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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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Ok I swear I don't just get up every morning and ask, "How can I be schizo today?"

But in one day I saw the following two things:

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1731747916568727610

Among the masses of migrants flowing across the southern border each day, a whole line of Chinese nationals, military aged men, automatically standing at "parade rest" as one reply pointed out.

And this:

https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1731808064108372245

Senator Dick Durbin making a speech in favor of allowing illegal immigrants into the military.

My schizo sense is tingling and saying that Nefarious Forces are Intentionally using the Power of Money to plan Bad Things for America.

Or, since this space has norms in favor of speaking plainly and against Darkly Hinting, let me put it more directly:

Is China bribing American politicians to allow Chinese soldiers to become American soldiers to conquer the USA via military coup?

Less Of This, Please. There are plenty of 500k follower twitter accounts that react with horror to tweets with out of context clips and screenshots of news headlines, I know where to get it if I want it, and I don't want it here.

Ok I swear I don't just get up every morning and ask, "How can I be schizo today?"

It's funny how all sorts of "conspiracy theorists" and people with weird ideas are halfway self-conscious of the fact they're like that, and make jokes about it. You should either genuinely believe your ideas, deeply investigate them, debate them - or consider what 'schizo' ideas you had five or ten years ago and how many of them have held up, and admit you're very wrong.

Also, whatever standard approves of this post but not posts about perfectly reasonable topics that just don't have enough context isn't serving its purpose.

It's funny how all sorts of "conspiracy theorists" and people with weird ideas are halfway self-conscious of the fact they're like that, and make jokes about it. You should either genuinely believe your ideas, deeply investigate them, debate them - or consider what 'schizo' ideas you had five or ten years ago and how many of them have held up, and admit you're very wrong.

Underestimated argument. Related tweet

The principle is simple enough: most gamblers day traders lose money, those who don’t almost all just get lucky, and updating your priors because a tiny proportion of gambles pay off is stupid. Anyone who actually knows Jones/Ike tier conspiracy theorists in real life knows their hitrate is sub 1% and being the most obsequious normie who believes every word in the New York Times would make you right vastly more of the time than they are. If you believe everything, which they do, you will eventually be right about a few things. This challenges no conventional principle or authority.

The NYT and the American establishment lie and trying to manipulate people so commonly that being reasonably suspicious and willing to believe plausible conspiracy theories makes you have a much more accurate version of the world.

It isn't gambling to not trust them but it is gambling to trust them. With bad odds. Going full Alex Jones means you are going to doubt the NYT when they peddle some of their BS but also buy into some of Alex Jones BS. In 2002 for example, if you listened to Alex Jones, he argued this:

To Jones, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 were part of a larger move to eliminate civil rights and control the populations, including Americans, more effectively. The possibility of war in Iraq, to Jones, is part of the attempt by what he calls the New World Order to dominate the world.

“The government needed a crisis to convince the people willingly to give up their liberty in exchange for safety,” Jones writes in an introduction to his latest, two-hour film, “The Road to Tyranny.” https://www.mcall.com/2002/12/20/voices-from-outside-the-mainstream-weigh-in-on-iraq-war-threat/

Which would suggest against the Iraq War, neocon domination and authoritarian measures like the patriot act. Which isn't insane, but an example of Jones leading people in this instance to a more reasonable place than the establishment.

Having known people who believe in ghosts and aliens, they tend to be less dangerous for the world than those made to follow fanatically the new current thing. Whether it is war related, or a different agenda.

Did you read the post you were replying to? The idea is conspiracy theorists are wrong almost all of the time, and sometimes right simply because they copy the things others are saying and make them more extreme. And then, after the fact, their fans select specific things they said that aged well to declare them accurate. And you respond by ... selecting a specific thing Jones said 20 years ago and arguing for his accuracy.

Your analogy doesn't work. If conspiracy theorists were treated like day traders, the NYT would not try to imply belief in Jones' theory is cause for immediate loss of credibility, they'd imply it's unlikely, but might end up being true, because you never know.

What you're doing is like acting it was no big deal that one UFO nut was 100% proved to be correct about extra-terrestrial contact, because all the other UFO nuts before him were wrong.

I don't understand why you think i'm arguing that, like, the lab leak is fake because Qanon people are crazy. I'm not saying any thing about the lab leak or similar. I'm saying that OP's claim about chinese soldier immigrant coups is Q-anon tier.