domain:parrhesia.substack.com
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4m ago
I dunno, yeah I saw people calling the election the moment it happened, but it sure didn't feel so certain to me.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4m ago
It's 'bellwether' and has nothing to do with the way the wind is blowing. The bellwether is the lead sheep of a flock ("wether" being the ovine equivalent of "steer"), so named because the shepherd attaches a bell to him.
birb_cromble
10m ago
He was cited for driving at that speed on Interstate 64 in New Kent County. From my travels there, I don't think that anyone could safely drive that stretch of road at that speed, regardless of their skill level. There are a lot of questionable sightlines.
zeke5123a
11m ago
One of the posters here (I think his name is Anti Populist now) posted the Seltzer poll. I, among others, pointed out how absurd the cross sectionals were and how inconsistent it was with prior polls. He kept on ignoring it predicting a Harris victory right up until she lost.
I rubbed his nose in it because when people make predictions on vibes while ignoring the obvious holes they should be reminded to improve their thought processes going forward. He then blocked me. So yeah, people here were gung ho on harris until she lost.
aqouta
18m ago
I do think he's definitely a bell weather more than anything but a bell weather does show you which way the wind is blowing.
07mk
26m ago
The backlash being faced by Klien, Derek, Yglesias and Buttigieg is baffling. Everything they've said has been polite, non-accusatory and measured. Yet, they're being treated like Nazis by left social-media.
I'm not sure how this is baffling given the behavior of the "progressive left" over the past 15 years. Responding polite, non-accusatory, and measured constructive criticism for the purpose of self-improvement from their less extreme allies as if they were Nazis has been standard operating procedure for about that long.
The surprising thing to me now is that Klein actually decided to meaningfully criticize them, given how hard he was supporting them until very recently, even while some of his peers like Yglesias had already started doing so years ago. The stuff around Klein and Weiss recently are the only signals I've seen that indicates that the failures of the progressive left to actually support progress is actually facing meaningful backlash.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
26m ago
I think the turning point for conservatives was actually the first assassination attempt, not the election itself.
DelendaEst
30m ago
I think its an effort thing. Dem mayors instruct their police to not even try to stop rampant arson and not to bother investigating afterwards, and on the off chance they do then the Dem DA doesn't prosecute it. But Biden had the FBI spend a shit ton of man hours combing through every source possible for every minor rioter who could be charged with anything at all.
I would prefer we use at least a minor portion of that effort arresting arsonists and burying them under the jail. As it stands, the effect is "rioters who are pro-dem causes get to have authorities look the other way, right wingers get the Eye of Sauron for 4 years straight", with the added bonus of lefties bringing J6 up every time they want to say their enemies are worse than them, and the dem friendly media reported on every single arrest and trial for a J6er, keeping it in the mind of the public.
Again, I don't care about the J6ers, they are morons let them hang. But selective punishment on this scale, and where what I think is the far worse crime gets the pass while the lesser gets the book thrown at them, is worse. If you guys wanted me to care about J6 so much you had a whole summer to exact some kind of punishment on rioters, you didn't, and now here we are.
haroldbkny
46m ago
It's hard to remember because for some reason there really was a major loss of memory once Trump was elected. I'm not blaming anyone, and I'm not being sarcastic; it was true. I remember the day before, almost everyone in the Motte lamenting that Harris was going to win, and the day after everyone taking about how Harris sucked and Trump's win was inevitable, and conservatives were in such a strong position in the culture war. I'm not sure how it happened like this, and I don't think it was exclusive to the Motte, either, but I'm not certain about that. But it's a really strange phenomenon.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
50m ago
I think it's best to treat that last "if" as implication rather than the subjunctive. At which point the Principle of Explosion applies.
daguerrean
52m ago
But as a straight white male with a job, I occasionally wonder what exactly Team Blue could ever do to entice me to vote for them in a national election (short of entirely abandoning 75%+ of their policies).
I’ve often wondered this myself and I’m not sure I’ve ever come up with a good answer. I wonder what other Motte users would say for this question
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
53m ago
It is like they are trying to somehow say "white dudes" with a Hard-R if you know what I mean. On paper it sounds neutral, but they way they say it...
roystgnr
56m ago
I'll agree with that in theory. In practice, note that "in appropriate conditions" requires "when the highway designers kept sight lines clear enough for that speed, including to any intersections or on ramps where someone might be trying to enter the highway after checking for traffic expected to be near the speed limit". Since highway designers never actually design for 115mph on purpose, you're pretty much stuck with places where it happened by accident, where the land was so flat and empty that you can't not see the road ahead of you for miles. I've had friends who enjoyed stretches of road like that in New Mexico, but I don't think any of them exist in Virginia.
My friends mostly enjoyed those stretches, I mean. One of them totaled his first car when a deer ran out into the road in front of him. In my experience most people who love driving that fast give other cars roughly the same consideration that he gave that deer, an implicit unexamined assumption that the highway ahead will be either clear or occupied by drivers doing the speed limit, that nobody will suddenly appear in front of them at surprisingly low or no speed. That assumption is usually correct, but it only has to be incorrect once.
FistLast2
59m ago
I have a super liberal friend who told me, "If Biden had dropped out earlier and they'd had a real primary, and Kamala had won, I think I would have voted for her."
Essentially, yes. There are layers.
The violent fringe of the left has always enjoyed more support. More often than not, the media doesn't so much cover left wing violence as cover for it. Left-wing agitators get a lot more institutional leniency and are often treated with kid gloves. They're good kids, with their heart in the right place, but they're just a little too zealous. Moderate left-wingers have a difficult time opposing the radical fringe intellectually, because they don't really oppose the endgoals. It becomes a debate about strategy and how to achieve those goals, and the radicals can rightly accuse the moderates of hypocrisy.
The radical left is a snake, and the moderate left is the grass that the snake hides in.
Of course, there are layers. There are radical leftists who actively support and commit violence, then there are others who don't act but support and cover for the violence, and then there are a whole bunch of people who are either ambivalent or intimidated by the radicals. They will mumble disapproval but they rarely make full-throated comdemnations nor argue back on points of doctrine, mostly because they would lose. The radicals have been able to increase their influence further by controlling institutions.
Of course all large groups and movements have something like this dynamic going on to some degree, but it's becoming more and more a prominent on the left, and it's similar to the problem with moderate Muslims.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1hr ago
116mph is fast, but there's nothing magical about three digits in MPH. One of my cars had that as about its top speed and while driving that fast was LOUD, it doesn't cause you to lose control or anything. It's just that Virginia makes anything over 85 mph statutory reckless driving.
Botond173
1hr ago
For clarification, Brian Kilmeade suggested killing the mentally ill homeless.
According to the article linked to by the OP, very specifically mentally ill (implicitly criminal and socially dangerous) homeless who refuse help from social services.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1hr ago
I don't think there are that many "porn is a great thing, actually" advocates out there, and most that exist are probably left-of-center by a decent margin.
Yes, but if the Democrats wantes to capitalize on porn, that would be the position they would have to take. 'We know you're pigs, we want to let you' as summarized by hydroacetylene loses even to 'That stuff is disgusting and we're going to make you stop'
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1hr ago
but I also don't think that column is likely to be motivating outside a small, highly atypical tribe of politics-obsessed weirdos
Nobody who isn't a member of such a tribe thinks about Klein at all.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1hr ago
When is the last time, genuinely, you've seen any article published in any mainstream new media that was written from the perspective of a disaffected male where he was able to express what his perceived grievances were, and explain what he might want from a political party?
This doesn't happen because to express one's grievances as a male is to invite ridicule from all (except a small group of other aggrieved), not just Democrats. Part of "traditional masculinity" is to not make such grievances. This of course leaves men at a severe disadvantage, politically -- it's fine to be a Stoic when you're the Emperor of Rome, not so much when you don't have the power to solve your problems yourself.
Hestia does not have to be a generic big titty asian girl.
But it's so nice that she is ;-)
RenOS
something is wrong
1hr ago
In general humans have exterminated, bred & moved very many species throughout history. All to considerable benefit with virtually no ill effect for humans. Most talk about the dangers of loss of diversity are scaremongering nonsense. We could probably even wipe out all mosquitos, and as a result other insects would simply take over its niche. Nature is quite adaptive and there are many overlapping niche species.
Botond173
1hr ago
I'm gonna be honest, I'm fairly distressed over this. This is how Pogroms work. In the famed Jewish Pogroms of 1881, 40 Jews were killed leading to a mass emigration from Russia. I wonder if we'll hit that number in Virginia the next 4 years.
Czarist Russia did not have something like the "Big Sort". The US, on the other hand, does.
I don't see it as directly insulting as the hard R so much as...patronizing? Juvenile?
It's just a weird way for supposedly adult political consultants to talk consistently about a group. Trying to think of a parallel.
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