domain:pedestrianobservations.com
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
just now
Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals?
It's amazing how this point is brought up when someone defected thinking the other side could do nothing, and then realized they were wrong.
I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough
It really isn't, and we aren't going to have peace anyway. If one side gets to do all sorts of shit and get away with it, and then not only excuse all of it but have the other side punished for doing something which vaguely rhymes, we've still got nothing but who/whom for a standard.
sockpuppet2
2m ago
Again, Scott links to his review of Mussolini's book in the post, using that as his reference for fascism, as an ideology.
sockpuppet2
4m ago
How often are terrorist attacks designed to discriminate between victims based on self-proclaimed ideology? Isn't the terrifying aspect of terrorism that attacks are largely indiscriminate?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
5m ago
I think cjet has the right of it below. The stupid thing these people did was not follow the golden rule of the internet - don't say anything you don't want held against you.
Also question: Is Wayne Hope a nazi? What about Francis Greenslade? Or what about Shaun Micallef, it's his show. Did that clip in anyway make you think any of them might be a nazi? Or did the context tell you they weren't serious, even though Wayne explicitly states that Nazis really are a superior race?
I reflected a bit on this. Generally among conservatives and here on The Motte there are two types of responses, both I dislike.
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“The left started this with Charlie Kirk/Jay Jones so this is fine.” All I can say is that this way lies ruin. Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals? Are we expecting some kind of come-to-Jesus mutual disarmament moment or just escalation until Civil War? If we are hoping for mutual disarmament, how does that happen? Why can’t this be that? Doesn’t someone have to move first?
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“This is different from Charlie Kirk/Jay Jones, that was not okay but this is because reasons.” Here my reaction is to say that you never step in the same river twice. Even though I share the intuition that this is a nothingburger while Kirk was a big deal I have to recognize it is always possible to conjure self-serving reasons why “this time it’s different.” I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough
aqouta
12m ago
On that note, given that the primary justification for the creation of Israel was the holocaust, we may as well shut the entire enterprise down
It's pretty surprising that the justification for the creation of Israel came decades after many jews had already moved to that region for a national project.
Gaashk
18m ago
This is part of why I strongly prefer handcrafts to puzzles. I've been enjoying learning to make wire wrapped tumbled stones. My husband is tumbling them, and I am wrapping them.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
20m ago
Sometimes the politicians order lunch too. Or proclaim today National Northern Hemispheric Penguin Day or some other such thing. But a lot of it is about deciding what acts will now call for state violence against the actor, or arguing about how to divide the spoils from the protection racket.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
22m ago
I believe you'll find the threshold is "just the other side of whatever is on offer".
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
28m ago
Now that we've established that this is not about celebration of evils like the Holocaust, we can talk about what is really going on here.
There is nothing wrong with pushing the overton window. You make the implication that Holocaust jokes are made so that one day we can genocide Jews again, but that's silly. With logic like that, I should have voted against gay marriage so that they wouldn't try to trans the kids next!
Yes, telling jokes are a way to wage the culture war. Since it is quite literally who/whom the entire topic is rather boring to talk about.
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
39m ago
The kind of guy who mentions the Holocaust every day, in a "joking" manner is not joking. He celebrates the Holocaust. I suspect this groupchat does not have a Holocaust reference every day. I wrote this sentence before I read the Politico article in full.
The writer says 2900 pages of chats, and Giunta says 28,000 chats. The article says 251 epithets. These guys were not slinging epithets left and right. It is highly unlikely they are making Holocaust jokes every day, or else the Journalists would have said how many holocaust jokes.
Damned right I am minimizing this. They are joking. Nobody is trying to Holocaust the Jews. I bet these guys don't even support Hamas lol.
07mk
45m ago
I think you have a very sad and hateful view of humor if you believe that someone joking about how Jews are dishonest and gas chambers is something that reflects badly on them.
ThenElection
47m ago
I think nobody suggested that the they should be investigated for conspiracy to commit murder wrt the gas chamber chat. Everyone understands that they were not seriously suggesting that.
Calling for gas chambers. Expressing love for Hitler. Endorsing rape. Using racist slurs. This is not a ‘joke.’
Totally fair politics, for what it's worth, but Newsom is at least pretending to think they were being earnest.
PutAHelmetOn
Recovering Quokka
48m ago
Kirk is not a saint and it's fine to joke about his death. I'm not sure I've seen many jokes though. I've seen a lot of "he had it coming" and a lot of glee. Those are not jokes because they are being serious.
That posters in this thread are comparing to Jay Jones is ironic and illustrative: he outright said he was being serious! I suppose his irony has more layers than even 4channers, eh? The only joke Jones told was the "2 bullets" joke, but everything else he said was serious.
Wearing an SS-armband would be a celebration of the Holocaust, which is not a joke.
Skeletor
58m ago
Well, the flip side of this is that with the righty reaction to the lefty reaction to the Kirk assassination, the Right has also thoroughly burned its "it's just banter" card. If the two competing party programmes in the US actually start being perceived as "install a modern version of Hitler" vs. "shoot all Charlie Kirks", which one do you figure will have majority support?
Fuck 'em anyway. Anyone who still wants to go soothe ISIS's concerns about blasphemy at this point will have to do it without me.
Jiro
58m ago
If the quotes are not very far from what he said in public, the leaks should be a non-story because they would amount to "Thiel says a slightly different version of the same thing he's said a dozen times in public already".
They can't be both shocking revelations and just more of the same old thing.
Err, aren't you making his point for him?
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