are less than (ie everyone else is superior).

So right now being a who’re person in England ain’t the worst thing. But right now is slowly. We may see suddenly soon (or we may not).

I’d love to hear more about Han supremacy and Chinese minority oppression.

I know a girl from work that is Chinese. The minority groups come up every now and then since one of them are from her hometown. I get no sense of supremacy in these conversations. If anything, it’s more of an attitude like “my hometown has this neat minority with cool food and traditional clothes. They have dance troupes and dress differently at official functions.” Kind of like a unqiue little touristy thing.

The whole Han supremacy thing seems more like a Reddit meme or a porting over of “white supremacy” to China. I’m sure there is disparate impact. And 99% of the communist party are Han. But it doesn’t come across as some systematic oppression. Not at all.

Do you believe the reports of mass repression happening in the Xinjiang region in the past decade+ to be exaggerated or fabricated from whole cloth? Do you expect a random Chinese expat (?) to have accurate knowledge about the inner workings of her country, and to share that knowledge publicly?

It's June 4th tomorrow, why don't you ask her about that on Monday to calibrate how much she's willing to say about China's recent history.

I do believe there is mass repression of the Uighur Muslims. I do think its comparable to the Israel/Palestine situation. Not the same. But comparable. And I think the Isralies are assholes when it comes to Palestine. But they have their reasons.

With israel though, there is a massive amount of media out there explaining exactly why their policies are necessary and/or minimizing what the Israelis are doing. That’s where the comparison ends.

To be clear. I don’t support Israel or China using state power to indiscriminately punish vast populations. I just strongly suspect that everyone eats up the Uighur story because they’ve been fed a one sided story and it fits the broader interests of the TPTB.

And back to my original comment, I’d love to hear more about this Han supremacy. That sounds a lot broader than this specific draconian crackdown on wahabbi Islam and their wider community.

Young Britons have it bad? Hardly anywhere near as bad as toiling in a Chinese coal mine or electronics factory.

Have you heard of the Rotherham scandal? I'd say that being discriminated against by the government (which white working class girls are) carries significant costs and problems.

ethno-religious oppression in China entails internment, sterilisation, forced labour and physical maltreatment (even torture) in those camps at the hands of state authorities.

While I fully believed this as far back as high school, I’m not sure I do anymore. Do you have any solid non-western sources for this?

I know a guy who is from Xinjiang (not a Uighur) and you literally need to present photo ID to enter a grocery store. Even if you don't get out in a camp everyday life is nothing like Britain.

Funny that. During the pandemic you had to show Id to get into grocery stores. And there were certain stores you were banned from altogether.

Clearly dumb, but you're not doing that anymore. They are still doing that in Xinjiang.

I tend to agree with you. The entire internment camp story appeared out of no where 5ish years ago and was convieniently timed with chilling western-Chinese relations.

The Muslim groups in western China that are oppressed used to be on the US list of terrorist organizations. They were quietly removed from that list a few years ago.

I imagine the Chinese apologist line is that these are Islamist extremists that have executed terroist attacks in the past. They’re surpressing them not unlike how Israel deals with Palestinians.

It’s not at all surprising that western liberals would be up in arms about this. Islamophobia is one of their pet issues.

I have no idea what really goes on in western china. But I certainly don’t think that the state department, cia, ngos, and media are telling me the whole truth. In fact we’ve seen them make up lies out of whole cloth many many times when it serves their strategic interest.

The entire internment camp story appeared out of no where 5ish years ago

Perhaps because that is when the camps were opened?

And note that China has not denied the existence of the camps but of course claims they are "vocational centers."

And see here

And note that China has not denied the existence of the camps but of course claims they are "vocational centers."

Is that a direct translation of "labor camps" from English (or perhaps German "Arbeitslager") to Mandarin and back again?

The Chinese name literally translates as the rather long-winded "Educational Center for Training of Professional Skills."

And note that China has not denied the existence of the camps but of course claims they are "vocational centers."

That's denying the existence of the camps. All that they're "admitting" to is owning buildings.

The Muslim groups in western China that are oppressed used to be on the US list of terrorist organizations. They were quietly removed from that list a few years ago.

The groups being oppressed there consist of entire ethnicities, not merely the organizations within them that commit terrorist acts. Hamas may be a terrorist organization, but Palestinians aren't, unless we are using the same logic that justified Japanese internment camps in the US.

But I certainly don’t think that the state department, cia, ngos, and media are telling me the whole truth.

The whole truth is that the communists destroyed the traditional religious order in western China, which had made its peace with the state, during the Cultural Revolution, and the vacuum was filled by Wahhabis from the Middle East who came in during the decades of economic liberalization. Newly radicalized elements of the Uyghur population advocated for independence and launched a series of terrorist attacks against Han residents and symbols of the government, after which the CCP concluded that Uyghur culture was the source of the problem and must be utterly destroyed. It was at this point that re-education camps were established, cameras were set up at every street corner, and millions of Han colonists were shipped in from the west to either displace the locals or assimilate them through intermarriage, guarded by a militarized police state that scrutinizes the minutest detail of daily behavior and social media history for signs of radicalization.

I would say that the British State currently has little room to commit any of the atrocities you describe. We have no heavy industry, as most of it was shipped offshore to East Asia and other places around the world and thus no Lithium Miners to abuse for the benefit of the global market. The worst crime that can be attributed on this basis is that the government leaves people who cannot adapt to the information economy to rot.

Morever, outside of the post WW2 waves of migrants, the UK has no immediate different ethnic group to victimise - white welshmen and scotsmen have more in common genetically with englishmen than they otherwise wish to pretend. If there was perhaps a group of Zorostrians who lived in Cornwall/Devon at the turn of the 20th century we may very well have had recent state oppression on british soil.

What about the Irish?

Ireland is not really considered "British" soil in the popular conciousness, NI is seen by everyone barring loyalists as this colonial venture we didn't really clear up. Much of what happens in the UK news cycle doesn't consider NI and May's coalition government was the first time many people actually learned about the separate but equal part of their state. In addition, most of the oppression was done by the loyalist ulster government, who are neither truly Irish nor mainland British, rather than the westminster government.

The oppression was done by loyalists, but the specific atrocities, Balymurphy and Bloody Sunday, were done by the British Army and the Parachute Regiment in particular. Operation Demetrius, when 2000 men were interned, was a British Army operation, so is definitely the fault of Westminster.

This is literally the plot of Shakespeare's Coriolanus - "discriminated-against military leader defects to erstwhile-enemies" is so common as to be a trope throughout history.

I am actually surprised at how well right leaning military men have cooperated with the system. The war in Afghanistan ended with large numbers of migrants comming to Europe. Afghans are the second most overrepresented minority in crime stats in Sweden. The war flooded Europe with heroin. What exactly was going to be conserved by that war? What socially conservative agenda was ever going to be promoted by that war? Yet, thousands of right leaning white men volunteered to die or get their legs blown off to defend the military industrial complex and globalization. The war in Iraq caused a million migrants to come to Europe and has been a disaster for the Middle East and Europe. I can't see any socially conservative goal ever have been achieved through that war. Yet, thousands of right leaning white men got killed in Iraq in order for their kids to be in a class full of refugees.

Libya ended with a million migrants a year coming to Europe and a jihadist trained by the UK government killing 22 girls at an Ariana Grande concert.

Taiwan is important because the globalists wanted to dump wages by moving electronics production to a lower wage country. If China tries to take Taiwan, the counterattack that gets mowed down will be manned by conservative white men. Towards the end, a few elite forces will walk over the bodies of dead polish Catholics in order to raise the pride flag over reconquered Taiwan. In the movie, the white men will be replaced by women of colour.

Israel/Palestine is a conflict between those who want Arabs to live where their grandparents live and those who want millions of arabs to move. The same conservatives who say they are opposed to arab migrations will be more fanatically zionist than what is allowed on Israeli TV.

I am nor surprised that the western militaries are skeptical of conservative white men. The shocking part is how loyal they have been.

So what's the State that has values that are antithetical to the pilot values in this scenario exactly? It's not the one that's racially oppressing them? I'm not sure I understand.

China does not claim to represent the white pilot's values, China does not demand any "duty" or "service" from them, the pilot's work in China, if they sign up, would be voluntary on purely capitalist mercenary basis. Not the same thing.

My contention is that the UK is exactly the same and any support of it from Englishmen in its current iteration is also purely mercenary.

has values that are antithetical to the pilot values

China. Most Britons and doubtless RAF pilots would and do abhor their form of government.

And yet, no Viet Cong ever called me a nigger.

Now how exactly is the Chinese form of government different from the UK in practical terms right now? What is it that you would be defending that is practically different?

And before you make any invocation of the natural freedoms of Englishmen or to democracy, remember this is the UK right now we're talking about. A regime led by a bureaucrat that owes his seat to a coup where people are routinely harassed by the police for speech the government disapproves of.

Now how exactly is the Chinese form of government different from the UK in practical terms right now? What is it that you would be defending that is practically different?

The UK government did not literally weld people into their apartment buildings to enforce covid lockdowns. It has not within living memory shot protesters en masse in the streets or run them over with tanks. It does not throw its citizens into internment camps for believing in the wrong religion. It has not within the last century so thoroughly destroyed its own economy and agricultural production that tens of millions of its people starved to death or sent forth mobs of brainwashed children to smash the graves of their ancestors with sledgehammers or stone their relatives and friends to death on made-up charges to meet a quota.

There are more worlds of difference between the Chinese and British governments than there are in the solar system.

The UK government is committed to replacing the British population with foreigners from all corners of the world, regardless of what voters have to say: https://twitter.com/t848m0/status/1560662923101347840

In 100 years time, judging by present trends, China will be Chinese, albeit old and authoritarian. Britain will be one of several North Atlantic Economic Zones.

It really doesn't matter, in the grand scheme of history, what the Iroquois domestic policy was, if they had a coup or whether they had famines from time to time. Does the nation actually exist as an identity? Does it have sovereignty over land? Those are the most important questions.

This is the key issue here. Why does the UK expect British people to show loyalty to a government that is trying to take their country from them, that has no concept of national interests? If you turn a nation-state into an economic zone then don't be surprised if your soldiers become mercenaries.

It has not within living memory shot protesters en masse in the streets or run them over with tanks. It does not throw its citizens into internment camps for believing in the wrong religion.

Not to say that the UK is as bad as China, but this isn't strictly true. 1971 saw British troops shoot dozens of protesters or just people going about their day indiscriminately with Bloody Sunday and the Ballymurphy massacre. And 2000 people were interned without trial, some being tortured, in Northern Ireland over 4 years starting in 1971.

A regime led by a bureaucrat that owes his seat to a coup

Probably not much continuing here now thar these points have come up in your other comment but this is absurd. This is just how the Westminster system functions and even this party-orientated system has been the norm for coming up on a century. It's called the 1922 Committee for a reason.

When you are on your third PM since the last election there is a real question of democratic legitimacy for their current administration.

With that said, I think there are a lot more complaints about the British system compared to the above (eg lack of freedom of speech).

When you are on your third PM since the last election there is a real question of democratic legitimacy for their current administration.

How so? He has the support of the MPs we all elected on the understanding that they could if they wished replace the PM with another.

Because generally speaking when people voted Tory they were voting for Boris. At a certain point, the ruling regime is so far from what people voted for it would be appropriate to call for a new election.

The only reason Tory’s don’t is because they’d lose.

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Under that logic you would never need another election. After all, you already elected the MPs once.

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I agree the Chinese government is abhorrent but what makes them so much worse compared to the UK government? That is, sure China is worse but the UK government also sucks.

Surely whatever you think about the UK, any plausible faults are on a completely different plane to those of the Chinese state, especially if the complaints you're levying are the aforementioned ones about affirmative action or whatever. Most importantly of all of course is the total absence of any genuine democracy or appreciable freedom of the press in China. Certainly to the extent that assisting China militarily because you were hacked off at a diversity initiative is indefensible.

First, I don’t really value democracy qua democracy. Second, the point isn’t just affirmative action (which is wrong) but actual dislike and disgust toward whites and specifically white males. That hatred will eventually lead to big problems for white males.

So while China sucks, strategical strengthening an enemy may in fact be beneficial. Granted, I wouldn’t strengthen since it believes in Han superiority. But the basic concept of strengthening the enemy of a regime that despises you isn’t a crazy idea.

So while China sucks, strategical strengthening an enemy may in fact be beneficial. Granted, I wouldn’t strengthen since it believes in Han superiority. But the basic concept of strengthening the enemy of a regime that despises you isn’t a crazy idea.

Strengthening foreign enemies of the regime is almost by definition strengthening people who believe in their own superiority over you. If not China, then whom? Russia? ISIS? No outsider is going to help native Britons out of the goodness of their own hearts, and I daresay most of the world still despises them more than their own government does.

Here's a counterargument. China does despise white people, they are just better at hiding it due to East Asian cultural norms.

Meanwhile in the West, while its true that white males face serious dejure discrimination, we are still on the top of the social hierarchy in some ways. For example, white men have an easier time finding dates with women. This "revealed preference" of women shows their true beliefs. Even if they might claim to view all races equally, they prefer white men.

So I think you are overestimating hate for white men in the West and underestimating it in China.

Men do not face de jure discrimination, they face de facto discrimination. It is still technically illegal to discriminate against white men.

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China seems to have a hierarchy of Han->honkees->everyone else. Which puts the white people above the bottom, anyway, unlike in more enlightened countries.

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Oh I noted that China believes in Han superiority. I don’t doubt the PRC loathe whites. And I wouldn’t buddy up with the PRC. My point is that buddying up with the enemy of the UK may not be a bad idea.

but actual dislike and disgust toward whites and specifically white males

This is so terminally online. Are you British? I have literally no idea where you have picked this idea up.

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This is so terminally online. Are you British? I have literally no idea where you have picked this idea up.

Did you read the OP in this thread? Declaring shocked ignorance isn't the great argument you think it is.

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Reading the relevant emails posted in the first link.

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Yup. In UK they arrest you for misgendering and in China about mentioning Tianamen

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687123/Mother-arrested-children-calling-transgender-woman-man.html

Before I respond with anything else is your genuine belief that the Chinese state does not restrict freedom of speech to any considerably greater degree than the British state?

In which country are you more likely to actually be arrested (or at least have the police show up) for posting in contradiction of state mandated beliefs? I actually don't know the answer. I do hear about it more often from the UK but that doesn't prove much for multiple reasons.

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In the same order of magnitude. Just different things you cant say. British libel laws are notorious. And the police is quite active in anti bigorty and hate speech online.

China cares about things people say that towards the state, UK - what people say to each other. Since I am quite fond of China retaking Taiwan, suppressing Tibet and don't give a fuck about Tiananmen - I don't think I can get in trouble with my speech in China ...

There is no freedom of the press or genuine democracy in the UK.

The PM is a party man the public did not vote for and people are routinely arrested for disagreeing with government ideology.

The PM is a party man the public did not vote for

Welcome to the Westminster system. The public did not vote for him, but they voted in the MPs that chose him as leader. A slight degree of removal but every action he wants to take (at least in the realm of primary legislation) must be voted upon by the people's elected representatives and those representatives could remove him and his government at any time should they wish to.

people are routinely arrested for disagreeing with government ideology.

Like with @Lizzardspawn before I respond to this I'll ask you a question; is it your genuine belief that the Chinese state does not restrict freedom of speech to any considerably greater degree than the British state?

I'll just try to answer here instead of having two threads for the same points.

I believe that using constitutional means of removing elected representatives in favor of bureaucrats approved by the real power structure is accurately characterized as a coup.

I believe that the current regime in place in the United Kingdom is no less totalitarian than the one in China. I believe it has similarly declared totalitarian designs, when challenged it has made similar exceptions to individual freedoms, and it has no ideological mechanism to stop it from growing more oppressive to those it sees as it's ennemies.

I can name ennemies that have suffered similar repression and harassment. I can name truths that are not allowed to be said. I can name people killed without trial. I can name ethnicities whose property has been seized. I can name statutes that allow the government to break the law. And now I can even name ethnic cleansing initiatives.

I don't like that things are the way they are. But I don't think it's in any way rational to consider the UK a free state. And I would like the case to say it is one still is to be explicitly stated and solid enough it doesn't sound word for word like Chinese propaganda.

I'm glad to be wrong. But why is the UK in any sense of the word freeer than China?

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Was it Orwell who said that phrases like "perhaps not unreasonably" are like ink clouds for indefensible political writing?

Saying it about your opponent's point feels a lot less egregious.

I suppose sometimes you really need to spite your face and your nose is an acceptable price.

A decade ago the supreme court unanimously ruled that people are actually allowed to appeal federal agency rulings to the court system, which the Obama administration did not want. The EPA had attempted to fine a couple $75,000 a day for starting to build a home in compliance with local permitting, on the theory that their land being next to a ditch gave the federal government control over the land. The houses right next to the local lake didn't bother the government: they just randomly picked this couple to ruin. Moreover, the EPA claimed that nobody could challenge its rulings in court, as they were "civil actions" rather than final penalties.

The court remanded the case and allowed the couple to appeal the EPA ruling, and it has been working its way back up the appeals courts ever since.

The couple just won a second unanimous supreme court case against Biden's EPA, which had attempted to define the navigable waters of the united states to mean any land on which there is any standing water at any time of the year (turning about 80% of US land into "water" for legal purposes). The EPA tried to moot the case by withdrawing their compliance order, but

It's interesting and a little encouraging that even the liberal members of the court (except Ginsburg) are not eager to give the executive infinite unappealable power. You might get a letter out of the blue threatening you with ruinous fines or prosecution because some federal agency decided to go after you as a test case, but if you have a hundred million dollars and backing from the US Chamber of Commerce, you might actually win after several decades of legal action.

While all the justices agreed that the EPA was wrong in this particular case the liberals and Kavanaugh authored a separate opinion because they disagreed with the majority's interpretation of the clean waters act. The issue is that water flows downstream, you can't protect the navigable waters of the U.S. without preventing people from dumping things into the marsh that flows into them. Congress wasn't super specific about what wetlands the EPA has authority over, I'm not a lawyer but a lot of the wrangling is over distinctions between waters that are "adjoining", "adjacent" or have "a significant nexus" with covered waters.

The EPA's argument was that the Sackett Family was filling in a wetland that had a subsurface flow into Priest lake and so needed federal permits. This got championed by Pacific Legal Fund, an organization founded by Ronald Reagan's former welfare reform team, because they saw a significant opportunity to loosen environmental regulation on property rights. Alito wrote the Majority opinion establishing a new test that only wetlands with a continuous surface connection to navigable waters are covered by the Clean Water Act, which would exclude a lot of wetlands that have been traditionally covered.

Kavanaugh actually broke with the conservative majority and sided with liberals on this issue because he thought that test was too strict. He argued that Alito's continuous surface connection test ignored the common meaning of "adjacent". It would exclude waters separated by man made barriers, such as marshes next to the Mississippi Levees, or swamps that drain into the Chesapeake Bay through subsurface connections. Pollutants dumped in these waters will end up in navigable waters and excluding them from coverage is nonsensical.

As usual with the Supreme Court it does look like Congress really needs to step in and clarify their law. The burden placed on property rights by saying that no one can build on their land if it has a tiny ditch that flows into a covered body of water is too high. But excluding swamps next to rivers without a surface connection from environmental protections seems to ignore basic hydrology.

As usual with the Supreme Court it does look like Congress really needs to step in and clarify their law.

This. For the most part, the Supreme Court ought to enforce the law as written, only bending words when the strict wording leads to absurdities that were obviously unintended. If Congress wants X, they need to write a law that unambiguously says X.

Honestly, I would like for some sort of formalized law amendment process that can be initialized by the Supreme Court. Something like "This Law is vague, you need to fix it. We've interpreted it as X for this particular case. If that's what it's supposed to be in the future, please reword the Law to state that less ambiguously. If you meant something else, please reword the Law to state that less ambiguously and we can apply that to future cases. But something needs to change here." And then Congress has a limited time to go through some version of the Lawmaking process to fix that Law and clarify their intentions.

For the most part, the Supreme Court ought to enforce the law as written, only bending words when the strict wording leads to absurdities that were obviously unintended. If Congress wants X, they need to write a law that unambiguously says X.

They've tried.

From the decision:

In addition, it would be odd indeed if Congress had tucked an important expansion to the reach of the CWA into convoluted language in a relatively obscure provision concerning state permitting programs. We have often remarked that Congress does not “hide elephants in mouseholes” by “alter[ing] the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms or ancillary provisions.” Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457, 468 (2001). We cannot agree with such an implausible interpretation here.

Of course this is a conservative thing.

It looks like a nice reminder that the Supreme Court actually has an important job.

I know we’re incentivized to see the dirtiest and most politicized parts of it. But sometimes a marsh is just a marsh.

The EPA tried to moot the case by withdrawing their compliance order, but

Come on, man! I'm on the edge of my seat here!

It's interesting and a little encouraging that even the liberal members of the court (except Ginsburg) are not eager to give the executive infinite unappealable power.

I can't imagine that she's all that eager these days, either.

Whoops, my bad. And you never know with Ginsburg.

A decade ago the supreme court unanimously ruled that people are actually allowed to appeal federal agency rulings to the court system, which the Obama administration did not want.

That is not the worst summary of a legal issue I have ever heard, but it isn't great. The Administrative Procedures Act provides for judicial review of “final agency action for which there is no other adequate remedy in a court.” 5 U. S. C. §704. The issue in the case was whether "final agency action" had yet occurred. Not whether "people are actually allowed to appeal federal agency rulings to the court system," since people have been doing that successfully for decades.

Biden's EPA, which had attempted to define the navigable waters of the united states to mean any land on which there is any standing water at any time of the year.

No, 40 CFR 120.2 defines "waters of the United States" to include wetlands, and "wetlands" to mean "those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions." And according to the Court's decision, that definition dates to the early 1980s. And see, eg, People of State of Ill. v. Outboard Marine Corp, 619 F.2d 623, 627 fn 14 (2nd Cir. 1980) (quoting the rule). It was not a creation of "Biden's EPA," as you imply.

The issue in the case was whether "final agency action" had yet occurred.

It's a bit worse than that; Sackett (2012) asked whether an agency's final ruling with penalties counted if the agency might change its mind about enforcement, but it also had to decide that "The Clean Water Act is not a statute that “preclude[s] judicial review” under the APA, 5 U. S. C. §701(a)(1)." And SCOTUS had to make that conclusion because the government argued such preclusion seriously. Indeed, the lower court decision references cases that accepted that explicitly.

No, 40 CFR 120.2 defines "waters of the United States" to include wetlands, and "wetlands" to mean "those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions." And according to the Court's decision, that definition dates to the early 1980s.

The poster is probably referring to various rulemakings and interpretations around that rule, which has been repeatedly modified: the 2023 final rule actually starts with a relatively complete (if not exactly unbiased) summary of the recent history, but also see the 2014 NPR, 2020 final rule, timeline 2001-2016 here.

The definition of "wetlands" in the CFR was not changed, but not all wetlands were covered by the Clean Water Act's past interpretations. I can't find the 1980 version from a quick search, but the 1986 guideline is here (cw: large pdf): it explicitly only covered "interstate wetlands" and "wetlands adjacent to waters (other than waters that themselves are wetlands)", where adjacency required "means bordering, contiguous, or neighboring", with some exceptions for manmade structures and beach dunes. By contrast, Obama- and Biden-area rules do not require adjacency, but merely a "significant nexus", pulling the term directly from Kennedy's concurrence in Rapanos (ie, and thus a term that was not used before 2006).

Estimates on exactly how many acres this covered are hard to come by, not least of all because every expansive WoTUS rule also advocated a case-by-case analysis, and probably didn't include literally every place to ever have standing water, but the claim that it didn't expand the area or coverage significantly doesn't pass the sniff test.

No, 40 CFR 120.2 defines "waters of the United States" to include wetlands, and "wetlands" to mean "those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions." And according to the Court's decision, that definition dates to the early 1980s.

That helps clarify part of what I saw about the case (the Reason video from six months ago) where the EPA also demanded they plant wetland plants on the land where none such plants grew. Ridiculous.

To be fair, a lot of wetlands plants are pretty hardy, if only because the definition is so expansive. You're probably thinking cattails or mangroves that require regular inundation to thrive, but the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers includes a broader framework of plants that merely require highly hydrated soils, including some dogwoods and willows.

That frame of logic was part of the reasoning some previous short-lived attempts at very expansive definitions of 'wetlands' (eg, in the late 1980s, must have seven consecutive days water no more than 18 inches underground).

That would definitely make my entire town wetlands

That reminds me that I need to uproot the "wetland grasses" on my land that are growing in the middle of all the other stuff.

wetlands adjacent to waters (other than waters that themselves are wetlands)", where adjacency required "means bordering, contiguous, or neighboring"

How far is "neighboring", they're 300 feet away from the lake.

This case is weird because the objectionable part doesn't seem to be the idea that the ditch on their land has some relation to the water quality of the lake, but the treatment of gravel and sand as pollutants. If they had been dumping highly toxic waste on marshy land next to a ditch that flowed into Priest Lake we wouldn't care whether it's technically adjacent or not, we'd understand that some amount of the water-soluble pollutants are going to make it into the lake. The maddening part is treating construction sand like toxic waste.

There's a lot of good policy arguments in favor of more specific and expansive regulations for more specifically dangerous materials. There are even good policy arguments in favor of regulating large changes to water runoff, including those done by the safest construction sand and gravel -- you can fuck up a lot of ecology with a giant dam, after all, and even without a basement the typical house is a large dam.

Some of these regulations exist, either at the federal level in other laws, or in some or all states. But it is easier to redefine things.

Having had to secure an erosion and sedimentation permit, there's good reason for treating sand and gravel as waste. It may not kill fish the way a more traditional toxin will, but it can seriously gum up an ecosystem enough to have the same effect on the health of a stream or lake. There is a whole host of Federal regulations concerning how much fill you can dump into a lake.

Right, but nobody was planning to dump fill in the lake as a part of this homebuilding process I shouldn't think?

If the Sacketts were to dump a bunch of diesel on their property, it's plausible that this could pollute the lake -- but sand and gravel to not travel in the water table this way, and should be regulated separately if the EPA is going to take an expansive enough definition of "waterway" to cover groundwater pollution.

So…is the OP a partisan hack or not?

A bit. At the very least, there's a ton of history here crossing 50 years across multiple political allegiances and a lot of 'non-political' regulation well before the Biden or Obama administrations. But not as much as gdanning's response suggests.

but the claim that it didn't expand the area or coverage significantly doesn't pass the sniff test.

And, if that had been OP's claim, there would have been no need to correct it. Similarly, had OP discussed the "adjacency" issue, as you do, and which was the actual point of disagreement between the justices in the recent decision, there would have been little reason to comment. But instead OP made a specific claim, i.e., that "wetlands" includes "any land on which there is any standing water at any time of the year," which is clearly not true.

I'm not sure it is clearly not true; there's a reason I wrote and emphasized probably, here, and the Sackett's property is already a pretty far outlier from the common read.

Is is clearly not true because the regulation clearly doesn't say what OP says it does. OP said it says one thing, when it says something else. Whether the Sackett's property falls within the (actual) regulatory definition is an entirely different issue.

PS: Again, not that it matters to the issue of OP's misstatement, but see the photos at the end of the Ninth Circuit opinion here. That does not look like " a pretty far outlier from the common read."

The site's google maps location is available here. The statute's definition to directly quote the opinion "the CWA prohibits the discharge of pollutants into only “navigable waters,” which it defines as “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas,” 33 U. S. C. §§1311(a), 1362(7), (12)(A) (2018 ed.)".

The EPA's ability to literally ever find standing water ever seem more an example of the problem rather than a defense, unless you think the Congress of 1972 meant to include happy meal toys in their concept of navigable, and not care whether it'd have to teleport through dirt to go anywhere.

Now you seem to be making a different claim, i.e., that the regulatory definition of "wetlands" is inconsistent with the statutory defintion of "waters of the United States." That may be, but what does that have to with OP's erroneous claim?

The OP's claim was that :

Biden's EPA, which had attempted to define the navigable waters of the united states to mean any land on which there is any standing water at any time of the year.

Ignoring for now the nitpick that what the Biden (and Obama) EPA attempted and what made it into the final rule don't have to be the same thing, the Sackett property pictures in the lower court opinion seems to be a literal case of an environment where areas that had standing water only for a part of the year.

EDIT: to be clear, I think pushing back about it being certainly including any land which had any standing water for any time would be somewhat reasonable, but your implication that the current rule either a) had no modifications since the 1980s, or b) depended solely on the term wetlands, is not reasonable.

More comments

I don't even know what to say to this. You admit below that the Obama administration's position was that the Sacketts should not be allowed to appeal the EPA penalty through the court system. But you worded your quibble as if you're trying to insinuate that this wasn't the case.

Worse, the Biden EPA announced the new definition of waters of the united states in December 2022. Your claim that it dated from the 1980s is deceptive at best. But you worded your claim very carefully to imply rather than state something plainly untrue.

To be fair, the enforcement action against the Sacketts started in 2007 (that is, the Bush admin); they were probably meant to cement down a post-Rapanos expansive rule that covered any waters with a 'significant nexus' to navigable waters. And Rapanos was, in addition to being the sorta guy that just made a delightful punching bag, also meant to cement down a 1989-era redefinition (ie, HW Bush or Reagan) that was nearly as broad, in turn.

November 26, 2007, my bad. I thought they only started building their house that year, and the enforcement came later.

All I can say is that you need to read more carefully.

You admit below that the Obama administration's position was that the Sacketts should not be allowed to appeal the EPA penalty through the court system

No, as I said, the administration's position was that the Sacketts should not be allowed to appeal the EPA decision YET, whereas OP implied that the Administration's position was that no one should be able to appeal EPA and other agency decisions AT ALL; OP said that Court ruled that "people are actually allowed to appeal federal agency rulings to the court system, which the Obama administration did not want."

Worse, the Biden EPA announced the new definition of waters of the united states in December 2022. Your claim that it dated from the 1980s is deceptive at best.

Leaving aside that your link shows that the rule did not take effect until March 20, 2023, which obviously was far too late to be the rule under which the EPA issued its order, and more than 5 months after the October 3, 2022, oral arguments in the case, what I said was:

40 CFR 120.2 defines "waters of the United States" to include wetlands, and "wetlands" to mean "those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions." And according to the Court's decision, that definition dates to the early 1980s. And see, eg, People of State of Ill. v. Outboard Marine Corp, 619 F.2d 623, 627 fn 14 (2nd Cir. 1980) (quoting the rule). It was not a creation of "Biden's EPA," as you imply.

And, if you had bothered to look at that 1980 case I cited, you would have seen that it says:

The Environmental Protection Agency provides the following definition for "navigable waters":

(t) "Navigable waters" means "waters of the United States, including the territorial seas." This term includes:

...

(2) Interstate waters, including interstate wetlands;

...

(6) Wetlands adjacent to waters identified in paragraphs (t)(1)-(5) of this section ("Wetlands" means those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions. . . .

So, as I said, the definition I quoted has been used by the EPA to define "wetlands" since at least 1980.

There was a time that draining swamps was among the greatest achievements of the government.

Fun footnote in the court's opinion:

Leovy v. United States also reflected the law’s longstanding hostility to wetlands: “If there is any fact which may be supposed to be known by everybody, and, therefore, by courts, it is that swamps and stagnant waters are the cause of malarial and malignant fevers, and that the police power is never more legitimately exercised than in removing such nuisances.” Traditionally, the only time wetlands were the subject of federal legislation was to aid the States in draining them. Wetlands preservation only gained traction due, in large part, to advances in firearms technology that made waterfowl hunting feasible.

Also, why do Democrats like swamps (or, as they call them, wetlands) so much?

  • water filtration to capture agricultural runoff

  • water retention to replenish the aquifers

  • biomass generation to capture carbon

  • waterfowl habitats

Also wetlands dampen the blow of hurricanes, flash floods and general storm surge; protecting human lives and reducing soil erosion. In addition to the obvious direct destruction of dry land, the soil erosion can allow salt water to enter fresh water ecosystems, killing most life within them, then the decaying dead plants stop anchoring the soil and cause even more aggressive erosion. Salt water flooding in previously protected fields also badly damages soil fertility.

Hurricanes start slowing down and losing strength as soon as they leave open ocean, and waves weaken and break by hitting all the foliage, sandbars and shallow waters. The more wetland you have as a buffer between the ocean and human settlements the better.

Getting rid of those is about as bright as taking all the padding out of a helmet.

I do not think the EPA knows what navigable means.

Well, here is a bit of the history, according to the Supreme Court:

After initially construing the Act to cover only waters navigable in fact, in 1975 the Corps issued interim final regulations redefining "the waters of the United States" to include not only actually navigable waters but also tributaries of such waters, interstate waters and their tributaries, and nonnavigable intrastate waters whose use or misuse could affect interstate commerce. 40 Fed. Reg. 31320 (1975). More importantly for present purposes, the Corps construed the Act to cover all "freshwater wetlands" that were adjacent to other covered waters. A "freshwater wetland" was defined as an area that is "periodically inundated" and is "normally characterized by the prevalence of vegetation that requires saturated soil conditions for growth and reproduction." 33 CFR § 209.120(d)(2)(h) (1976). In 1977, the Corps refined its definition of wetlands by eliminating the reference to periodic inundation and making other minor changes. The 1977 definition reads as follows:

"The term `wetlands' means those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions. Wetlands generally include swamps, marshes, bogs and similar areas." 33 CFR § 323.2(c) (1978).

In 1982, the 1977 regulations were replaced by substantively identical regulations that remain in force today. See 33 CFR § 323.2 (1985).

United States v. Riverside Bayview Homes, Inc., 474 US 121, 123-124 (1985)

Note that, in that case, "The [lower] court also expressed its doubt that Congress, in granting the Corps jurisdiction to regulate the filling of "navigable waters," intended to allow regulation of wetlands that were not the result of flooding by navigable waters. Under the court's reading of the regulation, respondent's property was not within the Corps' jurisdiction, because its semiaquatic characteristics were not the result of frequent flooding by the nearby navigable waters. . . . We now reverse."

Moreover:

On a purely linguistic level, it may appear unreasonable to classify "lands," wet or otherwise, as "waters." Such a simplistic response, however, does justice neither to the problem faced by the Corps in defining the scope of its authority under § 404(a) nor to the realities of the problem of water pollution that the Clean Water Act was intended to combat. In determining the limits of its power to regulate discharges under the Act, the Corps must necessarily choose some point at which water ends and land begins. Our common experience tells us that this is often no easy task: the transition from water to solid ground is not necessarily or even typically an abrupt one. Rather, between open waters and dry land may lie shallows, marshes, mudflats, swamps, bogs — in short, a huge array of areas that are not wholly aquatic but nevertheless fall far short of being dry land. Where on this continuum to find the limit of "waters" is far from obvious.

Faced with such a problem of defining the bounds of its regulatory authority, an agency may appropriately look to the legislative history and underlying policies of its statutory grants of authority. Neither of these sources provides unambiguous guidance for the Corps in this case, but together they do support the reasonableness of the Corps' approach of defining adjacent wetlands as "waters" within the meaning of § 404(a). Section 404 originated as part of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, which constituted a comprehensive legislative attempt "to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters." CWA § 101, 33 U. S. C. § 1251. This objective incorporated a broad, systemic view of the goal of maintaining and improving water quality: as the House Report on the legislation put it, "the word `integrity' . . . refers to a condition in which the natural structure and function of ecosystems [are] maintained." H. R. Rep. No. 92-911, p. 76 (1972). Protection of aquatic ecosystems, Congress recognized, demanded broad federal authority to control pollution, for "[w]ater moves in hydrologic cycles and it is essential that discharge of pollutants be controlled at the source." S. Rep. No. 92-414, p. 77 (1972).

In keeping with these views, Congress chose to define the waters covered by the Act broadly. Although the Act prohibits discharges into "navigable waters," see CWA §§ 301(a), 404(a), 502(12), 33 U. S. C. §§ 1311(a), 1344(a), 1362(12), the Act's definition of "navigable waters" as "the waters of the United States" makes it clear that the term "navigable" as used in the Act is of limited import. In adopting this definition of "navigable waters," Congress evidently intended to repudiate limits that had been placed on federal regulation by earlier water pollution control statutes and to exercise its powers under the Commerce Clause to regulate at least some waters that would not be deemed "navigable" under the classical understanding of that term. See S. Conf. Rep. No. 92-1236, p. 144 (1972); 118 Cong. Rec. 33756-33757 (1972) (statement of Rep. Dingell).

474 US at 132-133.

So, apparently the Court thinks that the EPA does indeed know what "navigable" means, or at least what Congress meant by "navigable." Note also that the EPA's interpretation is almost 50 years old; if Congress disagreed with it, it could have amended the statute to annul the EPA's interpretation.

Also, why do Democrats like swamps (or, as they call them, wetlands) so much?

Note that the regulation at issue was originally promulgated in 1976, under a Republican administration. And, as the quote above says, wetlands are "loved" for purposes of the Clean Water Act because "[w]ater moves in hydrologic cycles and it is essential that discharge of pollutants be controlled at the source." S. Rep. No. 92-414, p. 77 (1972).

There was a time that draining swamps was among the greatest achievements of the government.

We don't worry about malaria any more, and wetlands have many benefits

I do not think the EPA knows what navigable means. A plain language reading would be a waterway that you could travel along by boat.

Plain language is irrelevant when the term is defined by statute. The CWA defines navigable waters as "waters of the United States", and gives the EPA authority to define that further, pursuant to their usual rulemaking authority. So the relevant definition here isn't of "navigable" but of "waters of the United States", and those are defined pretty thoroughly in the regulations as well as by at least three supreme court decisions. Even if I took your definition at face value it woudn't make sense considering the purpose of the act. The stream closest to my house definitely isn't navigable by any plain language definition of the term, but it feeds into a major navigable river only a few miles downstream, where it flows across the property of a steel mill. To say that the mill could avoid the need for an EPA permit simply by dumping into the stream instead of the river itself would completely subvert the purpose of the act. So the definition naturally includes any waterways that connect to actually navigable waterways.

40 CFR 120.2 defines "waters of the United States" to include wetlands, and "wetlands" to mean "those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions."

Isn’t this backwards? Are you allowed to use CFR to interpret United States Code? Regulators can’t claim jurisdiction unless a statute grants them jurisdiction right?

No, administrative agencies always promulgate regulations which interpret statutes; they have to, because statutes are always going to use broad terms. " "Congress simply cannot do its job absent an ability to delegate power under broad general directives. . . . Accordingly, this Court has deemed it "constitutionally sufficient if Congress clearly delineates the general policy, the public agency which is to apply it, and the boundaries of this delegated authority.'" The key issue is how much deference courts should give to those interpretations.

More specifically, the statute give the EPA power regarding "the waters of the United States," but does not define that term further. Someone has to specify what that means, and initially that is going to be the administrative agency. Ultimately, it will be the courts, of course, or Congress itself, since if it does not like a regulation it can amend the statute accordingly.

"constitutionally sufficient if Congress clearly delineates the general policy, the public agency which is to apply it, and the boundaries of this delegated authority.'"

That's the whole issue though right? Congress told EPA to regulate "the waters of the United States", there was some amendment passed that implied that this includes "wetlands adjacent thereto" (because you know, what else are you gonna do about this?), then the EPA decided that this means they can regulate any relatively flat area with reasonably high annual precipitation (i.e. the most densely populated parts of the country).

Plessy died because it was no longer possible to maintain the legal fiction that segregated facilities were "separate but equal". When Chevron dies (and it will) it will be because it is no longer possible to maintain the legal fiction that agencies are operating within reasonable interpretations of statutes.

https://pacificlegal.org/plf-supreme-court-track-record/

Was this one Pacific Legal Fund? It sounds like something they would do.

Yes, this is a PLF case


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