domain:parrhesia.substack.com
Tiber727
20hr ago
These two statements:
The left-leaning media will paint Republican efforts in the most negative light
and
Trump wants ICE to be seen as a force to be feared
are not incompatible. The first is true, but doesn't actually dismiss whether the second is true or not.
And as to this second point, Trump is currently the guy who frames illegal immigration as an invasion, pays for illegal immigrants to be sent directly to a foreign jail without trial as gang members despite having no criminal record even close to gang membership and suggests sending Americans there, and sends the National Guard to progressive cities.
Trump's entire shtick is portraying everything as war and himself as champion. He wants that image and uses the media's attempts to smear him as fuel for it.
Skulldrinker
20hr ago
Obviously they can put whatever they want in their profile and still get infinite engagement.
Skulldrinker
20hr ago
Hinge.
TK-421
20hr ago
| I am not a politician; I have no charisma nor political skills, nor the skills required to hire such people, nor the money it would take to successfully lobby against even one law (and there are many bad ones). In practice, I cannot get a law changed. My choices are obey or not.
Bummer. I think you're being a little bit of a negative Nancy and you are able to meaningfully participate in the political process more than you believe, but it's true that people can have diminished capacity to engage with or even understand some laws / politics. There are many unfair disabilities that nature inflicts. I hope that in the future we will have the material, technological, social, etc. ability to have much finer instruments than current legal systems for structuring behavior. That is not currently possible. Your impairment, though, doesn't result in an outcome substantially different than someone who must live under a law they dislike but is enacted through the existing legitimate processes.
| No, of course not. If I'm breaking the law I'm doing what I want because I want to do it, and I don't much care if The Man doesn't like it.
That's chill. Just don't shoot the cop that pulls you over for speeding and if you lose the court case pay your fine.
TIRM
20hr ago
I heard an NPR show in which they interviewed chicken slaughterhouse workers. White Americans worked those jobs. They were displaced by illegals.
AnonymousActuary
20hr ago
Are you under the impression that I disagree with John Brown's actions?
to be honest I was, though perhaps influenced by that substack article. I guess I see how you could read it as acceptable under the circumstances, and then we are just arguing about circumstances.
I have definitely gained some respect for eg the Shane Claiborne's of the world he maintain a strict non-violence standard and just subjecting everything to that.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
20hr ago
Companionship dogs weren’t treated as working dogs in history. Greeks and Romans buried their dogs in elaborate tombs with poignant epitaphs. Neolithic humans buried dogs alongside human graves. There are statues in Europe commemorating dogs, the bronze weathered gold from the petting of passersby. The inordinate love of dogs may have negatively influenced the TFR of Rome, as Caesar / Plutarch criticize it in legend.
TIRM
20hr ago
just arrest people who do this
Ain't gonna happen. Online doxxing mobs are not subject to prosecution. I mean as a practical matter. Even if counterfactually there was a will to prosecute, the feds couldn't get almost all of the online mob.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
20hr ago
¿Por que no los dos?
It’s one of the more efficient and reasonable approaches of this initiative, in my opinion.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
20hr ago
Sigh.
You know, when I see your name on a reply, it triggers a little burst of shame. Classical conditioning.
I recognize that the mayor’s actions are making some bad scenarios worse. That includes withholding resources which might have rightly solved crimes. I shouldn’t have been so flippant.
I still believe it’s the motte to a bailey expressed all over the thread. Chicago is supposed to run this kind of investigation, and generally cooperate with federal operations, because that’s just business as usual. But the bailey launders the definition of “usual” to include more or less anything that supports ICE’s operation. If local governments aren’t actually compelled to provide aid, then they don’t have to run the investigation. They don’t have to provide riot police, or give access to every city building. I have a hard time squaring that with the absolute vitriol getting thrown their way.
07mk
20hr ago
I am trying to propose a grassroots way of continuing that decline in violence. I would rather not simply have cops on every corner, even though I am a cringe level of "back the blue" pro-police.
Cops who patrol corners often need to be fit, strong, and willing and capable of inflicting violence on unwilling individuals, for the purpose of protecting their community, right? Perhaps having cops on every corner is the way to provide a pathway for young males to adulthood in a way that reduces violence?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
20hr ago
And I don't accept that you're a Free Man and that following laws you disagree with means that you're being unjustly put upon and must suck it up and obey.
That's OK, I don't expect you (or Donald Trump or Governor Murphy) to accept it.
There are many, many avenues for you to try to get a law changed
"It is not my business to be petitioning the governor or the legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and, if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then?"
I am not a politician; I have no charisma nor political skills, nor the skills required to hire such people, nor the money it would take to successfully lobby against even one law (and there are many bad ones). In practice, I cannot get a law changed. My choices are obey or not.
You are not a creature in a state of nature that has been cruelly subjugated and is striking a blow against The Man by doing what you want.
No, of course not. If I'm breaking the law I'm doing what I want because I want to do it, and I don't much care if The Man doesn't like it. Advocacy? Pfah, The Man won't listen to me. Sometimes he won't listen to a clear majority; the national maximum speed limit lasted for 22 years. If it had been obeyed that whole time, we'd still have it.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
20hr ago
I am trying to propose a grassroots way of continuing that decline in violence. I would rather not simply have cops on every corner, even though I am a cringe level of "back the blue" pro-police. Thus, I am suggesting what I am suggesting for young male development.
When you say that providing a pathway for young men into adulthood doesn't reduce violence I am, first, skeptical to the point of doubt and second, curious about what your solution for reducing violence would be (short of cops on every corner).
Remember, the context of my original post was that this seemingly wayward fellow in California burnt down part of a city out of nothing more than a moment of spastic nihilistic rage.
Goodguy
20hr ago
Yes, it's happened many times in history. In the US, most recently in the 1990s. Probably in large part due to better policing.
That "Old Right" conservatism was largely liberal by my standards. To the extent that some of them supported segregation based on race rather than more individual characteristics, I think they were illiberal. But liberalism, at least in my sense of the word, does not require that a country allow huge amounts of unvetted or barely-vetted foreigners to enter. Liberalism can be pragmatic, it just has to be fundamentally based on and strive for the ethos of judging people on their individual characteristics, and on meritocracy.
On a side note, this is where I disagree with the more right-libertarian interpretations of liberalism as being best served by hyper-capitalism. I appreciate capitalism, but capitalism as it exists, because of inheritance, is not a meritocracy.
faceh
21hr ago
Re-upping the one piece of advice I have on this.
It has to be effortful, uncomfortable, and entail (friendly) conflict.
Videogames sublimate this urge easily, especially in PVP modes, but lack the physical strain.
Men have to learn to fight. They have to have something to capture, some opponent to beat, and some promise of reward for taking risks.
Otherwise, they flail around without purpose, the urges get released in distinctly destructive ways, they fall in with anti-social crowds who will use them as a weapon, and they start taking really ill-advised risks on the promise of spurious rewards. Crypto-gambling is arguably the best case scenario there.
Not a cure-all, in the least, but its a START, which is more than a lot of guys get. Coach knew.
| I don’t know what defense I’d have in the moment if ICE decided to detain me after making the determination that a.) I’m undocumented and b.) the license I gave them is fake.
I guess it would go the same way as the guy from your story, you're detained for a couple hours and released when they discover that you aren't the right person. That's supposed to be kidnapping?
Edit: I just realized that your "...Americans are right to sour..." statement might mean that you aren't American and don't know how ICE fits into the deportation flow, so my comment may have been excessively harsh.
From reporting, it may seem reasonable to think that ICE is rounding people up and choosing who to deport based on what they determine about the person's citizenship status. That could produce a situation where someone goes to the grocery store without their passport, gets caught up in a sweep, and finds themselves on the next flight to CECOT.
This is false. ICE does not make deportation determinations. The deportation decision has already been made by an immigration judge and ICE then needs to positively establish a person's identity to know whether they are the correct Jose Gonzalez who has a removal order. If yes, process them for deportation. If no, they can still detain you and refer you to an immigration court, but they can't deport you and you will have the ability to plead your case to the immigration court. (There are some nuances with immigration officers in some situations in border areas where they have more discretion to order an expedited removal, and if you at all claim US citizenship then expedited removal isn't permissible, this is not what's happening with ICE.) It's basically the same as other agencies enforcing different laws - ICE does not have the independent authority to deport in the same way that the police can arrest you for something but they can't make a determination of your guilt or impose a sentence.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
21hr ago
Is physical violence in society able to be decreased at all?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
21hr ago
Thanks.
I believe that the current liberal order will, inevitably, destroy itself and fall into fundamental illiberalism - actually, something quite close to tyranny or at least a kind of state-corporate oligarch - regardless of any "modifications."
I think that the current liberal order is better on the whole than any new order that is actually likely to take power.
We can quibble about the "actually likely" phrase, but, generally, I disagree with this. I think there are alternatives to the current liberal order - that have existed in the past - that are fundamentally better. No, I am not talking about returning to pre-Westphalian Europe or something. I believe the "Old Right" conservatism that existed in some form or another from roughly the end of World War One to the Civil Rights Act (So, let's call it 1920 - 1965 to use round numbers) was the best political philosophy. It was hugely disrupted by FDR - first King of America - and then eradicated entirely by the 1964 CRA. The Warren Court of the 1970s salted its grave.
daguerrean
21hr ago
So at worst he is guilty of using a less-than-optimal training technique. I view it as identical to spanking children. Perhaps there is a more optimal way of training a child, but people are under no moral obligation to be maximally optimal in everything they do. Obviously physically disciplining a child could be taken to the point of abuse, but a spanking is not in-and-of-itself abusive and does not require being the most optimal method
Goodguy
21hr ago
I'm not claiming that "the boys need purpose" leads to Nazism. I'm just not sure that giving boys clear pathways to become part of society necessarily reduces violence.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
21hr ago
Oh, cool! Yeah, that's my missing the point a little bit. Thanks for writing the clarification.
In that case then, my personal method of thinking about the sacred in the context of the sexual is pretty straightforward:
- God created everything with a purpose in mind. The Thomistic view on this is that everything has a 'telos' or properly ordered end (or goal) to it.
- In the context of man and woman and sex, the telos is eternal unification (marriage) and procreation. This is the Catholic view on not only sex, but marriage. The well ordered purpose and end of a marriage is to create children and then raise them in virtue (Side note: For couples who cannot conceive, a marriage is still good and valid so long as it results in a mutual support for sanctification - 'becoming a saint' - in the course of life. You don't divorce because of problems with conception).
- Sex is a sacred act because it results in the creation of life and is also a manifestation of true feelings of love between man and woman only so long as it is performed licitly in the context of the sanctioned sacrament of marriage.
- To have sex outside of marriage is to violate the laws governing sex.
To comment more specifically about porn:
-
Porn is a disordered use of sex. It isn't done within the bounds of marriage with the intent of conception. Even in a strange edge case where two married people are filming themselves having sex with the expressed purpose of conceiving, this is still disordered because the specific character of sex reserves it exclusively to the participants - man and wife. Sex is never "shared" with spectators.
-
Masturbation, likewise, is a disordered use of one's sexual organs for the purpose of self gratification rather than towards the well ordered end of procreating (again, within the context of marriage).
A lot of it comes down to what a thing of any kind is supposed to do - what I started with, it's "telos." When you misuses that thing, you're sinning because you're out of concert with the will of God. Of course, there are many different degrees of severity to this. Mortal vs venial sins and all that. But the underlying assumption is that there is a way to all things and that that way is defined by God and also totally knowable by man.
I am allowed to judge people who are having pre-marital sex and using porn because I want them to be in sync with God's natural law and ordering of the universe because it will be to their greater happiness, joy, and benefit.
Translated to the more secular, I don't like porn because I think it's bad for everyone involved - the porn viewer, the porn maker, the porn producer, etc. All of these people will be spiritually worse off for having engaged with what is an intrinsically disordered act.
TK-421
21hr ago
| (and no, I don't accept "We live in a society therefore suck it up and obey", no matter how many words you put behind it).
And I don't accept that you're a Free Man and that following laws you disagree with means that you're being unjustly put upon and must suck it up and obey. There are many, many avenues for you to try to get a law changed depending on the law. You are not a creature in a state of nature that has been cruelly subjugated and is striking a blow against The Man by doing what you want. Calling contributing to the smooth functioning of society even in areas that you might have some disagreement sucking it up and obeying is the attitude of a child, no matter how many times you shout "freedom".
| Sometimes, I want some of that machinery chipped away, so the organized, peaceful, advanced society can be less regimented.
Totally fair and reasonable to want to live in a different, more anarchic society and it's entirely possible that such a society would be better in some ways. By all means, get out there and advocate for your vision. But your preferences do not get to be arbitrarily imposed on the ~347 million other people in the US.
Goodguy
21hr ago
Got it. Sorry for misreading your post.
But, cards on the table first - do you see the current "liberal order" of things to be all well and good?
No. Given the current different political groups that we have in the West, I think that the current liberal order is better on the whole than any new order that is actually likely to take power if the current liberal order is replaced. However, I believe that the current liberal order needs some modifications, as long as they're done in a way that doesn't destroy the core liberalness of it.
If nothing else, the country (and the state and even my town of ~50,000) is simply too big for all but a small percentage to meaningfully participate in the political process. And that small percentage is made up mostly of those who make a living of it.
All depends on how high those penalties are. At some point, it will be worth shooting over.
ETA: You would think that in a first world country it never would be. But some years ago in New York City, a cop stepped into the road front of my bicycle, forcing me to go onto the sidewalk to avoid hitting him. He then arrested me and charged me with riding my bike on the sidewalk. When I went to court, the judge in the Midtown court -- who was not the regular judge -- told me I was lucky the regular judge wasn't there or I'd be going to Rikers Island. Rikers Island is the rather notorious NYC jail; the chance of a middle-aged white collar guy getting out of there alive, with his ass intact, and without any bones broken isn't very good. It's not an original observation with me that if the penalty for speeding is death, no one stops for the flashing lights. So be it. Anyway, I don't ride a bike in NYC any more.
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