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Hello! Today, on "Fucking Stupid Politics", here's a peach, a pippin, a doozy of an example.
'Why is peepul thinking we wuz talkin' 'bout killin' peepul? Y they not get de IMPORTANT ENVIRONMENTAL CLIMATE CHANGE FIGHTIN' POINT?'
Because you idiots made it about "killing", "taking out", "terrorists", etc. That is why people are discussing the ethics of murder and not your BIG IMPORTANT POINT.
These are the same people who would lip-wibble over "speech is violence". Imagine I did a graphic about "this is the harm reduction we could ensure by killing just one trans activist". Do you think they'd be all "Well Chauncey, that is an interesting rhetorical device to illustrate your thesis"? No, they'd be screaming about hate speech, death threats, inciting violence, and demanding not alone banning from all online media but the police to get involved.
And this is why they are shooting themselves in the foot over such campaigns. Never mind that if right this minute all fossil fuel extraction and production stopped, and we only had renewables and limited nuclear power to rely on. Our entire global civilisation would be in a lot of trouble because we haven't yet solved the transition problems.
No, let's keep discussing ethics. They could use a stern course of Aquinas. Even BP oil execs do not get up in the morning and go "Today I think I shall be Evil. Let me knowingly and purposefully kill the planet!" (Moustache twirling, evil laughter and gleeful hand rubbing optional).
Those guys are trying to make a living, provide a service, and sell goods. Yes, increase the profits of their company. Yes, get rich. Yes, all that. But that only happens because the entire world pretty much runs on oil. Up until the mid-19th century, petroleum deposits were useless or even seen as devaluing land if you had a lake of thick black goop slopping out of the ground. Ironically, petroleum could be seen as the environmentally friendly option, given that it replaced whale oil (due to the dwindling population of whales that were being hunted to provide oil). And so our industrial civilisation was built around it.
You can't slam the brakes on all of a sudden to move from fossil fuels to other sources. And the dumb stupid "punch a Nazi" lazy 'we're fighting a war here and we're the soldiers in the army of right' tropes on display here about "killing" people just for the job they do don't help. This is why ordinary people think the Just Stop Oil etc. campaigns are damn stupid.
Because they are.
EDIT: Ah feck it, while I'm being ranty anyway: this is instructive to compare to what I'm seeing about "Trump's 'we're coming for you' tweet is being investigated" as presumably incitement to violence and death and treason and coup and the rest of it. I was already thinking about "I'm sure you can find plenty of examples of political speeches and speeches by police commissioners and DAs and so forth about 'coming after/coming for/look out you're next' political opponents, crime, etc." so singling out this as a unique example of "no it's a definite threat of physical harm" seems to be leaning heavily on the scales.
The same way the Gabby Giffords assassination attempt was portrayed as "the Republicans with their target crosshairs poster set her up for this", never mind that people found examples of Democratic politicians also using targets/crosshairs in similar statements.
And now this: 'if we talk about killing someone, you should understand it only means 'if there were one fewer oil exec in a job' but if you use languatge like that, you really do mean to kill/harm your opponents' perfect example of one law for me and another law for thee.
Wait, what?
The issue with Trump's "IF YOU GO AFTER ME I'M COMING AFTER YOU" post isn't that it's inciting or threatening violence (it isn't). It's that it's arguably an attempt to intimidate witnesses in a criminal trial. "I'M COMING AFTER YOU" probably doesn't imply anything other than mean tweets in this context, but that's still witness tampering.
Probably it won't get prosecuted because it would be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump was directing the warning at potential witnesses. But for those of us burdened with less onerous standards of proof, c'mon, of course he was.
I am extremely confident you can't point to a speech or statement from a DA or a police commissioner that can reasonably be characterised as an attempt to intimidate a witness to remain silent.
Under your frame whats the difference between
Because him comment is well a very normal political statement.
Also very similar to to General Flynn
It just looks like Lawfare to me. And he who controls the justice system wins
I don't agree that "him comment is well a very normal political statement". A normal political statement is something like "I will cut taxes and reduce waste", "My opponent has sold out the American people", "Make America Great Again", etc. "IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I'M COMING AFTER YOU" is not a normal political statement. It's a clear attempt to intimidate.
There is no gag order preventing Trump from making normal political speech. He can continue to campaign, criticise the Biden Administration, etc. What he can't do is attempt to improperly interfere with a court proceeding.
Every politician uses campaign rhetoric like this about attacking their opposition. This doesn’t even reach the Maxine Waters line of calling for specific physical action.
This is just attempting to subvert Democracy by banning your oppositions speech. If he actually interferes with the court then do something. But banning speech and speech alone should be off the table.
Your solution is asking a 95% Democrat voting district to define what is “normal” speech during an election that is already super weird because they’re trying to prosecute the most popular politician in America.
And if he violates a 95% Biden voting (and Hunter Biden colleagues) definition of allowed speech - what’s the legal remedy? Lock up the President while campaigning?
Historically the parallels with Julius Caeser are eery. It’s about to be March on Rome time or meet the executioner.
He's not the President. But yes, lock him up. You don't get a pass to commit crimes with impunity just because your name is on a ballot.
Crime is just the definition of who’s in power, I guess we are on a path to cross the Rubicon.
Your opinion is against long-standing precedence of not lawfaring Presidents.
I don't accept your characterisation of Trump's indictments as "lawfare". My view is much more in line with Kevin Williamson's:
So define Trump as criminal. Then it makes it not lawfare. It’s not unprecedented because we defined Trump as a criminal. Despite the fact we spied on his campaign, invented a fake RussiaGate impeachment, used the Logan Act to target senior officials while in office (which every administration has broken), have a half dozen cases everywhere, changed statute of limitations so we could put him in court on rape (though the accused doesn’t even know what year it happened). But since we defined him as a criminal it’s not lawfare and we aren’t targeting a politician because we defined him as a criminal. It’s not unprecedented him being the first POTUS and 40% chance of being next POTUS because he’s not that he’s just a criminal. And of course all these cases are novel legal theories never used against anyone before. And then we are going to try this case with the current POTUS sons former business partner as judge. And of course instead of filing the cases earlier we are filing them during the election process.
But if it turns out, in the least surprising political development of the decade, that Donald Trump is a criminal, then he should be treated like any other criminal.
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You've got nine reports for basically being antagonistic and bringing internet drama about some Tumblr nobody here to bitch about. Sometimes it's not clear where "talking about stuff happening on social media" ends and "starting threads to dunk on lolcows" begins, but this is pretty close to just lolcowing. Gosh, someone on Tumblr said something stupid? Here, let me point you to a more appropriate venue for your incisive and cutting observations about such people.
I might have let this go (other mods might not) but since you seem to be in high dudgeon and are just slagging people right and left, I'm going to give you the periodic reminder you seem to need to cool your jets and stop acting like you have special license to vent your spleen in proportion to how worked up you are.
You've had a lot of AAQCs since your last warning, so I'm just giving you another warning this time, but if you feel a need to write polemics about the latest bee in your bonnet, find a bee who at least is a recognizeable name, and then don't go off on everyone who doesn't happen to be impressed by your spleen-venting. Really, before you lash back at me like you're about to, think about it - is this really what you want this place to be for, people dragging Twitter-sorry, X, and Tumblr for some random woke idiocy to point and laugh at? It's not like there isn't a target-rich environment out there, so at least put some effort into your Two Minute Hate.
Well I am horribly sorry that I have low tolerance for "shooting my own feet off and thus destroying what would otherwise be a good argument".
Nine people got their feelings hurted? Is that a new record?
EDIT: Number alone doesn't tell me much. If one person whose opinion I value says "this thing is bad", that weighs more with me than if nine million people whose opinions don't count in my view say "it's fantastic!"
Since I have no idea who the Nine Reporters were - nor am I asking you to tell me! nor should you! - then for me it's a case of:
I gave you the numbers because it's unusual for a comment to receive so many reports, and that is usually (not always) an indication that your comment was bad. Obviously we're not going to tell you who said what, but if you think nine people reporting you isn't enough reason to reconsider your spleen-posting and you just dismiss at as "people got their feelings hurted (sic)" (really, is that really your model for people reporting this post, that the Motte is full of climate radicals who were offended that you went off on a Tumblr climate radical?), then it makes me think that this performative navel-gazing was not sincere.
When you double down with this nonsense (which I literally can't even decipher):
you certainly do not give the impression that you actually care about the quality of your discourse.
Ah yes, I keep forgetting you children haven't read anything older than the Relatable Material in your high school English curriculum 😁
It's an older form of English (or, if I'm being exact, Lallans) which is a motto attributed to this person. Try sounding it out, you'll work it out!
But if that genuinely is too difficult, let me translate it into current American:
They have said. What say they? Let them say.
To paraphrase, it means broadly "So what if anonymous nobodies are saying this and that about me? Talk is cheap, let their tongues wag, I care not a straw whatever they may chatter".
I hope that helps with all your Gibberish Translation Needs!
(Historical illiteracy: never not entertaining to me).
Well I'll pull the trigger then.
You've got a lot of quality contributions. I would hate to see you leave, and you've been a good contributor for long enough that just about anything would result in, at most, a warning.
But going on an unbridled flamespree is past "just about anything". No, you do not get to flame people like that, nobody gets to flame people like that.
Three-day ban.
For the record, I really do hope you come back and keep posting, just not like that.
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Seriously? This is where you want to go?
I'm not going to pull the trigger here, but considering I was trying to talk you down and you have doubled and tripled down on being directly antagonistic and condescending to a mod telling you to chill out, I'm going to let another mod decide whether this should earn you a ban.
(And btw, I'm older than you. "Historically illiterate," well, maybe when it comes to 16th century Scottish witticisms.)
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It's an old saying, purportedly from Scots, expressing disrespect for public reproach. "They have said. What say they? Let them say."
We must remember he is American, after all 😁 I believe I first encountered a version of it in a James Bond novel, though equally it could have been in E.R.R. Eddison's Mezentian books.
Probably not to be found in "I Am A Non-Binary Poly Trans Girl" reading text for sixth graders, which is the kind of material I'd imagine Amadan is most familiar with.
Thanks for the implicit recommendation; is "The Worm Ouroboros" a reasonable place to start on that?
Of course, you might have to get back to me after the expiry of the ban you're inexplicably begging for...
I think I'm unbanned now, so, yeah.
Most finished of the lot, and sets out the entire world there. It's a preliminary novel in that it doesn't mention Zimiamavia directly but only as a reference to "that land of the blessed dead" on Mars, while the main plot of the Demons versus the Witches is going on. The frame-story of Lessingham in England doesn't really matter until we get to the Trilogy proper, where Mistress of Mistresses starts in Zimiamvia and Lessingham is a character there (not though quite the same as the English nobleman).
The Worm Ouroboros is complete in itself, and if you can manage to read your way through it, you'll know whether or not Eddison's style is for you.
It also has probably the best villain ever, Lord Gro, whom every reader loves, even though objectively he's sneaky, treacherous, back-stabbing, turn-coat with no fixed principles (save one or two) whom even the Witch-King rebukes once for "no, that's too evil a plan" 😁
Here's a review by someone else who was won over.
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I don't have too strong a sense of scale here—what would be a typical number of reports?
Most of the time it's a single report, although most of those we just approve. I'd say it gets into "whoa, we got a juicy one here" territory around four reports.
Nine is really high.
Not a record, though!
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Amadan is probably keeping count, I'm certainly not 😁
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I know I’m being an SJW, but I don’t think you should use African-American dialect pejoratively like this. I don’t think these are black people to begin with, and this wouldn’t be a good way to respond even if they were.
It's meant to be idiot speak, and if you think that sounds like Black English, I think that's more of a reflection on you than me.
This reminds me of some miminy-piminy pursedmouth posting at Neil Gaiman about "ooh a building in one of the episodes of the TV adaptation of 'Good Omens' which you co-wrote has anti-homeless spikes", trying to show off how Virtuous they were and take a scalp of a Big Gun as well, and being tutored that the particular object they pointed out in the screengrab was, in fact, a Victorian boot scraper.
Try harder to be Woker Than Thou.
While I personally thought you were going for baby talk and not something racial, I don’t think @gemmaem is being unreasonable here. You are literally putting words in your opponents’ mouths. Do you have any reason, other than your absolute enmity, to believe that these tumblr-dwellers actually Can’t English Good?
Don’t act so surprised when people mistake your exact flavor of caricature.
Because anyone who seriously argues "why is everyone talking about the part where I said about killing someone instead of my cool graphics?" Can't Anything Good.
You are saying that if someone says stupid things in one area, they must be overall stupid. This doesn't follow.
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Like @raggedy_anthem, I do not believe you intended to sound Black. Because AAVE is an alternate dialect with different pronunciations and rules of grammar, and because it is primarily spoken by members of a socially disadvantaged class, the stereotypical “idiot” pronunciation has sometimes shifted towards that (actually fairly complicated and internal-rule-abiding) dialect. This isn’t on me or on you. It’s on the pre-existing history of seeing Black Americans as social inferiors.
Given the surrounding social environment here, I don’t expect to gain points for wokeness. I do think that it’s useful to avoid normalising racial caricature, even unintentionally.
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I didn't read it as AAEV. If that was the intention, well, it could've been done better. But I honestly didn't get that vibe.
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Breaking news: tumblr is stupid. It’s obviously talking about murder. Half the comments (notes? Retweets?) don’t get why this is a bad thing and aren’t even holding the fig leaf. Fuck these guys.
That’s still no excuse to make your own scare quotes. Congratulations, you’ve drawn them as a dumb, baby-talking soyjak. Everyone point and boo at the outgroup.
I don't care about soyjack. But this is why no, it's not because conservatives are evil fascist Nazis, it's because you guys are idiots and the way you phrase things is idiotic and you destroy what could be good campaigns because you cannot resist being idiots. Did diddums get a lil' frisson of the transgressive writing that about killing an oil exec? Did they feel all tingly and righteous?
Fucking moron.
I'm highly exercised over this because it makes trying to steelman liberal to leftist arguments so damn impossible. This could have been a really good example of things! The idea that this much space is taken up by the actions of oil companies, by comparison by what is being asked of you, the ordinary person, is really incisive! But of course, just being accurate and educational wasn't good enough, they had to signal how tough black-clad street cyberpunk revolutionary warrior they were.
I want a good conversation about this. I want the environmental movement to provide good information and come up with solutions. I want people on the left not to beclown their own side.
And that is why I'm pissed-off about this whole "uh uh we only said 'killing' why are you all hung up on that?" when if they had a spare brain cell they could have made the same point just with "one fewer oil exec" and leave it to the imagination about how you get one fewer (if you want to imagine they give up the job and retire to the countryside to grow heirloom tomatoes, go you; if you want to imagine Mounds of Skulls keep it in your own head, tiger).
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The double standard wherein lefties can get away with saying and doing things, with mostly positive media coverage, that right wingers can be intensely criticized or even investigated for merely approaching is worth pointing out, but this is not a good example because it’s a literal rando on social media.
A literal rando on social media was recently imprisoned for harmful memes. Justice demands reciprocity.
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I'm kinda tired of that. When does it stop being "literal rando on social media"? Didn't we see that with all the people jumping on the BLM protest bandwagons in the streets?
Isn't Oberlin College in trouble right now because it wasn't "literal rando", it was brought out into the open by the Dean and Vice-President?
I've heard the "it's only a few crazy kids on college campuses/it's only randos on social media" argument once too often. It's not.
I’m pretty sure that even in über-progressive European countries the leaders the actual theocracy parties have more seats in parliament than the willing to resort to violence environmentalists.
I mean sure, ecoterrorism and animal-rights linked violence are things that exist(and there’s not actually much difference between the two), but they’re almost never intentionally killing anyone(accidentally killing and maiming people, however, is a thing that they do).
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I thought this was going to be a post about the NYT fretting about "backlash" to the Kill the Boer song.
On topic, the climate radicalization I see forming is turning me into a "climate change denier". I am agnostic on the impact of human emissions on the climate and tend to assume that the basic described effect of CO2 upregulating temperature is probably right, but I am increasingly seeing framing of "climate catastrophe" and "existential threat", to which I think just outright saying that this isn't happening is probably closer to the truth than some middle-ground. In the same way that "Covid is just a cold bro" would get closer to my preferred policies than "Covid is a very serious emergency", I think "climate change is not a big deal and has always happened" will be closer to my preferred policies than "climate change is literally going to end humanity" and I probably have to pick a side.
What makes me doubt the honesty of climate change activists is the way they bundle their politics. If you think we’re all going to fry, then that’s all that matters. Recruit nationalists and Marxists and monster truck enthusiasts. Be open to any policy. Try to figure out ways that people can keep as many as possible of the things they love.
But of course this isn’t what we get at all.
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Try not to do this.
To decide that you've had it up to here with the three or so well-funded idiots who make up Just Stop Oil and that you are going to hold your nose and sign up with the "I don't mind if the third world fries, it's hot out there I'm not surprised" crowd is a perfectly normal human response, and if at least some people do it it creates good incentives for activists not to be idiots. (Although I suspect that giving noisy idiots rent-free space in your head is bad for the soul). But that is a change in political tactics - changing your views on a factual question based on the noisy idiocy of a bunch of randos is irrational. If 550ppm CO2 is in fact as bad for humanity as the IPCC says it is, then this is the kind of fact that does not care about your feelings.
I don't want the world to fry, is the thing. I want good arguments, I want people to make a strong case, I want effective tactics and some kind of thought-out plan.
"Hey amn't I cool with my 'kill the rich' stupidity" is not that. Like Sandy from the Block turning up at the Met Gala with her Eat The Rich dress.
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That's only under the old 'business as usual' models. And only by 2050, even if we were on such a course. If we are worried about climate change in 2050 then that's a medium-good outcome, since we're here worrying at all.
Seeing as the IPCC never mentions 'existential' in its most recent report with the exception of low islands, climate change is something that can go on the backburner IMO.
Isn’t climate change being expensive and uncomfortable in the long run a good enough reason to think about it, though?
It's a lot less expensive and uncomfortable than many of the proposed solutions. A nuclear hellscape is expensive and uncomfortable, but I'd probably pick that over Full Communism Now.
Sure (though I think you underestimate nuclear hellscape), but we can just not listen to the batshit stuff and take the useful solutions as they are. Things like nuclear plants?
Though of course that runs into environmentalists blowing an aneurysm because they don’t understand it.
My point is that this issue in particular is worth thinking about for sensible people even if the loudest group talking about it are lunatics.
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I mean, there is an actual point there about "all the campaigns aimed at inducing guilt in you, Ordinary Person, about how it's your responsibility to stop living your life are meaningless because look at the outsized influence just one megacorporation has in this situation".
But they managed to bury that by their stupid stunt over "killing an oil exec" and now they've made this point worse than useless.
I think part of the problem is that climate activism in general and Sunrise and Just Stop Oil in particular are run by people who are good at talking money out of left-wing foundations, not by people who understand climate. (This is recent - Al Gore knew what he was talking about when he was the public face of climate activism). So they tend to think of the policy problem as a fundamental moral problem whose solution needs to be enforced by the State, not as a fundamentally technical problem whose solutions need state support to implement. And the preferred frame on the stupid left is something like "All major social problems are easy to solve and the only reason they haven't already been solved is that the people in charge are mean." So there is a lot of climate left effort going into allocating blame to a small number of rich people, rather than the general mass of middle-class people consooming carbon-intensive product.
The problem is that blame is not something you can measure with a thermometer. It doesn't matter whether the carbon emissions produced by commuting to a desk job in a F150 are morally the fault of Ford shareholders, Ford executives, Ford employees, Oil company executives, oil company shareholders, oil company employees, the banks that financed them, the politicians that set up the system they operate under, or the driver. Whatever the moral arguments, at a practical level the person who has to change their lifestyle to stop those emissions entering the atmosphere is the driver.
Voted down for sneering.
Just hit the downvote button, it is not necessary to make sure everyone knows you downvoted someone.
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My ordinary life is supported by the megacorporation. The reason that jets wind up emitting a bunch of CO2 is because a bunch of people like me like going cool places around the world; I'll even use credit card tricks to get the nice first-class seats, so I can enjoy a nap and a moderate priced wine on board. Manufacturing and construction companies profit off of Ordinary People like me buying houses, the oil companies get money when I go for a two-hour drive for no reason other than to watch a basketball game and hang out in a different town, and so on. I eat meat happily, order things on Amazon, and do all sorts of other things that use energy.
I say this not because I feel guilty - I don't feel even the slightest bit of guilt about the matter, but because I'm not mad at the executives either. They make their money running companies that make the incredible modern standard of living possible, and they do so by burning a shitload of fossil fuels. When someone wants an exec unalived for the crime of building a company that sells things that people want, the point is still that I actually should not be allowed to purchase those things.
Everything you say? Exactly. That's how the oil execs make the goddamn money in the first place - you, me and the people making the stupid graphic all use the benefits of modern industrial civilisation that runs off oil. "Kill the execs (in Minecraft)" does fuck-all for the problem, because we're all the problem.
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I've found that climate change activists universally want to restrict things they never wanted to do anyway. Like own pickup trucks and have (White American) babies. While either excusing or explicitly defending things they want to do or think others should be allowed to do like leisure air travel and third world fertility. It's not exactly fake, but it is always convenient.
I suspect an argument over whether ideology or cultural disdain is prior would end up in a similar place as the endless musical chairs games of "Do religious restrictions on sexuality focus primarily on controlling women?"
There are plenty of people in the UK who campaign against airport expansion on climate grounds but whose lifestyles rely on cheap flights - I don't think the climate movement is excusing leisure air travel.
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See also - people who were "ethical vegetarians" that got to tack on climate change as a reason later. Additionally, Covid lockdown enthusiasts who I wouldn't describe as the most social people beforehand. If I didn't know better, I'd have suggested that they might have kind of enjoyed the removal of social obligations.
As you suggest in the second paragraph, I don't think this is entirely cynical anymore than my defense of eating beef is entirely cynical. People tend to wind up with politics that align with what they kind of wanted to do anyway. It takes a fair bit of intellectual rigor to actually stop doing something that you want to do on the basis that your politics demand it.
Hey now, don't lump in ethical vegetarianism with climate change whackos. Factory farming (read: torturing billions of animals from birth to death) is evil, full stop. I have a lot of respect for people that stop eating meat on moral grounds.
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While you’re correct that first world environmental activists definitely tend to focus on things they aren’t big fans of doing themselves anyways- pickups, steaks, and babies being prominent examples- the idea that they generally support high third world fertility rates is not supported by available evidence. Population control campaigns in the third world have historically been driven by donor money that’s at least adjacent to the environmental movement in the US and Europe, as supporting evidence.
The idea that there isn’t a core of committed first world environmentalists willing to accept serious personal sacrifices is also false, although it is almost certainly true that there’s lots of them who are just after the pussy that doesn’t shower very often. Things like tree sitting and riding your bike everywhere have a long history in the US. They’re retarded personal sacrifices, but they definitely are personal sacrifices.
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With younger people especially, a lot of climate activists seem to lean towards an extreme, almost fatalistic view of the situation and consequently advocate things like mass deindustrialization and other civilization-suicide-adjacent solutions. As much as I appreciate the writings of Kaczynski, these solutions seem absurd without even getting into practicality.
The number of people with these views seems to be steadily growing at a rate I'm not sure I can fully credit to media coverage. Is it cyclical? Can anybody here that was around in the 70s provide some context? Maybe it's just edgy kids using twitter as an unprecedentedly powerful megaphone and we're still at the same base rate of this sort of thinking. Or maybe it's just a manifestation of greater general polarization.
See also: this stonetoss edit. Being nuclear-optimistic is now right-coded somehow.
/images/16914338578218443.webp
I have non-edgy barely online friends in their 30s who seem to think a local political party's throwaway idea of the government rationing car and plane travel is what we need. These friends do travel more than they would be allowed under that scheme and they do admit it, but they basically just say "it'd suck, but that's the kind of decisive action we would need" and excitedly talk up the idea to everyone.
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Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link