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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24745 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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Minor (or major?) update on the election for Speaker of the House. Jordan is apparently planning to not have a third vote for Speaker and instead back the plan to empower Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry until January. This comes after some reports that ~30 Republicans would vote against Jordan today, losing significant ground from yesterday when 22 did so.

I'm glad this Speaker contest is probably not going to paralyze us into a government shutdown. I'm unsure what is going to be different about the Speaker race in January though. I'm skeptical that the eight Reps who voted against McCarthy will be convinced to vote for him. After what happened to Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Don Bacon I'm skeptical that Jordan is going to be able to bring his opposition around to him. Maybe it will be Scalise after all? If Jordan's backers can be convinced. Path to 217 for anybody seems pretty murky to me.

This would be the longest period the House has been without a Speaker since 1935.

ETA:

Hearing reports that maybe the resolution empowering McHenry won't pass? Apparently some Members on both sides are now viewing the resolution as a mechanism for Jordan to continue campaigning for the Speakership, which they don't like. Not sure if this will be enough to actually sink such a resolution if brought to the floor but not as foregone a conclusion as I might have thought.

ETA2:

Apparently another Speaker vote at 10am tomorrow? More representatives (Buck and Ferguson) allegedly facing retaliation (not from other Members) for their anti-Jordan votes. Can't imagine this is helping.

What are the odds you think McHenry will just eventually becoming a permanent speaker by default in absence of anyone being able to scrape up a real coalition? I've heard people float Stefanik as a compromise candidate but haven't heard anything out of her indicating she's interested.

Any numerical estimate I would give would be low confidence so I'll skip that. I know inertia can be a powerful thing and I don't really see a path for any Republican to 217. Assuming the resolution to empower McHenry only lasts through January I think it's pretty unlikely. I can see why Democrats vote for such an outcome now to avoid a shutdown but don't see why they would continue to do so. Probably at least five Republicans agree? Or maybe McHenry becomes a de facto compromise candidate since they can't agree on anyone else and he already has the job. Probably it depends a lot on what happens with McHenry as Speaker. Can you motion to vacate the Speaker Pro Tempore the same way you could the Speaker? I have no idea.

The latest from their closed door session today seems to be a complete lack of clear backing for anything at all, supporting Jordan, supporting anyone else, or even temporarily empowering McHenry.

Like I said about conservatism, it's not constructive to try and identify a goal for white nationalism. Ultimately, these guys are moving according to particular values and drives and according to a particular theory of the world, not to try and reach a particular destination.

Shutting down legal immigration entirely? Fair enough, but most Western countries have already been so "demographically transformed" such that a white ethnostate is impossible to achieve through immigration reform alone.

As the saying goes, when in a hole, quit digging.

Most people nowadays have a non-white friend, family member, partner, or work colleague. White nationalism would mean severing these important relationships. In sum, white nationalism is dead on arrival as a political movement.

Many people nowadays are willing to sever important relationships in the name of politics. Divisiveness might be a obstacle, but I don't think it's what kills the movement. If cutting off a friend over race seems ridiculous but pronoun use does not, that simply seems to be because we've absorbed liberal norms around colour-blindness.

The end goal of white nationalists, as opposed to white nationalism, is to jerk themselves off to a vanilla variation on we wuz kangz to make up for their otherwise sad lives, until they die alone in a dilapidated old farmhouse somewhere.

White nationalist influencers compete to be the most extreme, offering up ever hotter takes and ever fewer deliverables. Trapped in the iron law of institutions, their status within extremely online white nationalism is worth more than the status of white nationalism, or of the white race more generally.

White nationalist followers, they follow for the same reason devotees of any conspiracy theory (most extreme political beliefs are indistinguishable from conspiracy theories) follow, to make up for the sadness in their own lives. The vast majority are failures in one way or another, socially or financially or romantically or professionally, who find in grand racial narratives a reason why their lives are so hard when other people's lives seem so easy. Blame it on the Jews and the niggers and suddenly everything seems so much simpler, there's no blame left for the white nationalist himself.

Just like the Communist imagines that his own life will be so much better once the eschaton is immanent, or the Palestinians imagine that life will be so much better if they just owned that other patch of desert instead of the one they are on, the white nationalist imagines that life will be peaches and cream when they are around people whose complexion is all peaches and cream. They haven't just tried Vermont, "the leaves change colors but the people never do," because they'd still be losers there.

Bio-Leninism doesn't stop when you get to the right of Lenin politically.

There is no realistic universe in which white nationalism succeeds. First, after all, white people would need a cohesive definition of whiteness. White nationalism lacks even a unified understanding of who and what they are fighting for. The census data cited elsewhere in this roundup includes most Hispanics, Aryanism includes Persians but not Arabs, Turanism includes the Turks but not the Chinese, what sense does it make to include Sicilians but exclude spaniards if they lived in Caracas too long, my learned friend in argument Hoff seems to include the damn Japanese. The imagined community is simply too imaginary for anything beyond masturbatory scheming.

On white nationalism, see @HlynkaCG below.

The vast majority are failures in one way or another, socially or financially or romantically or professionally, who find in grand racial narratives a reason why their lives are so hard when other people's lives seem so easy.

I've heard this said a lot, and reinforced in pop culture. But do you have any evidence this is actually the case?

This isn't a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely asking - obviously almost every white nationalist (whose job isn't to advance the WN agenda) is only going to express their views anonymously, so I don't see how to know whether they're writing from their mother's basement, or to get their thoughts out after a productive day's work at a high-paying white collar job before having dinner with their wife and 2 kids.

Blame it on the Jews and the niggers and suddenly everything seems so much simpler, there's no blame left for the white nationalist himself.

From what I've read on unz and vdare, there is a bit of hypo-agency in the comments section, and moreover the tone is often just nasty and childish.

But as for (most of) the actual columnists, like Gregory Hood, Jared Taylor, etc - I think this criticism is unfair. I think they honestly believe in good-faith that Jews (actually some of them seem to be in favour of Jews) and Blacks (and various other non-White races), on average, make the life of white people worse in some tangible fashion (the latter due to lower IQs, higher crime rates, etc and the former for encouraging anti-White sentiments)

They haven't just tried Vermont, "the leaves change colors but the people never do," because they'd still be losers there.

Even non-WN Whites engage in White Flight, so I assume actual WNs do so as well. And I assume that a WN would want to take active measures to maintain/increase the white share of the population of Vermont.

There is no realistic universe in which white nationalism succeeds.

If by success you mean White people somehow break off all ties with all of their non-White friends/family and get rid of the non-White population (by mass deportation, genocide, paid emigration or otherwise) and create a 21st century Nazi Germany, then yes - there is no chance of that happening.

But success is a spectrum - it is entirely plausible and realistic to try and stop all illegal immigration, severely limit legal immigration, and make anti-White racism become less acceptable than it is currently. These would all bring the current reality closer to the desired reality of the WN.

First, after all, white people would need a cohesive definition of whiteness.

Yes, you can reasonably disagree over whether various edge cases like Jews, mixed race people with > 75% white ancestry, Eastern Europeans, etc should be included in "White" - but there's clearly a spectrum, and most people who potentially fall under "Whiteness" would just be unambiguously White in any reasonable definition.

By the same logic, all attempts to advance Black ethnic interests in the US (which have been met with resounding success) should have failed miserably - after all what does it even mean to be Black? Everyone seems to agree that Mulattos should count as Black, but what about people with just a single black grandparent like Megan Markle (she looks pretty White to me)?

my learned friend in argument Hoff seems to include the damn Japanese.

If I understand @Hoffmeister25's view of race relations correctly - he believes that the only important distinction is between those with non-trace amounts (>20%?) of Sub-Saharan African/Aboriginal ancestry and those without, and he accordingly defines "White" to be the latter category (which leads to the inclusion of Japanese people)

I think this does sound a bit silly at first - but I think it makes more sense than defining Whiteness as belonging to some subset of European races. Any serious argument for White Nationalism that isn't just petty aestheticism* is based on the fact that Whiteness is a correlator for various traits that are desirable in an advanced civilisation (and also believing these traits are largely genetic, and so are immune to any kind of social/cultural intervention), and so whether or not a race is "White" should be decided based upon the character of that race and their contributions to science and human culture, as opposed to something so trivial as the colour of their skin.

*Well there's also the argument that Whites should preserve the White race simply because it is natural and human to care about those you're genetically related to (and similarly so should all other races) - but I think this is just a bit silly. Yes - your race is just a weaker version of your an extended family, but unlike the HBD argument, this one has much less of a tangible benefit (It can feel a bit alienating being the only person of race X amongst your friends/institution, especially in childhood - but I'd take 100x that emotional pain over the physical pain of being shot or stabbed)

https://journalistsresource.org/economics/smart-people-racism-equality-prejudice/

Adult Racism is negatively correlated with childhood IQ, and with verbal test ability.

Survey respondents with better scores on the verbal ability test were much less likely to have a negative view of black people’s intelligence and work ethic. For example, 45.7 percent of respondents who scored the lowest on the test reported that they think “blacks are lazy.” About one-quarter (28.8 percent) of the highest scorers agreed with the statement.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34922337/

Racist attitudes positively correlated with risk of cardiovascular disease.

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/36645656/AJPS1-libre.pdf?1424109585=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DReexamining_Racial_Attitudes_The_Conditi.pdf&Expires=1697999510&Signature=YAh4tFTCOdz3sOFY-J34tMOQetDgao2Wp3X-qPOa7e6lCQ8Qb1LoIyx8O9tP7D7-VfIKxgiRb2jy6ElZpsesPWgkiL0NWyJjZEcU6lcuigOArY3J6VE76ed2NV6kHnPpGVmOL50nlcQMalMzdxg2TqeN0LQYRaDOACGKOgXb9dWKvuY3HPy0lLbMRkof1ufaMEGQ7IpFtRKD7qgpRVzxkqIcLssiQGkT0zsLiLfoqstb2DOF24bwae5K1Aj5CKbVCHfV2oWYyC3R7zWH5uBa4l4zy1fk9RRsD6gwvS~8n64a67nWVd0V36IFhXHI7qh-KFL4g3JcxhiiZB881pnw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

High socioeconomic status groups respond to diversity by becoming less racist, low socioeconomic status groups respond to diversity by becoming more racist.

A large body of empirical evidence supports this view, showing that highly educated Whites are more likely to reject negative racial stereotypes, agree with structural explanations for Black-White inequality, and endorse principles of equal treatment (Schuman et al. 1997).

Additional studies show that racism correlates positively with things like going to prison, and that racist attitudes correlated negatively with things like owning a home.

Now one can quibble with all that. Maybe all those things are just measuring college education, and liberal indoctrination on racial issues are just dogma. Intelligence probably correlated with believing in transubstantiation in Catholic Europe and in disbelief in transubstantiation in Protestant Europe, education tells you that societal truths are real. Or one can argue that people lie on surveys. Or that the actual number of true white nationalists is so small that they can hide in the margins of studies like this, though the latter is damning with faint praise.

But this invisible unfalsifiable mass of powerful racists is an imaginary friend/nemesis shared, as @HlynkaCG likes to point out, between woke and wignat thinkers. Look around elite corporations and college campuses, no open racists, but they're all secretly the real racists! It's leftist thinking, it would violate the progressive stack.

Then you look at the visible leaders in the field. You have Richard Spencer, who at last check lived with his mother. You have EOW Kierkegaard, who changed his name and fled the country to escape a $10,000 judgment against him (a judgment for court costs resulting from his own failed attempt at lawfare, a frivolous lawsuit to shut up a critic). No successful first worlder is more than mildly inconvenienced by a $10,000 cost. I'll spot you one of Hanania or Moldbug, though both would deny being in that scene they're close enough to count for half each and they seem to be living well.

RE white vs black need for clear definitions

The difference being that Blacks were a small minority, and sought notional equality. There was no universe where they had an interest in excluding anyone from negritude, and no one so excluded would suffer should they achieve their aims. Where white nationalists seek exclusion. If I join up with the wignat project today, I'm hoping things play out that my wife is considered white by the faction that wins. I'm just trusting in that, as the protection of my family. That's a bad gamble. Because once we live in Wignat land, my half breed kids won't have other minorites to support them because those groups have been thrown out.

The attempt to reframe wignat ideology as purely an anti Black (and maybe Arab?) Coalition assumes that it is all people care about. That makes little sense. Cultural closeness is going to mean more than iq to most people.

Aesthetics are part of it, but things like religion are also important. Things like cuisine, like customs. Evangelical whites are closer to American Blacks than they are to Asian immigrants on all those; without evangelical whites a right wing movement is a joke. I took communion this morning at mass from an African priest; to become a wignat I must reject the Church. That's a big ask.

A white nationalism that rejects Christianity is rejecting the real cultural glue of American and European history.

High socioeconomic status groups respond to diversity by becoming less racist, low socioeconomic status groups respond to diversity by becoming more racist.

crude model: it could be explained that his SES, their NAM peers have criminality 0.5% versus their own 0.05% but for low-SES, NAM peers have 5% criminality versus their own 0.5%, even if the difference is ten-fold is each case, the high SES have less to worry about.

https://journalistsresource.org/economics/smart-people-racism-equality-prejudice/

Adult Racism is negatively correlated with childhood IQ, and with verbal test ability.

Thanks for the evidence. As @The_Nybbler has pointed out, you could argue this away by theorising that the smarter racists merely have the common sense not to express overtly racist views in public contexts.

But I think this leads to the question of what it really means to "believe" something - if a man goes through his whole life saying that he believes in God, goes to church each week and baptises all his children, I think he probably ends up "believing" in God in some sense to smooth over the cognitive dissonance.

Now one can quibble with all that. Maybe all those things are just measuring college education, and liberal indoctrination on racial issues are just dogma. Intelligence probably correlated with believing in transubstantiation in Catholic Europe and in disbelief in transubstantiation in Protestant Europe, education tells you that societal truths are real. Or one can argue that people lie on surveys.

Well yes - that's my take on the matter. But that's just an explanation of why WNs are less successful on average (that isn't "you'd have to be an idiot to think something so stupid") - I think a college education is a very good correlator for intelligence.

The difference being that Blacks were a small minority, and sought notional equality. There was no universe where they had an interest in excluding anyone from negritude, and no one so excluded would suffer should they achieve their aims.

Yes - that is a good point. However I was trying to demonstrate that your general principle of any kind of movement to advance the interests of group X requires us to have a precise, legalistic definition of what it means to be X (Black Activists and White nationalists are similar in the lack of one)

If I join up with the wignat project today, I'm hoping things play out that my wife is considered white by the faction that wins. I'm just trusting in that, as the protection of my family. That's a bad gamble. Because once we live in Wignat land, my half breed kids won't have other minorites to support them because those groups have been thrown out.

Firstly - White Nationalism is obviously marketed primarily towards Whites who marry other Whites. It's not an indictment of the movement that you would be opposed to it, anymore than the fact most non-White people would be opposed as well - it's not meant for you!

But also to address your point - as you said it is a gamble, but you seem to ignore the possibility of it turning out well for your offspring - if they are included as "White", then they end up living in a state with a much lower crime rate, less money spent on welfare, etc (This isn't to say it couldn't still wind up as negative expected utility, just that it's not uniformly negative over all possible outcomes)

The attempt to reframe wignat ideology as purely an anti Black (and maybe Arab?) Coalition assumes that it is all people care about. That makes little sense. Cultural closeness is going to mean more than iq to most people.

I agree that most people don't judge others on IQ - but we're not talking about normal people. We're talking about a group that exists on the fringe of the fringes.

However I don't think cultural closeness will be the deciding factor either. I think what will actually inflame passions is violent Black crime.

If you're happy with the current state of affairs (as you and I both are), then any kind of argument about how the IQ/culture/etc of group X doesn't really inspire you to action, it's all so abstract, the harm is all in expected value. And anyway, talking about this sort of stuff could land you in trouble, and even just thinking about it could alienate you from your friends/family ("what are you thinking about?" "...um, nothing") - why not focus on another engaging line of inquiry with less self-destructive potential?

On the other hand, victims of violent crime experience extreme, angry and fearful emotions. And when someone sees a video of the crime (as far right accounts love sharing on Twitter) they instinctually feel some of that fear and anger - and I think that if more and more people start getting exposed to this sort of content, this may very well make them seriously question notions of racial equality (and then maybe even become WNs)

https://journalistsresource.org/economics/smart-people-racism-equality-prejudice/

Adult Racism is negatively correlated with childhood IQ, and with verbal test ability.

The URL alone casts doubt on that. The study seems pretty badly confounded... the higher IQ you are, the more likely you are to know that expressing racist views is taboo. The study's abstract actually has a third proposal (which is the one the authors accepted):

It is commonly hypothesized that higher cognitive abilities promote racial tolerance and a greater commitment to racial equality, but an alternative theoretical framework contends that higher cognitive abilities merely enable members of a dominant racial group to articulate a more refined legitimizing ideology for racial inequality.

That is, the smarter you are the more sneaky a racist you are.

Are you sure you aren’t painting your ideological enemies as objectively immoral losers predestined to have bad lives — and who do not have sex — because these emotionally repulsive characteristics overpower the logical mind? Meaning you no longer need to do the dirty work of considering their line of reasoning or rebuffing their values?

I think people who share socially excommunicable things online have crossed a selection effect filter, and as such are not representative of the median case. Consider porn: despite the fact that 90% of young men watch porn, only the most deranged person online will like and share X-rated posts under their real name. The online presence of these people do not tell you the median life of a porn-viewer, which is decidedly median. This applies to a whole array of things. The people who pine for a white-only nation are either going to post anonymously somewhere, not post at all, or have given up on a normal social life and no longer care about anonymity.

But there are some ways to decipher what these people are like. The “leaders” of the movement who de-anonymize themselves range from run-of-the-mill (Jason Kessler) to the most accomplished you can be as a liberal arts student (Richard Spencer and Costin Alamariu). When Tucker Carlson’s writer Blake Neff was doxxed, and mind you he may have had the most influential job of any conservative writer in America, we learned that he would post racist trolls anonymously in his free time (“Black doods staying inside playing Call of Duty is probably one of the biggest factors keeping crime down”, this ridiculous kind of stuff).

It's important to distinguish here between racism and white nationalism. The former is a proposition one can believe personally and it is or isn't true, whatever. Run your life according to it, you will benefit if it is true, regardless of what anyone else believes.

The latter requires recruiting a supermajority of white people to your cause, a cause obviously doomed once one observes the beliefs of most wealthy successful young whites. It only works as a magical thinking conspiracy theory, as a belief in the Emperor Nero escaped to the East and returning with a great army. It benefits you zero unless everyone believes in it too.

@Folamh3 summarized it well here.

But in general I like @ThenElection 's point here

The most socially attuned straight white men treat wokeness as a man in the 1950s would treat Christianity. Mouth the platitudes, make sure to turn up to the expected group ceremonies, avoid socializing with people who loudly reject it, and certainly don't angrily denounce it yourself. But never go too far in that direction: someone performing a public display of self-flagellation will always be considered a weirdo, no matter how motivated it is by his dedication to righteousness.

The idea of a silent hidden unfalsifiable majority that believes in what you believe strikes me as rather too self serving to be real.

How did Zionists do it?

Most people nowadays have a non-white friend, family member, partner, or work colleague. White nationalism would mean severing these important relationships. In sum, white nationalism is dead on arrival as a political movement.

They don't have to come. Moreover, if they do have a non-European partner, their children are not going to be Europeans, so that family would not qualify. Typically people in these situations are not interested.

There's perhaps 10% of the population in any given historically-European country that would not see an issue with living among other Europeans. Some of these people will have to move to another area, to regroup.

It would not be unexpected for people living in certain localities with existing policies like "catch and release" for (non-European) murderers to move out to more hospitable locales.

Currently these locales are strictly gatekept by financial means but other options exist and will develop themselves in less authoritarian countries than the West, where freedom of association does not exist.

The more pressure is put on existing mostly-European communities to integrate, the more successful the independence movement can be, until we simply run out of Europeans.

In 50 years, every single European child will be born from a right-wing extremist family by today's standards. Perhaps they will simply integrate into some order-minded, economically-advanced Asian country in the future, before disappearing.

@Hoffmeister25 has written a bit about this in the past. Here's a couple conversations with him about this on the old site. He's also still here and presumably happy to talk about it.

There seems to be a big spectrum among wignats between “white Israel” (ie preferential immigration, special privileges, official acknowledgement as an ethnostate, but still large nonwhite population) and whatever the most extreme turner diaries or neo-nazi stuff is.

I think she's saying a good portion of them don't care. I think I even heard some say that if you stop the eternal "cultural enrichment" you'll end up with a new ethnicity at some point, so pre-existing diversity is not a big deal. Don't know if you'd count them as wignats, though.

Like I said, I don't know who counts as a "wignat".

Edit: Wait, I figured it out. D'oh, you're right, of course.

Brazil had the vision over a century ago.

The other thing we learn from brazil is that the status and relative success in society of this much more "spectrum" sort of distribution is that the darker you are, the lower you rate. There's all sorts of affirmative action and skin tone policing to determine who is "black enough" to qualify as underprivileged. In short, it is not the post-racial society being sold.

https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/for-affirmative-action-brazil-sets-up-controversial-boards-to-determine-race

"In one state, they even issued guidelines about how to measure lip size, hair texture and nose width, something that for some has uncomfortable echoes of racist philosophies in the 19th century."

Better dust off those phrenology books and bust out the colour charts.

Funny how leftist anti-racism winds up measuring lips to see who gets government jobs, and leftist feminism winds up putting violent male sex offenders into women's prison, and leftist sexual liberation just can't keep away from the kiddie dicks. MAPs of meaning, indeed.

My grandfather is probably more representative of the median IRL white nationalist than anyone you see on Twitter, and his opinion is that we should sterilize welfare recipients, criminals, and single mothers to keep from becoming a majority black country.

His numbers are probably not accurate. But the sentiment does exist.

I realize this is kind of besides the point, but it's pretty funny to be worried about the US becoming a majority black country. Currently the white and black fertility rates are nearly equal and a higher percentage of immigrants are white than black (though most immigrants are neither). You could make the case that the US will eventually become majority Hispanic (they have the highest fertility rate of any major group and also a high immigration rate), but majority black would require some pretty extreme changes in current trends.

100,000,000 Africans will immigrate to the United States. I'm calling it now.

You’d need a major liberalization in legal immigration policy for that and that’s unlikely if the Dems don’t have 60 seats in the senate, which is very unlikely.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants have flooded across the southern border this year. We have documented evidence that a great many of them are Africans. Nobody is stopping them from coming here. Why do you believe that the immigration status quo is insufficient to allow that number to balloon to the numbers @omfalos predicted? Who or what is going to stop all those Africans from coming here, without any change to the current formal immigration regime?

We have the data on those that are stopped by CBP at the border. The top five nationalities (as of stoppings in September 2023) are Venezuelans, Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans and Colombians. Most black illegal migrants are Haitian, not African. Tiny numbers of Senegalese have attempted to migrate illegally, along with some other West Africans, but the US is usually able to close these loopholes as they pressure Latin American countries into tightening tourist visa restrictions for African passport holders. The challenge is overland crossings of Central American natives, and Venezuelans.

To note that Columbians, Mexicans, and Venezuelans are all by Latin American standards pretty white and are all by American immigrant standards pretty eager to assimilate and intermarry with locals. The real long term effect from this wave of immigration is that the median white American in the future will look more Italian and less Norwegian.

The mostly European upper crust are not the ones crossing the southern border. I think the long term effect will be an enormous underclass, high crime and general decay surrounding a few upper middle class enclaves. Basically what they have in South America today.

You can look at pictures from detention centers or border patrol and it's obvious that they aren't the Guillermo del Torro phenotype. They don't look anything like people from Italy or Spain.

It's unlikely even if the Dems have 60 Senate seats. I'd expect some liberalization on that front, but probably not too much beyond what we had in the Bush/Obama years. Additionally, liberalization probably wouldn't favor any particular country, so while we'd see more immigration over all, most of that would be from people who are already coming. You'd have to liberalize immigration from Africa and Africa only to have any chance of achieving a black majority.

Well yeah, his numbers aren’t accurate. But people IRL exist who think the USA should engage in coercive eugenics that ends in a whiter society.

But people IRL exist who think the USA should engage in coercive eugenics that ends in a whiter society.

Totally agreed that such people exist (though I suspect that they're not very common). In my view such an opinion is appalling, but I do think it's pretty funny to be afraid of America becoming a majority black country.

If you wind back the clock, not even a century, you'll find that public opinion was the opposite in many ways of what it is today. Do you think that means it's impossible for current opinions to change in the next century, or that change can only go in one direction?

To arrive at where we are now, people had to be threatened with guns. In the name of progress, guns were put at peoples backs to force integration. Why couldn't the same technique be used for the opposite end? I'm asking you.

I notice a kind of resignation in your tone: America's already too far gone; it's impossible to change things through immigration reform. Too many people are in interracial marriages, and it's too popular too. I've noticed this same tone with other commentators like Razib Khan. I think it's motivated by a little fearful voice in the back of your mind that says maybe it's not impossible. Maybe the vast majority of people just adapt to whatever's fashionable. People do what men with guns tell them to do. Well, most of them.

I don't think you're right that it's impossible. Anyway, it probably doesn't matter if it is or isn't. I say that there's a possible regime with America's current demographic make up that would satisfy most white nationalists. If not with the social, political, and economic policies, then with the general attitude and orientation of the government, military, and mass media.

Things can change.

At least some of them have concrete - albeit quite small - policy proposals. An example is the "Idaho Project" which consists of getting the legal right to turn most of Idaho (i.e. all of it except Boise) into the white ethnostate. Idaho ex Boise is chosen because it is already like 97% white and 3% native American, and they don't seem to care much about the Native Americans.

I kind of support them. If they can turn Idaho into a white paradise, let them do it. I've never been to Idaho, I don't really have any plans to go, and don't see why anyone else should care either.

It's a pretty basic, well-accepted principle of a modern citizenship that a citizen of some country be allowed to move in and to whatever other part of the country they wish to occupy without this being illegal.

Democratic Czechoslovakia in 1930s had police keep a registry of Gypsies (the name then used for the 'Roma') who were and are prolific, mercifully mostly petty criminals and restricted them from downtown areas of large cities and so on. I don't think this was universal, more on a clan by clan basis.

All I'm saying is, it's not unprecedented.

This is not true in modern day China, you by and large can't just up and go from a rural farm to Shangai, they have a system called Hukou that pretty strongly limits where a person can live and work.

Should probably have specified that I'm talking about non-authoritarian countries, generally. Hukou is a part of the general command-style society in China.

I drove through Idaho with my dad on the way to a week in Seattle with relations. We had a very pleasant breakfast at a Denny's near the Oregon border; we'd probably still have no problems in Ida-White (what else could you name it?), as I doubt our very nice waitress recognized an old Jew when she saw one — because anyone who looks at my dad has seen one!

But what if the Parliament of Idawhite passed a law adding a couple of episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm to the elementary school curriculum? My dad has been confused with Larry David.

What about black drivers? My old roommate is now an adjunct professor at Portland State University, and between the job interview and the move, that's three times a black lesbian has driven past the exact same Denny's—and we have yet to ask anyone in thar demographic lucky enough not to share a lease with me about any omelettes they've ordered whilst en route to the Pacific Northwest.

What happens, if we give Idaho to the white nationalists, when the rest of us want to drive to Seattle? Are we just expected to not have a Grand Slam?

ETA: You could also name it Ida-Cracker. Obviously.

I was going to flip out at you for passing on White-aho, but then I read your edit, Ida-cracker is great.

Well, how about Native American reservations? And as for those: you can't, in general, move there, only the tribe that owns it can; but you can drive through and even stop at a restaurant. Any 'realistic' (for whatever value of that...) Ida-White would need to follow a similar model.

It wouldn't be in their interest to block or harass people who pass through.

I've never been to Idaho, I don't really have any plans to go, and don't see why anyone else should care either.

The extent to which the progressive project has this totalizing nature is striking, isn't it? If the wignats want to turn a chunk of Idaho into their paradise, no skin off my ass. I can see how this would become a problem if it was so successful that lots of other places wanted to do the same thing, but the idea that it's very important that a sparsely populated place remain maximally required to abide by federal "fair housing" laws and such is just weird to me. This seems like a real difference in intuition and preferences between the more libertarian-minded and authoritarians in general. I understand the desire to exert strong control over a local environment, but I just don't understand wanting to send federal authorities a thousand miles away to force integration.

whatever interracial statistics are summoned up, intracial crime dwarfs it

I don't think this is particularly convincing as an issue minimization. Yes of course intraracial crime is going to be more common, just as interpersonal crime is more common than "random" violence.

The delta between white-on-black and black-on-white crime is, when adjusted per capita, something around an order of magnitude difference. For asians the gulf between interracial violence directions is even more stunning.

In a sentence: the end goal is for white people to behave and organize like proud Jews. If that occurs, the majority on the WN-spectrum would be happy. It would ensure the continuity of white people and their culture, stave off spiritually damaging criticism regarding privilege or historical ills, and ensure that white people have an accurate and positive self-image. There would be thousands of advocacy groups that would be quick to dispel “tired euphobic canards” wherever they appear.

“End goal” is a different question than “how to”. You’re kind of blending the two together. That’s the “end goal”, but naturally a lot of people have different views on implementation.

the end goal is for white people to behave and organize like proud Jews

Most wignats remind me more of Haredim than of Zionists.

The Haredim are a lot more competent and successful than the wignats, even if what they are successful at (turning the US welfare systems in their favor) is repugnant.

The Haredim are more reminiscent of say those sections of the French ultra Catholic right where they still marry young and have lots of kids (often, like Varg iirc, as recipients of France’s extremely generous welfare for parents of large families). Most ‘regular’ US wignats aren’t ‘living the lifestyle’, (eg. are living essentially the same lives as centrist or progressive peers), which I do think is a large but possibly not fatal flaw in a lot of reactionary movements.

Welcome to day 2 of the United States House of Representatives quest to elect a Speaker, for the second time this year. The House should be in session shortly. I doubt a Speaker will be elected today. Even Jordan's supporters are saying Jordan will likely get fewer votes today than he did yesterday. This isn't necessarily fatal for his candidacy. McCarthy's votes ebbed and flowed over the course of his election, it will probably depend on the magnitude of the shift.

Some Republicans are also floating the idea of giving Speaker pro tempore McHenry additional Speaker powers temporarily, if Jordan can't win the vote. Presumably this would be to get Congress through another CR or the appropriations process so as to remove that deadline from consideration. Also, as alluded to in the link, not great for the person seeking to become Speaker to have no idea how many votes some motion or resolution would get!

ETA:

At the end of the first ballot results stand at:

212 - Jeffries

199 - Jordan

22 - Other

1 - Not Voting

Jordan loses ground from yesterday and slips below 200 votes.

ETA2:

No more votes today. If this takes a number of votes similar to McCarthy we're going to be here a while...

I made all those jokes about how "congress only makes things worse"—apparently god heard and decided to show me how things are without a Congress.

Third vote for Speaker of the United States House of Representatives set to start shortly.

What I'm hearing is the plan now is to do marathon votes, potentially through the weekend, as a strategy to wear down the holdouts and elect Jordan. I'm skeptical this will be successful. Allegedly some Republicans are saying they will go home for the weekend, Speaker vote or no. That is a bit of a sketchy place to be in because if enough go home (10) that means Hakeem Jeffries will be elected Speaker rather than Jordan. I imagine there would be some immediate votes to vacate the chair if that occurred but not sure how they would turn out. Also some Republicans have apparently been pressuring McHenry to bring legislation to the floor without a bill empowering him and he threatened to resign rather than do so.

ETA:

At the end of the third ballot results stand at:

210 - Jeffries

194 - Jordan

25 - Other

4 - NV

Jordan losing ground from the second vote as expected.

ETA2:

Reporting coming out of Republicans closed conference following the vote indicates the holdouts have no demands and want no concessions, they just don't want Jordan to be Speaker. If 8 people will never vote for McCarthy, 20 people will never vote for Scalise, and 25 will never vote for Jordan I'm not sure how this ends. One Rep was pictured carrying a resolution to oust McHenry as Speaker Pro Tempore. Maybe his replacement will be more amenable to doing legislative business without an empowering resolution? Apparently Jordan's latest vote total is the tied for the lowest in a vote for candidate for Speaker by a majority party since 1911 when the House was set at 435 members.

ETA3:

Jim Jordan has reportedly lost an internal ballot (88-112) and is out as Speaker Designate for the Republicans. As an amusing aside the 8 Republicans who ousted McCarthy have apparently circulated a letter claiming to be willing to accept some punishment like censure or expulsion from the Conference if it helped get Jordan elected. One problem? Rep Ken Buck has voted against Jordan all three times and apparently did not sign off on being included in the letter.

Apparently House is now going home for the weekend, lots more people expected to put their hats in the ring this next round.

Can anyone explain to me why this particular House speaker election is so contentious?

US political parties are really coalitions of factions and the Republican majority in the house is smaller than the smallest coalition. This makes each coalition is effectively the marginal vote required to elect a speaker and they're all trying to elect a speaker they perceive to be maximally friendly to their faction interests or extract maximum concessions from an unfriendly faction's choices.

Normally the way this is handled is back-room dealing where concessions are offered. Thing is, either the Freedom Coalition is intransigent, the mainstream isn't willing to offer them enough, or there's too much bad blood over the last time they got a deal which was then violated. Or all three.

because a few conflicts are coming to a head right now

there is a very slim majority in the House due to laughably idiotic behavior by Party leadership and the NRCC and a small group of representatives see this as an opening to attack two fundamental pillars of Congressional business over the last few decades+

  1. Dictator Speakership Era is in jeopardy - for the last few decades, the speaker of the house has had a shocking amount of power over the business of the house which almost entirely excludes the vast majority of the conference from decision-making and legislating.

  2. Appropriations going through non-Normal process - Appropriations bills haven't gone through the legislatively designated normal process of how they are supposed to be drafted and modified and on what schedule for decades. Instead, they're clusterfucked through another process which is likely illegal but which no court is going to stop it which ends in giant omnibus bills and other sorts of christmas tree bills. Instead of just passing the appropriations bills required by law through the normal process also required by law, they appropriations are done by Continuing Resolutions and giant omnibus bills.

The small group of GOP representatives were able to get concessions which should end the Dictator Speaker Era as well as the Omnibus/Continuing Resolution Era from McCarthy in exchange for McCarthy getting the gavel. Appropriations must be passed through the normal process which means 12 appropriations bills produced by the 12 committees through the normal process and are brought to the floor before the statutory deadline which means no more omnibus bills and no more continuing resolutions. And there were many other smaller concessions. McCarthy broke his promises and used Democrats to do it. The small group revolted and that was the end of McCarthy's speakership.

This presents a big problem for many of the GOP blob who no one has ever heard of; McCarthy brought in A LOT of money and he used control of that money to fund many GOP people to win their seats which they otherwise never would have won. These people are duds, they can't fundraise, and their voters do not particularly like them. Without McCarthy protecting their seats and attacking their primary opponents, their seats are toast. This is A LOT of the caucus. These people are very upset that the smaller group of GOP rocked the boat because they have been living large with McCarthy doing all the work and getting the flack to deliver to donors who keep the gravy-train rolling. Many in the caucus feel ousting McCarthy was a stab in the back of leadership who had worked for decades raising billions and taking flak to do things the vast majority of them wanted anyway.

Some other conflicts which exacerbate the issue is the large and growing divide between the GOP and their voters as well as MAGA vs Establishment GOP; the harder and harder to hide secret of the caucus is that a large portion, maybe even a majority, and definitely party leadership actually really dislike their own voters and MAGA is making it increasingly difficult to maintain the scam of lying to their voters while delivering to their donors which keeps the moneytrain, status, etc., rolling in.

tl;dr: a small group of reps attempting to use their negotiating power given a slim minority to bring down two fundamental pillars for how the House works and has for decades which slammed directly into a large group of their own caucus who rely on the scheming and fundraising to maintain their seats and owe those seats to leadership they feel was backstabbed

Appropriations bills haven't gone through the legislatively designated normal process of how they are supposed to be drafted and modified and on what schedule for decades.

Has it been decades? I seem to remember the process being roughly the normal appropriations process up until 2011 or 2012 (can't quite remember which), when they got rid of earmarks.

The small group of GOP representatives were able to get concessions which should end the Dictator Speaker Era as well as the Omnibus/Continuing Resolution Era from McCarthy in exchange for McCarthy getting the gavel. Appropriations must be passed through the normal process which means 12 appropriations bills produced by the 12 committees through the normal process and are brought to the floor before the statutory deadline which means no more omnibus bills and no more continuing resolutions. And there were many other smaller concessions. McCarthy broke his promises and used Democrats to do it. The small group revolted and that was the end of McCarthy's speakership.

It's important to note that this small group was intentionally making it impossible for McCarthy to keep his promise. He was going forward with regular order, the Appropriations committee and relevant subcommittees had reported their bills already by mid-July, but Freedom Caucus holdouts spiked rules votes to begin floor debate on those bills time and time again.

The whole situation was engineered by a group that got to get their names in the headlines off of it. They wanted him to break his promises because then they got to fundraise off of being the scrappy freedom fighters against the duplicitous Establishment. But, by forcing a delay, they put McCarthy in a situation where he had to choose between a shutdown and a CR.

Just like the Left, the Recalcitrants in Congress depend on people being underinformed about how a complex process works so they gin up a self serving narrative.

All twelve bills could have been passed by early August and a unified Republican Conference could have fought a very public and very righteous fiscally conservative battle against Democrats in the Senate and White House through the end of September, boosting their credibility as a serious party of responsible government without risking a shutdown. Instead, they're embarrassing the party and all but guaranteeing the Democrats regain the House next year, all so Matt Gaetz can send out fundraising emails while he votes to kick his own party out of power.

It seems like you’re underrating the possibility that they wanted a shutdown.

Well, what I'm really doing is underrating the diversity of opinion among the Recalcitrants. Chip Roy, although not one of the defenestrators, has consistently been among the recalcitrants on advancing budget bills, but I trust him to be doing what he does for the reasons he says and he would probably have been fine with a shutdown if the budget didn't come out the way he wanted. Gaetz was doing it for attention and fundraising, he thinks he's going to become the next Governor of Florida off of this. Some of the others wanted a shutdown because they seem to think hardball negotiating will get them what they want ( I think Andy Biggs is in this category).

Others may have their own reasons.

Chip Roy is rooting for a shutdown because he wants Greg Abbott to be in charge of US border policy, and right now the most plausible route to that scenario is for the federal government to stop paying the border patrol(with most plausible route #2 being that the Biden admin gives in to all of his demands as a condition of keeping the government open). I think Andy Biggs is in agreement with that policy even if he has a few other demands. Matt Gaetz might be attention whoring, but he might also just be the face of a Biggs/Roy axis who can take a fall if it all blows up.

As of now, Polymarket implicitly thinks either the deadlock will go on longer than 8 months, or that we'll have a candidate coming completely out of left field (i.e. one that's not currently listed). The total potential profit from buying a no share for all options, assuming none come true, is just 38 cents. Granted, Polymarket is a fairly thinly traded platform, but it's still real money people are betting with so that gives it a good deal of legitimacy in my eyes.

Current frontrunners are, as of 10/20/23:

  • Current temp speaker Patrick McHenry at 10%
  • Steve Scalise at 7%
  • Kevin McCarthy back from the dead at 6.5%
  • Tom Emmer at 5.5%
  • Jim Jordan at 5%
  • Hakeem Jeffries at 2%
  • Donald Trump at 1.5%

So there's around a 60% probability that the eventual winner isn't in that list, or that the deadlock lasts longer than the market resolution date of June 30, 2024.

Modern US federal politics is notorious for its gridlock, but this is taking it to a new level.

What I'm hearing is the plan now is to do marathon votes, potentially through the weekend, as a strategy to wear down the holdouts and elect Jordan.

This is so weird. If someone sincerely thinks Jordan shouldn't be the Speaker, why would it matter how many times they vote? What's the incentive to just sit there, roll your eyes, and vote for not-Jordan?

The strategy is opaque to me as well. I'm under the impression attrition is how McCarthy got the last few holdouts to vote "Present" rather than for someone else, which secured him the Speakership. However there was a lot of discussion and compromise to actually get the votes over Jeffries. My impression is Jordan hasn't been doing this part (maybe he can't?) which means getting people to vote "Present" by attrition is not going to work.

I mean, not for nothing, but as I understand it these are mostly quite old office-dwelling people who have to be physically present and sitting upright and not asleep when each of these votes happen.

The strategy may be to literally wear them out, physically, mentally, and emotionally, until their strength fails or their will breaks and they either give in or go home.

More bad press for them, the base is riled up and wants them out, elections are coming up, etc.

It remains wild to me how few Representatives cleave to the perspective that they should simply vote in the fashion that they think is correct and then win or lose elections on the merit of that. I suppose I understand that the selection filter for who winds up there doesn't favor such a personality, but you'd still think there would be a few.

Or more likely it's just a convenient stance to take when there are big donors like the MIC putting bags of money on the scales behind the scenes.

There are 10 Democratic member of the house who are over 80, if you run votes for 18 hours you stand a reasonable chance of pushing the session long enough that some of them decide bed sounds better than voting when they know they have essentially no chance of their guy winning.

'Fillibuster to the death' emerges as a viable strategy at some point...

Here we are two weeks after Kevin McCarthy was first removed as Speaker for the United States House of Representatives. About to have our first vote on the House floor to try and select the next Speaker.

It's been a bit of a tumultuous two weeks. At the beginning of last week Steve Scalise (R-LA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Kevin Hern (R-OK) announced their candidacy for Speaker. Hern subsequently dropped out before any internal polls of the conference had been done. Scalise won the initial round of internal Conference votes over Jordan on Wednesday 113-99. Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday around 20 Republicans came out as hard no's on Scalise, more than enough to deny him the Speakership. Scalise subsequently dropped out leaving Jordan as the presumptive candidate. On Friday, shortly before the internal Conference vote, Austin Scott (R-GA) declared his candidacy for Speakership though went on to lose the internal vote 124-81 to Jordan. While there have been subsequent developments indicating many of Jordan's critics have come around the margin in the House is so close there may still be enough to deny the Jordan the Speakership.

This is a presently ongoing event and I'll update as the situation develops and I am able.

ETA:

As of the time of this writing the first ballot is still being counted but five nine Republicans have voted for someone other than Jordan, meaning he will not be Speaker on the first ballot.

ETA2:

At the end of the first ballot the votes stand at:

212 - Jeffries

200 - Jordan

20 - Other

2 - NV

With 2 NV that means the total to win is only 216. House now in recess rather than another vote. This vote total is within a couple of votes of where McCarthy was for the first three days and eleven ballots in his Speaker campaign. Hopefully this one doesn't take so long.

ET3:

No more votes today, House has gone home.

Will there be a house speaker in time to even have a discussion about averting a government shutdown?

Given the margin that the previous CR passed by I have to think the same set of Reps could decide on some Speaker, at least long enough to pass another CR. They could always be removed later by a motion to vacate.

NyTimes is doing a good live counter: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/17/us/politics/house-speaker-vote-tally.html

God the republicans are such losers. 3 votes for McCarthy is just absolutely pathetic. Put your stupid petty grandstanding nonsense aside.

I've been considering a longer effort-post on the topic to tie it in with other conversations about "credible accusations", but since we're doing this today, I just want to mention my favorite Jim Jordan subplot is his putative involvement in the Ohio State wrestling sex abuse scandal:

The Ohio State University abuse scandal centered on allegations of sexual abuse that occurred between 1978 and 1998, while Richard Strauss was employed as a physician by the Ohio State University (OSU) in the Athletics Department and in the Student Health Center. An independent investigation into the allegations was announced in April 2018 and conducted by the law firm Perkins Coie.

In July 2018, several former wrestlers accused former head coach Russ Hellickson and U.S. representative Jim Jordan, who was an assistant coach at OSU between 1987 and 1994, of knowing about Strauss's alleged abuse but failing to take action to stop it. Jordan has denied that he had any student-athlete report sexual abuse to him.

The report, released in May 2019, concluded that Strauss abused at least 177 male student-patients and that OSU was aware of the abuse as early as 1979, but the abuse was not widely known outside of Athletics or Student Health until 1996, when he was suspended from his duties. Strauss continued to abuse OSU students at an off-campus clinic until his retirement from the university in 1998. OSU was faulted in the report for failing to report Strauss's conduct to law enforcement.

So, the scandal is that some wrestlers got groped by a physician 30 years ago and the claim is that Jim Jordan "knew about it" and failed to put a stop to it. Of course, none of them bothered to mention that Jordan knew about it until a few decades later when he became a rising figure in the Republican Party. What's the available evidence on the matter?

In June 2018, at least eight former wrestlers said that reported that then-coaches Russ Hellickson (head coach, 1986–2006) and Jim Jordan (assistant coach, 1987–1995) were aware of the abuse by Strauss but failed to put a stop to it.[37][38][39] Jordan's locker was adjacent to Strauss's, and while he was assistant wrestling coach, he created and awarded a "King of the Sauna" certificate to the member of the team who spent the most time in the sauna "talking smack".[40]

Former wrestling team members David Range,[41] Mike DiSabato and Dunyasha Yetts asserted that Jordan knew of Strauss's misconduct. Yetts said, "For God's sake, Strauss's locker was right next to Jordan's and Jordan even said he'd kill him if he tried anything with him".[42] No wrestlers have accused Jordan of sexual misconduct, but four former wrestlers named him as a defendant in a lawsuit against the university.[43][44][45] Several former wrestlers, including ex-UFC fighter Mark Coleman, allege that Hellickson contacted two witnesses in an alleged attempt to pressure them to support Jordan the day after they accused Jordan of turning a blind eye to the abuse.[46][47]

So, basically, "come on, he had to have known". With the standard of "credible accusations" applied to Kavanaugh and Jordan, I find it hard to believe that anyone could be truly innocent. The necessary ingredient for a scandal appears to be finding someone willing to say that a few decades ago he must have known that something bad for going on. Seriously, how the hell is anyone supposed to defend against that allegation? What can you even say other than, "uhhh, no I didn't"?

Strauss apparently committed 47 rapes over a period which included Jordan’s entire tenure as assistant coach. After which he was finally ousted in a “closed-door hearing”. Clearly enough people were aware of his tendencies. Why assume that didn’t include his assistant coach?

By analogy, let’s say your resume mentions that you were managing accountants at Arthur Andersen until, say, late 2000. Would an employer be wrong to ask some pointed questions about your knowledge of Enron? To assume that, as someone on speaking terms with various convicted fraudsters, you might have had some involvement?

Now, that doesn’t make any specific accusations credible. I don’t find it reasonable to blame Jordan, and saying “no, I didn’t” should be fine. It would be even less reasonable to try and blame you or me, given that we’re several degrees more distant from any such situation. We are obviously “truly innocent.”

I think it’s a terrible standard of evidence even in the court of public opinion. Simply positing that a person was in the general vicinity of whatever bad behavior is enough for these things to be used to smear people. I get especially suspicious of such “he was there” smears when the person isn’t accused until they become a public figure.

If you worked for Anderson for fifteen years including the time around 2000 and the Enron scandal, that doesn’t mean much by itself. And if you had some reasonable connection to bad actors or activity, it shouLd be able to be easy enough to actually name the people or activity you were surrounded by. And if for some reason nobody can point to anything specific in the time between the incident and whatever public office people want to stop you from getting, the motivated reasoning involved makes the sudden “outing” seem less about a scandal and more about political wrangling over a position of power.

Isn’t that the point, though?

There is some level of association at which I should assume he knew what was going on. Coaching these kids, managing the locker room, and working alongside the rapist clears that bar, IMO. That’s ignoring any statements from the alleged victims!

I want to stress that I don’t really care, and don’t find such knowledge to be some sort of disqualifier. I just think it’s reasonable to assume he knew.

For what it's worth I feel the same about Trump's rape civil lawsuit. "Did you violently rape this woman in a store changing room almost 30 years ago?" What possible defense could you have other than saying you didn't do it.

Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll

"Trump 'raped' her as many people commonly understand the word 'rape,' ” Kaplan wrote.

Thanks for clarifying that, civil court judge. This literal he-said she-said based on 27+ year old memories has convinced us all that Trump's violently raped a woman in a clothes store. He unambiguously says he didn't do it and obviously no evidence exists 3 decades later, but that doesn't count.

I think this is missing some relevant context for those quotes. They were made as a reply to Trump's lawyers arguing that his conviction for sexual assault was not relevant to his parallel defamation case since he was only convicted of sexual assault, not rape. So the question of what, exactly, was encompassed by the term "rape" was relevant in the defamation case. Carroll argued it was used colloquially, Trump argued it was only the specific crime.

At least part of the issue's that there's a mess of allegations, here. Some of them are just creepy combined with the rest of the stuff (eg, he'd buy students expensive dinners); others are the sorta thing that justify pitchforks and torches on its own.

TOSU's college locker rooms were allegedly a nest of peeping toms and exhibitionist masturbation, and a lot of people unrelated to the lawsuits giving allegations that Jordan knew about (and reacted to!) Strauss being part of that. See page 55 here. This is pretty bad behavior unless you're in a gay bathhouse, and honestly a little distasteful even there, but it was also allegedly not just Strauss, and while it's illegal it's usually the sorta thing that just gets you banned rather than arrested. There's not a good count for how many times this happened, but eighty-four students said they observed it at least once; there's basically zero chance Jordan was unaware of it.

Then, separately, Strauss was also inviting random people photo sessions, sometimes having the photo subject pose topless or in wrestling singlets, then groping them. That's wildly inappropriate given the power disparity. The investigation found 16 students who described this behavior, most of them encountering one or two incidents before avoiding the man entirely after that, and since we're mostly talking the 1980s or early 90s, there's a lot of very good reasons that they would not have told everyone contemporaneously, or that everyone would have recognized what Strauss was doing -- even for some gay people in the 80s, this would have looked like 'just' really awkward overtures rather than grooming. A larger number were targeted for photography in their underwear as part of medical studies Strauss lead, but this is not as clearly abuse rather than just creepy given the abuse. Jordan probably would have heard of at least some of this, but probably not in detail, and it's not certain.

Then you have a lot of molestation pretending to be medical exams, ranging from groping them beyond any necessary testicular exam to unnecessary rectal exams. This seems to have been the largest category, with 122 athletic students being targeted, some with multiple incidents. This was and is legally and morally sexual assault, but not all victims realized it at the time, and the extent it was present in earlier complaints rather than rumors is not well-established. By 1994, there had been both internal and external complaints, but it's not clear if Jordan would have been involved in the resolution of those complaints, as a lot of this occurred through Strauss' access to the medical care team rather than through the school's sports program, but he might have heard of some rumors.

Then you have overt sexual assault or, to borrow from Oprah, rape-rape. This ranged from performing unnecessary digital rectal exams and then grinding an erection against the victim to digital or oral sex to try to create an erection or to completion. There are clear reports of this behavior by January 1996, and Strauss used some shaming tactics that probably would have prevented earlier victims from coming forward, and the investigation found 44 students who described behaviors along these lines. Again, much of these happened under the auspices of TOSU's medical care side rather than its sports medicine one, and most of the complaints along these lines were from the end or outside of Jordan's tenure, so it's not clear that he would have been involved but might have heard rumors.

And then you have the molestation of minors, which was the highest-profile allegation. The investigation found a couple people who probably were abused in manner related to Strauss's position in high schools, but only one gave a first-hand account, and that account was not clearly abuse. There's not much obvious reason why Jordan would have been aware of these allegations.

Sidney Powell has taken a plea deal in Trump's Georgia RICO case regarding the efforts to overturn the Georgia election result.

Under the terms of the deal, she cops to 6 charges, the RICO charge gets dropped against her, she gets 6 years probation (so no jail time), pays a $6k fine, provides a written apology, and testifies against Trump and other co-conspirators. Considering the serious exposure she had, I count this as a pretty sweet deal.

Interestingly, Kenneth Chesebro (another co-conspirator) reportedly rejected a similar plea deal. He has asserted his right to a speedy trial, and that is set to start very soon. We shall shortly see which of the two of them made the right call.

Homeboy, throw in the towel

Your shit got fucked by Sidney Powell

Apologies to The Beastie Boys

The BBC is now reporting that Chesebro has in fact accepted a plea deal now. So that test won't come from him, it looks like.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67174576

Yup, seems like he got the fine knocked down to $5k.

Kinda wild that you can plead guilty and cop a $5k fine or face a minimum 5 year prison term if you force the state to prove their case. I know this is normal and how the system works, but it's still crazy.

Edit: And he got them to drop every charge but conspiracy to file false documents.

Having to do 100 hours community service in a state which isn't your home state is probably worse than a $5k fine. For someone planning to work in a PMC job after this is over, a felony record (which he gets and Powell doesn't) is definitely worse than a $5k fine.

Seems like a poor choice by Chesebro. $6K to make it all go away seems like a pretty darn good deal to me.

I believe that his offer was a $10k fine, but yes. Easy to imagine he ends up paying more than that just in legal fees, even if he successfully defends himself.

Maybe he thinks it's too cheap a price for his soul.

Which is to say of course that someone who has been 'conspiring' with Trump probably believes in him and believes him that there was fraud involved. And someone who believes an election was fraudulently won is unlikely to respect the frauds now in charge and might even think being jailed is a small sacrifice for saving their homeland. Or similarly he might think an $8k fine for insurrection is a sign his opponents have no faith in themselves and their case.

To be clear, Chesebro has not been charged with insurrection or for any of the events at the Capitol on Jan 6th. He has been charged for his involvement in the Georgia false elector scheme.

Saving the term insurrection for the capitol shenanigans is in essence agreeing it was an insurrection. I do not and I have no respect for the idea, so I call anything Trump 2020 related an insurrection with the exact same amount of respect for the term as I would use referring to the capitol shenanigans, which is to say none.

Yes, but you were referring to the state's understanding of "insurrection." If I said, "he might think an $400 fine for robbery is a sign his opponents have no faith in themselves and their case," and you pointed out that he was charged with shoplifting a can of tuna, not robbery, it would hardly be a convincing response for me to say, "well, I refer to all types of larceny as robbery." What does my personal definition, of which the authorities have no knowledge, have to do with how strong the authorities think their case is?

No, I was guessing at the reasons he wouldn't take the plea deal. I didn't think it was necessary to ensure my hypothetical thought processes favoured accuracy over rhetoric.

I've dropped a fresh Israel-Gaza megathread here.

In culture war-ish political shifts from Eastern Europe, Poland's opposition looks to have overcome the PIS, meaning that the sometimes notorious Euro-skeptic right-wing government will likely be replaced by a more EU-phile coalition.

While the PIS won the most votes of any single party, with around 36.6% of the vote, this was less than the last election's 43.6%, and there seems to be a lack of coalition partners to reach the 50%. This was a fatal slide, which while having many contributing factors followed a major scandal in which corruption in selling Visas greatly undermined one of the PIS's key policy points- immigration- while validating accusations of corruption. While there will be some pro-forma opportunities for PIS to try and form a government, in practice leaves the likely next government to be an opposition-left coalition, which will likely be led by former prime minister (and former European Council president) Donald Tusk, who leadership in Poland was what paved the road for PIS to rise to power about 8 years ago.

Such a result will likely be greeted as a relief and good news for the European Union elites, and especially for Germany and Merkel, who Tusk was a reliable partner for. Tusk is about as much a Eurocrat as one can have, and has long been a leading voice in European circles shaping anti-PIS narratives as he tried to get back into Polish politics in the name of countering democratic-backsliding.

With a EU-phile government in Warsaw, this means some policies are likely to change. However, the nature of changes are likely to fall short of a 'the opposite of anything PIS did,' due to dynamics of PIS both doing some genuinely popular things which required 50-stalins criticisms, and for the nature of changing paradigms. Some of the dynamics that led to PIS criticism- such as the nationalization of hyper-majority German-owned Polish majority- aren't as likely to be reversed and re-sold once to the same companies once a shakey three-party coalition mostly united by being anti-PIS. Some things will be reversed, some will be kept, and some things will just be paralyzed due to coalition politics. That said, the European power centers- especially Brussels and Germany- can likely expect a more compliant Polish government for the next few years while Germany and France make a major push for power centralization in exchange for EU enlargement.

Various policy changes to look for movements on might include-

EU-centralization: This is one area where EU policy changes may see or enable significant shifts. One of the PIS's claims to notoriety was its functional political partnership with Hungary to block EU-level efforts to punish/exclude/potentially even suspend voting rights of recaltrant states. While condemned as part of anti-democratic badness, this had a major functional effect of blocking attempts at EU centralization that could sideline and selectively punish bad, or just unpopular, states. Tusk, as a EUrocrat, is almost certainly to step back from watering down issues targeting Hungary, but whether this will translate into a broader centralization momentum is less clear. The Germans and French have shifted from a current-EU-model of centralization (where individual states would be able to punished and lose veto rights- something Tusk might have gone along with) to now proposing a multi-speed-Europe model in exchange for expansion, which has far more serious implications, and which Tusk has opposed in the past (for potential reasons to broad for here).

Judiciary: This will likely be the quickest / easiest reversal, to EU applomb. The Polish judiciary followed a judges-select-the-next-judges, not appointment by the elected party akin to the German or US, and attempts to change that was strongly condemned by the EU (for whom the Polish Judiciary was seen as reliably deferential, despite corrupt origins from the post-communist transition). PIS paid regular political costs, and Tusk will drop that at the first chance while likely trying to prune if not purge the influence of PIS-associated judges (which will not be subject to significant EU-level criticsm)

LGBTQ+WE: This is one where the government line will likely align with the EU consensus of embracing the rhetoric and enabling/encouraging advocacy groups to set up social networks in Poland that were previously resisted. While over action will likely be less than full-throated supported, this was a PIS culture war point that the anti-PIS coalition will likely reverse for internal and external support reasons, though it will easily be a function that plays more to elite interests and foreign legitimization from EU allies than widespread domestic support.

Ukraine: There's very likely to be little substantive change on this. The biggest change is likely to be if there's a change in the distribution of arms vs other aid, which will reflect the military-industrial and rearmament policy more than a desire to aid Ukraine itself. While PIS did have election-rheotric and some disputes with Ukraine, I wouldn't expect the new coalition to substantially different on the conflict points (no Ukraine food dumping on politically significant farmers), and some of the criticisms of PIS on the Ukraine front came as much from a 50-Stalins direction as anything else.

Rearmament: Since Ukraine started, the PIS went on a major armament buying spree to modernize and bulk up the Polish military. Part of this was to free up older platforms to pass on to Ukrainians, while others were about establishing Poland as a military leader in Europe. Pre-election criticism focused on cost, and so reigning in would be natural (which could in turn mean less direct arms transfers in the future). The real interest will be what is cancelled versus what is changed, as various EU-power centers were more opposed that Poland was buying from outside the EU- especially US and US-alllied suppliers- rather than rearming itself. This will likely be a more case-by-case basis as PIS already had the ability to start some contracts that may have clauses making it less feasible to back out and transfer. It would be a major surprise, and reversal, if new-Poland renenges on the Korea tank contracts and goes for a German option.

Military-Industrial Policy: An outset of the Ukraine and Rearmament policies, PIS was establishing relationships and efforts to make Poland an autonomous arms center who could compete with French and German armament industries both inside the EU market and without. This had a dynamic of countering the EU strategic autonomy efforts (which are largely synonymous with French and German led arms projects), so there may be EU-advocated efforts to reign in the potential competition as a part of the rearmament restraint and Ukraine aid reallocation. Look for if South Korea's tank deal is radically restructured, as that was not only a rearmament program but also a lead-in to joint R&D for Polish military production capacity.

Media: One of PIS's condemned policies was its functional de-Germanification of Polish media. During the post-Cold War period and the early 2000s, part of Germany state-encouraged economic policy was the expansion of German economic interests, especially media interests, in the post-Soviet east. This led to a major centralization of Polish media by German corporations, who weren't adverse to leveraging corporate influence for political influence and themes, including shaping editorial lines on Polish politics. Tusk was a beneficiary of this as part of his German political alliances, given the nature of German government-corporate media relations which can be characterized at times as 'cozy,' but when the PIS took power they compelled foreign-owned media concentrations to sell, which is how the PIS gained outsized media influence that the opposition decried as state propaganda. Despite PIS now losing hold of that, I suspect that there will be no explicit German re-sell/reversal: rather, the Polish media landscape will likely be re-coopted by the new ruling coalition, just with different political interests in charge, or the new government will attempt to compel re-sell, but with an eye for more pro-EU rather than German-specific interests, to try and re-establish a dominant pro-EU media sphere but do so in a way a future-PIS government can't reverse as easily.

Immigration: This is likely to be one area where PIS broke the EU-phile paradigm, and Tusk and the anti-PIS quietly maintain continuity as a whole. While Tusk was a committed EU-phile and ally of Merkel, PIS made extremely good political hay from its anti-immigration stance, even getting the grudging German acquiesence when it was used in the 2021 Belarusian-instigated refugee crisis, where PIS preventing migrants from requesting asylum served as one of the only shields preventing an otherwise easy movement from Belarus-thru-Poland-to-Germany during the German government formation process. Given the EU-wide changes to immigration, and especially Germany's, while Tusk may entertain some token-level redistribution support, this will be a topic they step very gingerly around, not least because letting in immigrants corruptly was a key point of what brought PIS down, and could easily do them in again in turn.

There's more to be guessed at, of course, and I don't claim any special insight, but overall I'd expect by next year Poland-EU relationships to be on a fundamentally different tenor, but not at all what they were before PIS took control. Expect a lot of whom and who sort of 'it was really bad when PIS did it, not so much an issue now' tenor as conflicts occur, but one where Tusk and his EU allies try to make longer-term systemic efforts to prevent PIS from returning and cement a pro-EU coalition for as long as possible, but doing so knowing there's very shakey footing that could see them quickly fall and a PIS-coalition return.

PiS made extremely good political hay from its anti-immigration stance

A major scandal during the campaign was the "cash-for-visa" affair. Moreover, PiS does a lot of posturing on illegal immigration while opening the floodgates to legal migration. In many ways, they remind me of the GOP. Pretty hardline on stuff like abortion but totally hypocritical on immigration

One of PIS's condemned policies was its functional de-Germanification of Polish media.

Instead, Soros' Open Societies foundation literally bought one of the most prestigious newspapers ("Rzeczpospolita") as part of a wider consortium under their noses, LOL. They simply scaremonger about the Germans while allowing US plutocrats to buy up domestic media instead.

It's not easy to see it at the first glance, but the supposed coalition will still be quite conservative. A center-right party named 'the Third Way' openly proclaims Catholic morality and values and it seems that without them the parliamentary majority cannot be reached.

Doesn’t feel like that on the ground. Polish people are Shreks, their support for LGBT can be understood as “do whatever you want out of my swamp”, have all the negative rights you want, such that Im not expected to grant you positive freedom. Polish people react to rumours of LGBT flags in Western courthouses, schools, and libraries with a shock that chooses between “this is terrible” and “this is so terrible it must be PIS Stalinist propaganda to scare me away from the west”.

Polls with questions like "do you support rights" don't reflect what's actually happening in the culture war, in fact the attempt to conflate the two feels like a pretty explicit smear tactic.

"Flawed" does not begin to give it justice. Most people haven't the faintest clue what "LGBTI+ ideology" is supposed to mean. Even as a culture war junkie I cannot tell you what those specific pollsters meant by that, I can just tell you that what the elites try to sell under the "LGBTI+" label includes things far outside the overton window of most people even in the progressive west, let alone Eastern Europe.

such as the nationalization of hyper-majority German-owned Polish majority

What does this mean? PIS nationalized nominally-Polish companies owned by Germans? Or is it related to the media sales mentioned later?

I appreciate the writeup.

What does this mean? PIS nationalized nominally-Polish companies owned by Germans? Or is it related to the media sales mentioned later?

'Nationalized' isn't technically correct, in that the companies were sold rather than seized, but polandization of media was an established PIS goal partly accomplished in part by using control of the government to ban government entities from buying subscriptions, which undercut the financial viability of a significant number of media outlet. In short- financial viability depended on public purse strings, and so the party in power has power of the purse. (Which is one reason why it's unnecessarily likely to revert to foreign ownership- the same tactic could occur again, and media is even more dependent on state-support than before.)

The media sale was part of the PIS goal of re-polandizing the media, which was a multifaceted fight with both local and foreign interest groups that were actively arranged against the PIS. The role of foreign-owned media in the anti-PIS media sphere was openly acknowledged early on, and often mutually antagonistic. Here is an early 2019 article from DW (a German media company) that's rather frank about the nature of a significant parts of the majority-foreign-owned media sphere being part of the anti-PIS coalition. This is characteristic of the Polish media struggle after PIS came to power in 2016, where the sort of passive 'soft power' German-owned media influence in the earlier 2000s was giving way to more and more overt political influence attempts as part of anti-PIS polish politics.

The breaking point came in late 2020, with the purchase of Polska Press by a Polish state-owned refining company from Verlagsgruppe Passau, the German media company that had been running it since before PIS came in power. Polska Press was a media firm that owned hundreds of local newspapers and websites, including 20 out of Poland’s 24 regional daily newspapers as well as a further 120 regional weeklies. The portfolio of websites were reported to have over 10 million users, and the entire deal enabled access to an estimated 17 million media consumers, when Poland is a country of less than 40 million. Link

If that seems to be a lot, it is. Poland is a country of less than 40 million. But from a media-analysis, and PIS-perspective, the bigger point is that the concentration of ownership already existed.

For all the objections of PIS taking control of the papers, PIS couldn't have taken 20 of 24 regional daily newspapers in a single sale if someone else hadn't exercised collective ownership first, that party had been corporate German since before PIS came to power. While there's always an argument that German media was more neutral and objective and free from government influence, it's not exactly hard to find links between the 2010s German government and German media that enabled the German government to shape corporate media coverage.

It also probably didn't help that anther German media CEO wrote a letter to his Polish media workers calling a PIS politician a loser for opposing Donald Tusk and indicating his intent to apply editorial pressure in his preferred direction. That's the same Axel Springer media group co-owned (and now directly owns) PoliticoEU, one of the primary English-language media groups covering European politics as a direct feeder to the American political-media sphere via it's American cousin, Politico. If you read a media article on how Polish media freedoms were at threat in the later 2010s, there was a non-trivial chance it was either dervied from, or directly from, an Axel Springer outlet.

Axel Springer, completely unrelated, owned a number of Polish media interests in the 2010s that may or may not have been subject to polish-ownership risk.

Put it all together: in the mid-2010s as PIS campaigned to power, the media environment was a majority foreign-owned, especially German owned, with prominent German media actors already indicating a not-so-secret hostility to the incoming party. PIS declared it's intent to re-Polandize Polish media, the German-owned media fought back to preserve their ownership. Arguably, they lost. PIS may have lost this election, but only after a political generation and a general dismantling of the German media empire in Poland.

I appreciate the writeup.

You're welcome.


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