domain:philippelemoine.com
bicameral_mindset
1d ago
I'm just a lurker, but I'm very happy this place exists. It provides a model for how I should behave in other communities as well.
AfterEpictetus
1d ago
I don't think you're wrong, exactly, but I think you're ignoring an important dimension of the disagreement. That being the distinction between positive and negative rights (freedom from vs freedom to).
The traditional American view of rights is almost entirely negative, and each of the amendments in the bill of rights that grants a specific right frames it as a negative right (generally the right to be free from some government action).
Rights during/post FDR tend to be framed as positive rights (new deal/great society), or possibly "entitlements".
Your distinction is important, but I don't think it can be understood properly without examining the underlying disagreement about rights.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Weirdly modern war might make peace less likely. I’ve been thinking about this theory recently. Many past major compromises, treaties, peace deals etc all benefit from having a well known, somewhat trusted individual who can both negotiate and then sell it to their own people after. Who negotiated peace after the Revolutionary War? Ben Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay. Many such cases, a definite Great Man Theory thing. But Israel and other modern states are in the habit of killing any famous leaders who begin to pop up before they get famous. Thus, no one left to bargain with. Afghanistan, Iraq too.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
1d ago
For politically high profile cases I would expect someone, somewhere inside or outside of the prison system would have had a quiet word and said 'this person is important, don't fuck this up'. For all of these unlikely cascading failures to happen? It's very suspicious.
What I'm also saying is that there should be logs kept as standard in western countries for high grade security systems and the whole 'whoopsies everything just happened to not work' doesn't fly. Even making allowance for podunk bad installations, operations and oversight.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Hey I was thinking of posting something similar. I really like this place and I’m glad it seems to be flourishing and getting good new folks.
Tanista
1d ago
These mistakes are not that hard to correct
This then raises the question of why these mistakes are so pervasive. This is somewhat understandable for the average, random wokie, but why is it also true for the intelligentsia of this movement, who are presumably paid to know how to bring about individualism?
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1d ago
Huh you preempted my post, I was coming here to essentially say the same thing:
On the rare occasions I wade back into reddit these days, I'm reminded how much lower quality the discourse there is in general. Arguing to win is the default, instead of arguing to understand. People will happily and uncharitably pounce on any minor mistake or misunderstanding they can in order to get a rhetorical edge. I've gotten old enough at this point that I just don't care anymore, as soon as I get the impression that someone is arguing to win I just nope out and let them have it.
There were no "golden days" of reddit either (aside from when TheMotte was there lol), I've been on reddit essentially since the very beginning and although it's had its ups and downs it's never reached the heights of TheMotte.
So yeah, this place is amazing, and I hope you guys keep doing what you do.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
1d ago
Somewhat tangentially, I can't find any evidence that anyone involved in prisons has ever been fired or disciplined for recording issues alone.
On the other hand, major Wall Street firms are routinely disciplined for record keeping failures even if there's no case of fraud or other misconduct being examined.
To me that means shitty record keeping in prisons is actually the norm while on Wall Street it's something firms are constantly anxious about fucking up.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1d ago
The "word on the street" among the conspiracy crowd is that the "most requested" age range at Epstein Island was 14-16. That was typical. It was mainly Epstein himself who had the more, well, "unusual" preferences.
Completely unverified rumors! Make of it what you will!
I love it too. It's probably the only online forum I participate in at this point; I've been spoiled rotten to the point I can barely enjoy any of the rest.
Though I wish I had more energy to effort-post. I used to make big posts full of citations and dense argumentation more before and get into spirited disagreements and butt heads with users but I feel like my contributions have been rather lacking as of late. Life gets in the way I guess.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
First, the immediately preceding paragraphs to the quote, might be relevant context I will put below. This is at risk of drifting too much from your prompt, but I feel like they are pretty important and the excerpt doesn’t stand alone. (Also I am an avowed moderate so might not be the intended audience)
Too many on the far left seem destined to erode the very thing that makes Americans put on a uniform and sacrifice their lives for our common nation. Now, part of the solution, I think the most important part of the solution, is you first got to stop the bleeding. And that’s why President Trump’s immigration policies are, I believe, the most important part of the successful first six months in the Oval Office. Social bonds form among people who have something in common. They share the same neighborhood. They share the same church. They send their kids to the same school. And what we’re doing is recognizing that if you stop importing millions of foreigners into the country, you allow that social cohesion to form naturally. It’s hard to become neighbors with your fellow citizens when your own government keeps on importing new neighbors every single year at a record number.
But even so, if you were to ask yourself in 2025 what an American is, I hate to say it, very few of our leaders actually have a good answer. Is it purely agreement with the creedal principles of America? I know the Claremont Institute is dedicated to the founding vision of the United States of America. It’s a beautiful and wonderful founding vision, but it’s not enough by itself.
If you think about it, identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let’s say, of the Declaration of Independence, that’s a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time. What do I mean by that? Well, first of all, it would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Must we admit all of them tomorrow? If you follow that logic…
I think Vance is using a straw man here. He even kind of acknowledges it (charitably it’s a rhetorical device at best). Are there really many influential political people who think this is the sole criteria for immigration? Don't think so.
I think it’s fair to say the far left has a disdain for America that’s a more caustic than hopeful, and that’s bad. But I think the regular left, yes even their leaders, tend to be more aspirational to American principles than Vance gives credit for. It’s also wrong what he says about them on the first place: I’m not aware of many even on the far left who advocate to kick people out of America if they don’t share the principles? At worst they display schadenfreude or want to put you into eternal lecture-detention.
And does a disdain for America, where it exists, also directly translate to weaker social bonds, his original concern? No, there’s no real link, really he just thinks the number of immigrants is too high and too ‘other’. It’s also a bad argument because he’s saying that too many immigrants worsens anti-nationalist pride… but at the same time alleging that the leftists deliberately want to import people based on agreement with American ideas or principles? Pick a lane, man. Weirdly he suddenly makes a U-turn and now describes this American creed as a progressive leftist thing, despite literally just talking about it as a good, general, national pride thing. Again, pick a lane man.
I think your read of this attitude as anti-meritocratic is accurate. He’s underestimating, ironically, America’s own extremely strong assimilation forces. He’s not considering immigration as a potential strength. I don’t really see too much of a statement on individualism. My main critique is that this vision is confused and intellectually incoherent. Ironically, he is great and even accurate about identifying some big problems with the left, but not so great at building something in its place (the same accusation levied at far leftists w/r/t America)
More broadly however I think the distinction between individual advice and public policy choices is the biggest issue of our age and most of the left-right divide generally. Right wingers preach personal responsibility which is good, but on a public policy level this means they ignore real suffering and policy can be weak. Left wingers preach social responsibility which is good, but on a personal level this means they fall into a cult of victimhood and their happiness and effectiveness goes down. Good policy and good individualism both require a degree of what to many feels like cognitive dissonance or hypocrisy, even though it isn’t. So they often default to one or the other exclusively and engage in tribal debates, trying to hammer home their strong points while being blind to the weaknesses.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1d ago
Some time spent tinkering, but sadly no progress.
Right now I just have a bunch of objects that aren't where I want them to be, aren't behaving like I want them to behave, and I can't seem to get a handle on the why or how. I'm trying different ways of debugging this, but so far I'm not getting a proper grip on it.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1d ago
As the highly official representative for "this place", I conclusively answer your questions with
- No.
- Possibly to some extent, but in between implications lost in hostile interpretation and and the high probability that the defintions are doctored specifically to serve the argument here, I'd say not enough to allow for an actual yes. The strictly correct answer seems to be "Yes if you want to, else no.".
- 120% word games. I mean, your entire setup here is...weird.
Here's a suggestion: If you want to know what people here think on individualism and meritocracy, then just plain open a discussion about individualism and/or meritocracy. If instead you try to play semantic games with highly controversial public figures in order to attempt getting a blanket statement describing the ideological degeneracy of "most posters" here...I dunno, seems crooked.
But I don't care much about American politics, so I'm probably not the target demographic.
In summary, I just wished you had started a more open-ended discussion instead of laying out bait, no matter how openly you did that.
My bias goes the other way I guess. I've seen so much shit fail at its one fucking job I'm hardly surprised anymore.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
1d ago
I'm kind of the same. I don't effort post, but I enjoy being here and the people here.
I like that even the ones I disagree with are at least speaking my language.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
I love this site.
I don't contribute even remotely the same level of thoughtful and well-considered effortposts that many do, I disagree with shit tons of bad takes (that are almost always well-argued) and in some cases I just nod with awe at not only the intellect (by which I mean an ability to read, remember, and consolidate massive amounts of text, both discrete and historical) on display here at times. Fuck the haters.
Thanks to all for making my online experience richer, regardless of the timbre of your political sensitivities and whether they skew differently from my own.
Also happy birthday to that one Mottizen (you know who you are)!
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
1d ago
I'm giving allowance for the fact that what's on the tin isn't always what is installed or maintained. My main point is that it is likely that failures in a 'just so' way of the electronic security systems is possible, but unlikely.
TowardsPanna
1d ago
Aha! Didn't imagine they could be swapped in and out.
benmmurphy
1d ago
As an alternative we can have a system with losers but instead of the winners being chosen by merit we can use an alternative criteria like knowing the correct people or being born to the right parents.
quiet_NaN
1d ago
In today's "old man yelling at clouds" news, it appears that leftist memes (e.g. on imgur) have taken to calling Trump a pedophile due to his connection with Epstein.
As someone who does not give a damn about Trump, but who cares about the language we use to describe reality, I want to object.
A pedophile, in my book, is someone who is sexually attracted to pre-pubescent kids. Often, the term might imply exclusive pedophilia, e.g. someone who is only attracted to pre-pubescent kids. This seems like the worst sexual attraction card to be dealt, while being straight, gay, bisexual, into MILFs, or into BDSM, or most other kinks means you have a decent chance of getting laid, the lack of adults who could pass as pre-pubescent means that there are no sex partners who could consent. If used as an insult, the unfortunate implication is that people are morally responsible for their sexual inclinations.
Naturally, there is an overlap with people who end up molesting children, which is rightfully considered a serious crime. It bears saying that a significant fraction of child molesters are not exclusive pedophiles but just men (mostly) with broader sexualities who use the opportunity of the power discrepancy between kids and adults.
In general, I think that power discrepancy is why we have age of consent laws. Using the age is obviously a crude approximation, I can think of situations where a 15yo having sex with an 18yo would not be problematic from a power discrepancy point of view, and also of situations where two 18yo having sex would be problematic from a power discrepancy view without being criminal. But still, one has to draw the line somewhere, and age is at least something which can reasonably be verified, while "would a judge like the power dynamics in that relationship?" is much more diffuse.
If we tie consent to age, then it makes sense to dis-emphasize physical development. After all, a woman consents with her brain, not her boobs. It might certainly make a difference if the defendant claims he was mistaken about her age or that she was the one who initiated sex (not that either defense would help much, likely).
To get back to Trump, I think it is pretty clear that he is not an exclusive pedophile. That guy paid for sex with Stormy Daniels, hosted beauty pageants and boasted about grabbing post-pubescent participants "by the pussy". Based on the women he married, "small and flat-chested" does not really seem to be his type.
He is also a sex pest. I can not imagine him going "Dear Jeffrey, this is very flattering, but I do not think it is appropriate. Look at that poor girl. She is a minor who possibly did not have a clear idea that she would be expected to do sex work here and is effectively trapped alone on an island with some very powerful people. Besides her being below the age of consent, this whole setting is intrinsically coercive. If you want me to fuck someone, please get an experienced sex worker of legal age for my next visit." Instead, he probably went "great, I will take the one with the bigger tits" and committed a particularly vile act of statutory rape.
From a culture war point of view, I can see why the left is pushing the pedo angle. It basically comes from qanon, where "oh, did I mention they also rape kids" was used as a boo light to drive home the fact that these were Bad people. MAGA pattern-matched Epstein to this, which was fair enough. Now that it looks like Trump might have been a visitor to Epstein's Island, the likely factually accurate claim "Trump is a sex pest who has no conception of consent and will happily commit statutory rape" is not going to do much damage. The American people have known that he is a sex pest with no conception of consent since 2016, and in their heart of hearts they also know that someone who is generally loose on consent will also not be a stickler for the rules as far as age of consent is concerned. By contrast, going "that pedophile world-controlling elite you were always talking about? Trump is their chairman!", or more shortly "Trump is pedophile" is obviously superior as an attack in the CW.
Still, a lot of epistemic commons are burned in the process, and I really don't like that.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
You're right
I struggle to call this a war though. It's insurgency whack a mole with a sprinkling of ethnic cleansing
Thanks for the insight. I'm still cynical enough to believe this is what's advertised on the tin and not stuff that means any of it works well, especially when administered by the human capital involved in prisons.
The fact that it slams at the one minute around midnight is a strong Bayesian update towards system error.
Well, that's a bad thing to do, agreed. Glad you didn't mean Jews, since all your other posts sure looked like you were talking about Jews, until I pointed out to you that this is not and has never been true of Jews, and suddenly you aren't talking about Jews anymore. Very odd, but glad that's straightened out.
Well, yes, I'd argue equally that you could hardly condemn German Catholics, Gypsies, Slavs, etc. for being "unpatriotic" for failing to serve the Reich when they were being put in camps. You're absolutely right, this didn't only happen to Jews!
I suppose this is true. Still a little confused about who you mean, since you're not talking about Jews.
Not a lie, just confusion since, you know, you keep talking about Jews until when pressed and your examples are shown to be specious, you inform us you didn't mean Jews. Still a little confusing, but I'll take your word for it that you were in no way implying that Jews are less patriotic, loyal, or entitled to be considered full citizens and fellow nationals as anyone else.
This is a very odd thing to accuse me of, since I talk about lots of things besides Jews, whereas I'd say the vast majority of your participation in any thread anywhere is about Jews. So unsurprisingly, when we interact, it tends to be about Jews.
But since we've cleared up that misunderstanding about what you think of Jews, I look forward to seeing what else you can contribute!
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