domain:web.law.duke.edu
defenders of the proposition that rogue/irredentist regimes
You're responding to a post where I say foreign militias are holding the regime in place, which the people don't support. How do you construe that as defending?! Even the "30%" (I think that's a motivated number, but directionally correct that a majority aren't) of Shia in the country don't support the regime, with grand Ayatollas opposing Khamenei. I'm a am pro-regime change in Iran. @Hadad
Two understood it the same way, so my writing is the common denominator, but... I don't understand.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
7hr ago
Personally, I'd only wish success to someone banning Disney, rap etc.
To react to your bailey, @The_Nybbler haven't many in this community opposed this government and arana imperii, ascribing modernity's ills to it?
See, I knew this was coming. There is a consistent bait-and-switch deployed by defenders of the proposition that rogue/irredentist regimes such as Iran are actually secretly friendly to Western culture/interests. The initial claim is always “No, they’re not actually trying to ban Western culture or actively harm Western governments.” And then when someone brings up examples of those regimes explicitly opposing Western cultural imports or waging covert/proxy war against Western countries (particularly America), the claim switches to, “Okay yes, they are opposed to the West, but that’s good, actually, because the West is degenerate and its cultural imports deserve to be banned.”
Yes, I have issues with much of the lyrical/philosophical content of hip-hop music and the culture around it. I agree that much of Disney’s recent output is of questionable artistic quality, and that some of its messaging is insidious. However, if there is such a thing as “the West” (and I’ve expressed my skepticism that such a construct refers to something real and consistent) then surely one of its defining factors, at least in the 20th and 21st centuries, is that it is extremely reticent to ban entire categories of art. As an American, I can effortlessly find the intellectual and artistic output of countries and cultures which are openly hostile to my own; I can follow Russian nationalists and Iranian mullahs on Twitter, and I can watch ISIS videos online without needing a VPN lest I risk imprisonment. Only a very insecure and consciously-insular regime would ban the output of its critics, either domestic or foreign. That the Iranian regime does so is a sign that it is not friendly to the spirit of Western-aligned cultures. (It is also, of course, openly very hostile to the political, economic, and military interests of Western-aligned nations.)
I agree with you that the Persian people have no inherently adversarial relationship with me and mine. They are one of the great historical cultures of human history, and I long to see them returned to their former glory. This would not be possible under an Islamic hard-liner regime with revolutionary and anti-Western sentiments baked into its DNA. A proud and high-IQ people deserve better than these incompetent, blustering, grubby mullahs. My problems lie almost entirely with the people on top in Iran, and not with the people who have to live under their boot.
rae
7hr ago
You are basing your worldview on random ragebait TikTok videos, a platform where the #peeyourpantschallenge had over four million views. Please, I implore you, talk to real people instead of doomscrolling dumb online discourse.
MEN are the ones not putting in enough effort into their appearance and there's just not enough hot men out there.
It’s absolutely true that most men put way less effort into their appearance than women. Like, c’mon. If you don’t believe this, tell me your skincare routine, how many hair products you own, and how long it takes you to get ready in the morning.
But anyway, that should be an advantage for you. Getting a nice haircut, moisturising regularly and buying a few well fitting fashionable outfits will already set you apart from the crowd.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
7hr ago
Hadad
7hr ago
Cruz is openly admitting that his religious fantasies are a primary motivation for his foreign policy, which in my opinion should disqualify him from holding public office.
Why would a man following the edicts of his conscience disqualify him from office? The state isn't to make laws imposing religion; there's nothing at all forbidding individual politicians from being religiously motivated. You probably wouldn't like the end result if we started policing the inner worlds of representatives.
phailyoor
7hr ago
I don't get this post. So some lib journalist does a hit piece on some maga staffer. And you decide to dramatize it into an entire hecking novel, because why exactly????
Can you explain your point in plain english? Who even is Natalie Winters and why should I care? Why does she represent "BASED" subculture rather than anyone else?
Hadad
7hr ago
hy not just blow it all out in a cocaine-and-hookers weekend and then end it with a 9mm breakfast? Usually, the responses I hear are along the lines of, "I don't want to take such a cowardly way out", "I still want my life to mean something", "You should still try to be a good person." Hmmm, interesting how that kind of sounds like there's actually a higher level moral and ethical framework in play. Maybe these hardcore secular materialists really are trying to both fill and not acknowledge the God Shaped Hole.
They're just flailing around the fact suicide is scary and they'd rather not die, even if the world around them sucks. The self-preservation instinct is quite strong, and has nothing to do with God or higher level morals.
Hadad
7hr ago
It's great that they don't all chant death to America. In the event the nicer ones overthrow the local powers, perhaps relationships could be repaired! Hopefully they manage to do so soon, otherwise it won't matter. No amount of good men will justify letting Iran go nuclear.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
Uh, twelver Shia Islam being more compatible with western civilization than Judaism or Sunni Islam is pretty plausible, but Iran is definitely not friendlier.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
8hr ago
I'll put this here because I've never put it anywhere else and this has been a week of extreme not good for me.
One of my best High School buddies killed himself in November of 2022. There was a group of about five of us who were inseparable all of junior and senior year. College did college things and we start to drift apart, but would sometimes still catch up when people tended to come back to the hometown for Christmas or Thanksgiving. After I learned of "Dane's" (not his real name) suicide, it fell to me, for various reasons, to contact his High School girlfriend. She was also part of this friend group and everyone had bet money that she and Dane were going to get married. They really were a loving couple.
When I called her and relayed the news, her reaction was pretty predictable. Though they had split finally over 10 years prior, she was still quite upset though still in control of herself. After the initial shock had subsided she do the normal thing and asked me how I was feeling about it.
And that's when I exploded. I didn't break down. I didn't sob. I got intensely angry. Not at her, but at Dane. Because I saw that a saying I had heard before was true; suicide doesn't end pain, it just distributes it out. Here was a woman who had shared her first love with Dane and then gone about her life peacefully. Gutted. A friend group of four other dudes who perhaps lament the fact that we've fallen out of contact with each other is now brought back into contact via tragedy. The family opted for a family only funeral, so the four of us got on a Zoom with the intent of meeting up somewhere for an irish wake for Dane. But, 15 minutes in, we kind of looked at each other and collectively decided, "No, we don't actually want to fly to see each other like this." Dane's dead, and it's hard for me not to remember that with some anger.
I think the circumstances surrounding your cousin are much different. I was only adding a perspective on suicide that I think goes unsaid sometimes. It's a tragedy, of course. I don't know enough about the last two years of Dane's life to know what he was going through. There's some mystery, in fact, about the final few days, but that's for the family to know. Still, the fact remains that that final act wasn't final. All of the hurt is still out there floating in the corners of the hearts of so many other people now.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
I live in a- or in multiple- based subculture. One of them is extremely popular on the internet.
Yes people say things that are clownish or weird to normies. But does anyone deny that modern secular society has, uh, problems?
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
Mexico may or may not have the state capacity to build domestic milindust, but it’s a world leader in heavy industry in general- thé challenge would be mostly getting it converted over to military spec as opposed to civilian stuff. They clearly can make things, drones probably aren’t any harder than trucks.
your dire, ever-postponed predictions
My prediction has been for some time now that the culture war will continue to escalate until we either find a way to leave each other alone, or until violence and chaos become self-sustaining. I do not think this prediction has been postponed, and I think the developments of the last four years have born that prediction out quite well. Our current society is still best described as a massive, distributed search for ways to hurt the outgroup as badly as possible without getting in too much trouble, and that search is observably advancing over time. If you disagree, give me the metrics by which you judge social cohesion, peace and prosperity to be increasing, and we can discuss it.
your proposed solutions
Which of my proposed solutions do you object to, specifically?
The woke have largely backed down from their most extreme positions during the summer of george, on BLM riots, covid restrictions, metoo nonsense, DEI, etc.
In what sense?
Race riots and zero-sum racial politics did not start with BLM. They ruined numerous major cities across the US in the 60s and 70s. They devastated the black community of LA in the 90s, blighting it for decades after due to the lingering economic and social effects. And after that mess, Clinton was supposed to have laid the issue to rest with his sista soulja moment, and then Obama was supposed to have paved the grave over for good with his two terms. And yet here we are, No Justice, No Peace, same as it ever was. Antifa-style gangs are still rioting in Blue strongholds, and their criminal violence is still being ignored, excused and actively enabled by major Blue institutions. Blues generally have moved to openly endorsing the murder of rival politicians, and we're seeing the normalization of straightforward political assassination. We're right back to the Days of Rage, because nothing actually changed.
Blues are on the back foot because we Reds dealt them a crippling and humiliating electoral defeat, and we're currently capitalizing on our victory by attacking their infrastructure directly. There's still several dozen million of them, and while the institutions they control are clearly in decline, they still wield considerable power and influence. There's going to be another election in a year, and then another presidential election two years after that, and there's no reason to believe that Progressivism will not come roaring back the moment they regain significant political power. All we have done they will attempt to undo, and they will aim to maximize the damage to our institutions in turn while the power is theirs. We're going after their institutions because we fundamentally do not believe the people running those institutions have changed their minds, and we are not confused about their approach to the wielding of political power.
BLM riots, covid restrictions, metoo/affirmative consent, DEI and so on are expressions of the contradictions within the Blue worldview. Those contradictions will keep right on expressing themselves whenever and wherever Blues secure power, and usually in these same forms or in forms very similar to them.
You did say you were going to coerce me, or else the woke (earlier you) would coerce me.
"Previous Me" was a standard-issue tits and beer liberal who believed strongly that coercion was unnecessary; I, like most of the other tits-and-beer liberals, was driven out of the Left when our erstwhile allies decided that free speech and tolerance were for pussies, actually, and that Liberals Got The Bullet Too. I now recognize that some level of coercion is necessary, because I've personally seen how the vacuum collapses, and how the supposed Liberal safeguards against such a collapse failed.
If you believe that people like me are just as bad as the Progressives, or perhaps worse, then go live with the Progressives and see how that goes. Either way, you need to accept that naive liberalism is not sustainable, and will inevitably decay.
Most Iranians are not religious and do not support the government, which sics foreign militias to oppress them. I speak Persian and have spent much time among them. Every couple of years there are massive riots, with thousands of deaths, as people fight back.
Even then, much of the Shia clergy opposes the regime; Khamenei isn't even a marja let alone the first among equals nor most popular religious leader within Iran itself. To concede a bit, at any rate they're friendlier than the Saudis and Emiratis, Shia are far more compatible and friendly with our world (but again, religiosity's similar to Czechia. Here's a survey giving 30% as Shia, only 40% as Muslim at all.)
strictly bans Western music and most other Western cultural output - @Hoffmeister25
Khatami relaxed that, already. Besides nowadays, everyone has a VPN. You can talk to plenty of Iranians right now, even with the attempted internet lock down, even if this isn't real. Personally, I'd only wish success to someone banning Disney, rap etc.
To react to your bailey, @The_Nybbler haven't many in this community opposed this government and arana imperii, ascribing modernity's ills to it?
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
‘They’re gonna build big, beautiful nukes Tucker, the best. We can’t let that happen.’
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
I’m not sure where the misreading of the Bible is here, because I’m not sure what the prophecy he’s going on actually says. It’s plausible he’s actually right about those verses.
The prophecies he’s referring to are mostly Christ’s foretelling of the destruction of the second temple- which, as you may recall, happened in 70 AD. Ted Cruz’s misreading is the claim that these are end times prophecies as opposed to a divine punishment for the deicide of Jesus.
LiberalRetvrn
8hr ago
Well it is a big problem that our discussion about the merits of bombing iran is being derailed into debates about the interpretation of a fairytale book. Cruz is openly admitting that his religious fantasies are a primary motivation for his foreign policy, which in my opinion should disqualify him from holding public office.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
Iran is actually pretty friendly to apostolic Christianity, so long as it doesn’t proselytize. Hezbollah controlled Jerusalem would probably maintain Christian religious sites unde the current arrangement.
ABigGuy4U
8hr ago
I think that’s also a very good counter example to all the people who say that there are no conspiracies because they are impossible to keep secret. This organization wasn’t even actually secret and they still managed to conspire undisturbed for forty years.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
English has an enormous vocabulary, much like French and unlike far cruder highly-inflected languages. Latin, Russian, Spanish- they all just come out and say things. English and French use a variety of expressions and innuendos.
Anyone know how welsh or Gaelic talk? Might be an areal feature for the northwestern fringe of Europe.
ABigGuy4U
8hr ago
’sexual innuendo’
Ok, now you’re just being pointlessly obscure. Mods! Mods! This man is violating the rule that everyone must speak plainly!
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
It’s technically a diaresis.
LiberalRetvrn
8hr ago
Borders are a perfect example of something arbitrary. They have no physical significance, them being set up the way they are has no justification other than historical precedent. We are all entitled to go wherever we want.
but falling marriage rates do not in themselves indicate that "no one is finding a partner."
Yeah, the increasing numbers of people who report not having a partner indicate that. actually.
If you think this data is just wrong, fine.
But its all kinda points in the same direction. Fewer relationships, women being more choosy, men losing ground, and marriage rates tumbling, along with birth rates.
I keep posting data from various countries, from various sources, and asking someone to find me data that disagrees with this, that shows a different story.
And about the best that I've seen is that SOME PARTICULAR SUB-POPULATIONS, say the Amish, the Mormons, other religious sects, are doing pretty well overall.
If you were proposing we ban dating apps, I'd have qualms about the legality and the implementation, but I'd probably approve in principle.
Well here yah go, from me:
Identify the cohort of males who are carousing and stealing women's most fertile years and cull them. Just straight up kill 'em.
If that's too extreme, we can just castrate them. Compromise!
That cuts out a major factor that is both preventing women from settling AND is making them less marriageable. Heavily punish males who exploit young women's emotions and leave them worse off than they found them.
If that's still too extreme, then maybe just ban dating apps altogether.
If THAT is too extreme, just require every dating app to VERY publicly disclose their actual success rates for men and women forming relationships, so people can make an informed decision when using them. There's a reason they don't disclose them normally. They're abysmal.
And then, reduce or remove all economic policies that explicitly favor hiring women so that women are less likely to marry a corporation. There's enough competition amongst biological men without having to compete against Megacorps anyway.
Then reduce or remove most policies designed to allow an unmarried women to live 'comfortably' on the public dime, thus becoming brides of the state.
Basically, remove the economic policies that keep women from enduring any significant difficulties, ever, from childhood on, so that women will actually need a man in their life for more than just happy fun sexy times. This is called "ALIGNING THE INCENTIVES."
I'm standing by each of these suggestions.
Do you want to go full Dread Jim (literally make women property)? Do you want to retvrn to traditional (pre-Enlightenment) Church rules?
No.
I'd like to return the a legal status quo of approximately 30ish years ago, where there wasn't nearly as much direct economic support for women to pursue additional degrees, or hang around in the long term in corporate jobs, or to remain unmarried even with kids b/c the state and the corporation will pay their bills regardless.
I'm not hiding the ball, I've stated my main position/suggestions openly. I'm not out here yelling "REPEAL THE 19TH." I know guys who are.
Just even the playing field and the incentives and I think we see improvement. Women need some reason to prefer marrying a guy and sticking with him, rather than being able to just extract the same resources via the state, or from hundreds of microhusbands on Onlyfans.
But Gen Z men are turning further and further right. (Caveat, of course, Gen Z women have made an even more pronounced swing left, which makes them even less appealing as partners.)
And let me just point out. These are men who were raised, in some large portion, by single moms. As in, steeped in female influence literally from birth.
They were taught mostly by female teachers.
They've had their lives guided by female academic administrators, HR staff, hiring managers, and they've had their dating lives governed pretty much completely by female standards since they hit their teen years.
They have their entire upbringing defined completely and utterly in terms of female guidance and authority. I won't go into the concept of "the longhouse," but that's just the facts.
And they're turning right. They're listening to Andrew Tate, and they're voting for Trump and Co.
What do YOU think this cohort of men will do if they hit their 30's and find themselves unable to form families or hit the other life goals that they'd expect to achieve by then?
Just throw some thoughts out there.
I'm offering the moderate options, but these guys are even less likely to give a shit about women's input.
Ok. Now do human rights.
More options
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